Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life

by Anthony Reynolds

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: Biography, Music, Nonfiction

321 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2010

Reviews

[Габриела Манова · Rating 5 out of 5]

Беше един от онези ужасно студени дни, в които снегът чака последния момент да завали. Неделя, разбира се. Гледах Bird on a Wire. Великолепен, ненатрапчив, силно автентичен и много топъл филм за Ленард Коен, проследяващ турнето му през 70-те. Режисьорът Тони Палмър направи най-дългото интро, което съм чувала на прожекция, но пък беше толкова благ и разказваше страшно увлекателно... Как Коен не искал да прави турне. Как Палмър познавал Коен първо като поет. Как филмът вижда свят 30 години след направата му. Как наследниците на Пикасо толкова се трогнали от филма, че позволили на Палмър да ползва гълъба на мира за обложката. Филмът представя Л. К. като пацифист. Спокоен човек, приел болката като част от битието. Представя го бавно.

И неслучайно четох книгата бавно. Сега на това се уча – на бавност. На спокойствие. Ужасяващ контрапункт на всичко, което съм. Спокойствието ме безпокои. Страхът и болката – също. От тази гледна точка Ленард Коен има много за казване.
Чета го, както (не) съм си го представяла. И докато гледах Bird on a Wire, и докато четох биографията, не ме напускаше мисълта, че Коен през почти целия си живот е страдал от депресия. Но страдал ли е всъщност? Както казва Том Йорк, много креативна енергия е концентрирана именно в това чувство, така че в известен смисъл страданието е и благословия. Не че не се е терзал - особено като по-млад. Но в края на живота си сякаш най-сетне се примирява и помирява със себе си. Не рови в миналото, не дълбае. Човекът, който бях, не ми е интересен. Именно това ми е идеалът за остаряване. Само като се замисля колко време отделям, едва 21-годишна, на спомняне на всичко, което съм била (колкото и малко да е то), ми става смешно. (И само малко страшно.)

Чета Л. К. по-нисък, отколкото винаги съм го мислела. Чета го и си представям как рецитира текстовете си – не ги пее, рецитира ги. Чета го като хроникьор на настоящето. Чета го плуващ в басейн под звуците на Avalanche. Чета го първо като човек, после като писател и чак накрая като изпълнител. Не знам защо, но за мен Ленард Коен ще си остане преди всичко един от най-великите поети. Въобще. Не на нашето време. Не на ХХ век. Един от най-великите поети изобщо.

През октомври миналата година, когато излезе последният му албум, слушах Ленард и си мислех за нещастието като катализатор. Понеже напоследък си мисля колко споделяне е прекалено много споделяне и колко биографичното може да се смята за изкуство, опознаването на човека и музиканта Ленард Коен ми дава храна в тая насока. Той никога не се е страхувал да пише каквото пише. Човек не може да избира за какво да пише... просто отиваш там, където има дим.

Поезията и музиката на Ленард Коен дават смелост да си искрен и непретенциозен. П(д)оказват, че да си откровен – с откровеност, която е същинско разголване – може да се прави фино и стилно. Някои биха нарекли това еротика, но за мен е по-скоро романтика. Ленард Коен е може би последният романтик.

И един цитат, който ми хареса прекалено много, за да не го споделя:
Никой не може да се остави в чужда власт за дълго, но и никой не може да държи другия поробен до безкрай.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an edited review. I'm not changing my mind about the writing, just trying to be a little kinder. Full disclosure: I gave up on page 35. Here's why:

My first hint of something amiss came with the author's admission that he'd never seen a full Leonard Cohen concert. While I'm sure it's possible to write a biography of a living and currently touring performing artist without having ever caught a whole show, it's inexcusable.

Hints started piling up as I had to re-read sentences for meaning. I gave the author the benefit of my fatigue, having just driven 4 1/2 hours from a weekend in the mountains. I also told myself to excuse the writing for the sake of the revelations. Next morning I came across this sentence opening describing the pop sounds of 1960's England: "Such somnolent saccharin sounds scraped sumptuously up against the still primitive sounding..." Two sentences later, the author describes the weather as, "cold and teal coloured..." A few pages later, this description of a casual acquaintance; "Charmaine had an almost modelesque beauty about her." Next, the use of the words "vivid" and "vividly,' thrice within five successive sentences. Finally, upon meeting Marianne, as in "Hello Marianne," "the silent far off sound of destiny falling into place." Samuel Johnson is worth quoting here: "Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage you think is particularly fine, strike it out."

I expected to like this book; I wanted to like it - that's why I bought it. Leonard Cohen's life is worthy subject matter, and the opening description of the events before the ill-fated concert at which Cohen collapsed was compelling; but, and it's a big but - the following pages were so poorly written I just had to stop. Could the problems have been fixed? Maybe, with a diligent editor, but someone made the decision that the book was ready for publication, and in my opinion it wasn't. A matter of taste? I think not. Are there revelations and insights worth mining for? Possibly, but I just can't bring myself to it.

It's a shame, the subject deserves better.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone familiar with Reynolds' work will know that his books in particular avoid the obvious whilst offering incredible detail and information.

This work is no different, drawing on scores of new interviews with Cohen's collaborators and colleagues allowing you to feel as if you are right there in the studio during the making of Cohen's seminal albums. Reynolds is not one to focus on the day to day private life of his subjects. The angle is always the work. (Speaking of which, the proof reader could ahve worked harder on this).

The photo's herin are wonderful. I don't think i'vbe seen roughly 80% of them before. This is the best book I've yet read on Cohen the Singer/Songwriter/musician/producer/performer.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, (which is on You Tube) he quotes Jon Landau saying, "I have seen the future of rock and roll, it's not Leonard Cohen". Landau then said Springsteen was the future. I first heard of Cohen when I was around 18. My church youth group went to see a folk trio (whose name I have long forgotten) and they sang "Suzanne". Because the second verse is about Jesus, I became interested to hear more of Cohen.
Living in rural Ohio at the time, I just couldn't walk down the street to the record store and buy his album. I had to go Mansfield to a record store, and they didn't have his album. However, I did buy Judy Collins' album "In My Life", in which she sang "Suzanne". It was a start.
A couple of months later, I bought Cohen's "Songs from a Room", which was his second record. A month later, I bought "The Songs of Leonard Cohen", his first album. I memorized the album's lyrics and sang them under my breath. I have been fan since.
Reynolds wrote very sloppy biography. It is not well researched, treating everything superficially. For instance, he covers the important women in Cohen's life. When Cohen ends the relationship, Reynolds mentions it, but doesn't explain why the relationship ended. He lacks that kind of curiosity. On the other hand, he goes into detail about recording sessions, what studio, the personal was on the album and the equipment used.
Cohen was engaged for a while to the movie actress Rebecca De Mornay. Reynolds stated she was in the movie "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" with Tom Cruise. Wrong! She starred with Cruise in "Risky Business". I wondered how many other things he got wrong.
In the 1990's Cohen was managed by Kelly Lynch who stole five million dollars from him. Reynolds writes, some one contacted Lynch to get her side of the incident. But Reynolds never tells us what she said. I looked it up the case online, to me her story seems unreliable.

[Mary-lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

They say do not judge a book by its cover but on hindsight this book is exactly like it's cover. A man in a suit who you can't clearly see and the clothes themselves are like a detective show disguise. A portrait on the wall, which we later discover only vaguely looks like the man portrayed within, a vase of roses ( pity they weren't gardenias that would have worked with the story much better), and a small boat which I now think would be a Greek boat. I must also mention the man in the photo has beautiful hands. I see them as creative but in a fussy delicate way. Hands like this would be good for making model boats. Finally it all looks a little too 'staged'....but still intriguing.
Well that is the cover and the book really. I also now know that Leonard Cohen is a kind and hardworking man. A spiritual man in the tradition of smoking, drinking, drug taking 60's type spirituality in fact he is a monk but has decided the monastery life is not for him.

I actually stopped reading the book early on because it just did not satisfy my curiosity about the private life or mind of such a man but then I wanted to know what happened, how did he get from a poet on a Greek island to a legend and I did find that out in a technical way but not in the human, messy, emotional way that would have been satisfying to me. I don't think the author even met Cohen, I know he had never seen him in concert , and he had some annoying writing habits. At some stages he began referring to Cohen as LC and that really annoyed me and at one stage he described his voice as being like God on an answering machine, too clever by half. It is not all bad though and I will now endeavour to listen to some of Cohens work.
POSTSCRIPT
I bought ,'The Essential LEONARD COHEN' CD yesterday. It had been a big day but I couldn't wait and put it on straight away. I was doing other stuff and my first reaction was, " Oh this is so droning I shouldn't have wasted my money", and then this morning I really LISTENED whilst doing my practice. The word now is that he is a genius. I am just like those referenced constantly in the book who start off with a vague idea who Cohen is and then end up worshipping at his alter.
My criticism of the book that it didn't have enough messy life stuff leaves as soon as you listen to the lyrics. We don't need to have the messy stuff presented just the context ( which the book does) because the lyrics are a seed of the world. Perfectly imperfect like a pearl or river stone. I am converted!

[Damien · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have complete sympathy for those who commented on the remarkable number of editing issues in this book, but I persevered and such issues almost disappeared in the second half. Given that the author is something of a poetry aficionado, and thus presumably a person who cares about words, I am left thinking that perhaps the issue is not one of poor editing (although I still think it is), but one of ‘style’.

With that out of the way, I really enjoyed this book. Although it goes off into details that were sometimes irrelevant to my interests, the long list of interviews used as background for the project provide a wealth of information about Cohen, of course, but also about the various milieux in which he moved over a very long period of time.

As for Cohen himself, he comes across as a charming, kind and generous man who was dedicated to his vision. Perhaps his achievement of idol status among the bourgeoisie of the Western world has something to do with their / our admiration for a rather solitary man who does what he likes, when he likes, in pursuit of that vision.

Thus in speaking of his years of activities at the Zen retreat at Mt Baldy, Reynolds notes that Cohen would get up before the prescribed 3.00am in order to have a coffee and a couple of cigarettes. That suggests a somewhat idiosyncratic approach to Zen. On the other hand, he seems to have understood the main idea; after his five year stint on the mountain, Cohen notes that ‘One of the goals of the activities is to discard the goal’.

So who is Leonard Cohen?

Fittingly, Cohen himself gets the final word. Reynolds finished the book with this quote from the great man himself, written on Hydra in the early days:

In my journey I know I am somewhere beyond the travelling pack of poets
I am a man of tradition
I will remain here until I am sure of what I am leaving

[Kerfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject of this biography remains elusive and enigmatic throughout, cultivating various deliberately surface, pleasant, cinematic personas to keep his interior intact and unknown. For many years intoxicants further blurred his interactions with the world.

Others describe him as "gracious" "gentlemanly" "pragmatic" "workmanlike". Despite his many lovers, passion does not figure into this narrative. Leonard Cohen's conversations and interview answers are pretty bland.

But there are the written words, the poems, the songs. As Cohen says himself, "I never say anything that even remotely matches what I say in my work."

And so this book, like many musician interviews and biographies, falls flat for me. It doesn't help in this case that the author is a fawning fan whose writing never seems worth reading for its own sake, and that the editing is really really bad. I'm a person who is bothered by constant sloppy spelling and grammatical mistakes that should have been corrected in the proofs, and in this volume they abound. "We'll" for "Well"? Seriously.

I did discover few things I didn't know. "God is Alive, Magic is Afoot was written by Cohen, not Buffy Sainte-Marie. The John Cale version on "Hallelujah" that is my favorite was one of the first interpretations recorded. And I don't know if I ever experienced the Phil Spector album, so I reserved it at the library.

In the end, the work is what serves as the "crack in everything" that lets the light into Leonard Cohen. Not Reynolds' biography. So listen to the music, read Cohen's own books. Much more satisfactory.

[Sam O'grady]

Leonard Cohen is without a doubt one of the greatest musicians I've had the opportunity to listen to again and again. Naturally, a biography in his honor piqued my interests. However, those interests might have been piqued a little higher than I realized. Author Anthony Reynolds is certainly an avid Cohen fan himself and puts a wealth of detail into this door-stopper of a book, doing semi-detective work on the side by taking note of Cohen's friends' and fan's opinions of him. However, the book suffers from two major flaws: While Cohen's music and poetry is certainly amazing and unmatched, his lifestyle (save for some notable events) I didn't find terribly interesting. The second flaw being that Reynolds' prose is somehow overbloated and yet grammatically incorrect on numerous occasions at the same time. Reynolds' writing tends to go into great detail on simple things as if to make them seem dramatic or larger than life, when really those simple things were merely simple. Reynolds definitely could have used a proofreader for his grammatical errors. This is recommended only if you're a die-hard Cohen fan.
But as Leonard himself once said, "there's a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

[Under Milkwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a couple of years to get around to reading this book which is odd because Leonard is a lifelong hero of mine. Perhaps it was the lame title that stalled me. Anyway, Anthony Reynolds has obviously done his homework sorting out chronological events over a period of forty years. Because it's Cohen's life, you stick with it even if Reynolds never saw one of his concerts until Cohen was in his seventies and has had no personal contact with him whatsoever.
Sadly, Reynolds (or his editor) neglected to do their homework with the words themselves because I kept stumbling over typographical errors and needless repetitions. And the selection of photographs and the way they fall in the biography is strange indeed.
Having first seen Leonard Cohen at the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne in early 1980 when he actually stood outside the Backstage Door and signed autographs (while I patted him on the back!), one can only cherish those days when Leonard was a seemingly humble poet of the people as opposed to the heavily guarded 'hits' machine that he has become.
An enigmatic life indeed but save 'remarkable' for Meryl Streep's biography.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a deeply affecting beginning to this biography which focuses on the moment when Cohen collapsed onstage on his 2009 tour when in Spain. Reynolds was in the audience that night, a long-time fan about to see Cohen for the first time and for all the world it looked like the great man had just died in front of the crowd. In the end it was only a scare - I got to see Cohen later that same week in Barcelona, on his 75th birthday no less, still cracking his little jokes about age - but it underlined the risks of this "last tour to provide for his family" and his own odd combination of fragility and resilience that he had been offering up since his appearance as a poet-turned-singer in 1966.

Reynolds is an accomplished music biographer because as well as his polished writing style, he is actually a musician himself, a singer-songwriter who had a brief moment on the main stage in the UK in the 1990s, with the band Jack, and has continued to work on the fringes in the interim. He has written about many of his musical heroes and managed to transmit a combination of enthusiasm and clear-eyed recounting, sometimes finding an angle that leaves behind the hackneyed tropes that tend to get bandied about in the music press.

Here he has a curiously durable subject, a singer-songwriter who seemed out of his time when he emerged - already in his thirties and seemingly plying a folk boom that had been transcended by electric guitars - and somehow remained that way through all the ups and downs of his career. The key was his capacity for empathy and connection, while still leaving space for people to project their own images in between his verses. Suzanne and Marianne were based on real people, but they were written as ethereal, mythical creatures, as were the Sisters of Mercy. More priapic than his gentlemanly demeanour would lead one to believe, Leonard Cohen cut a swathe through the free love era, inserting the coffeehouse poet of an earlier generation with aplomb and maintaining a classical dress sense that somehow became his shtick because of his preternatural calm in presenting himself that way while all around were beads and flounces and patchouli and atavistic military gear. He never hid his Jewish roots, indeed laughed about them on multiple occasions in song. He kept his sense of humour, overcoming stage fright and crippling attacks of depression.

In truth, he was not much of a gentleman when it didn't suit him to be. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too, and possibly would not have been so beloved if he had come along at a different time. However, what cannot be overlooked is that his appeal to women was extraordinary and crosses over generations. His ability to combine the carnal with the romantic and the spiritual is a potent brew, helped in seeming timeless by the fact he used so many mythological and liturgical references. Dylan did too, but mostly as figures of fun, jumbled up with plenty of literary touchstones. Cohen instead makes them flesh and blood, so we play David's three chords ("…the fourth, the fifth…") along with him in Hallelujah, we sit with him as he "forget(s) to pray for the angels" who then forget to pray for the partnership he is bidding so long to.

There were times I wanted a little less self-serving mythmaking when it came to the dealings with Marty Machat (and his son Steve) and especially with the hapless and/or devious Kelley Lynch, about whom the official story really does not hang together very well at all. It made for a great comeback tale: spiritual singer-songwriter comes down from Buddhist monastery to find his riches ransacked and is forced to go on tour. Her argument is that she was used a fall guy for Cohen's messy tax circumstances and that her life has been upended by going against Cohen. The question as to why she went against him if there was a way of working together is not really covered. There were apparently offers made. The whole saga will come out eventually and may not be particularly edifying, while perhaps taking the lustre off the fairytale comeback story. In any case, the return of Leonard Cohen with that band on that tour, and the subsequent one, was a true gift to his fans in his last few years.

And it was the tour where he collapsed onstage and where he celebrated his 75th birthday. The man was blessed with savoir faire and savoir dire. The murkier aspects of a bohemian life may be necessary for completeness and to avoid a whitewash, but they will not take away the magic of the extraordinarily sturdy and memorable songs that were penned by this Canadian knight errant.

[Hester Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Leonard Cohen and have already read the Sylvie Simmon's biography which, in my opinion, is a lot better. This is an interesting read at times, and I like the structure, following the subject through each of his major albums. However, the syntax was clunky and I didn't get the sense from the author that he himself was a fan, which made the whole thing seem slightly cold and passionless.

[Katarzyna Konieckiewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo szczegółowa biografia. Zawiera relacje bliskich Cohenowi. Zastanawiające, że sam autor nigdy nie interpretował publicznie swoich utworów. Pozostawił to słuchaczom. Cieszył się z tego że jego utwory są często wykorzystywane przez innych, te interpretacje wielokrotnie doprowadzały go do łez. Oczywiście tych ze wzruszenia. Cieszył się z emocji, jakie mógł wzbudzić wsrod odbiorców. I to chyba jest wielkość artysty.

[Lynn Davidman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Leonard Cohen's music and I bought this book, I was eager to read it.
I was disappointed; I think the author is confused about Leonard Cohen's relationship to Judaism and Christianity. He grew up so deeply steeped in Judaism, as his songs show. But the author said he was equally loyal to both Judaism and Christianity. I find that hard to believe...

[Dymbula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeho hudbu moc neposlouchám, z nějakého důvodu mě nebaví. Hlas má nádherný, texty nejsou blbé, ale... Zatímco kniha o jeho životě mě bavila hodně. Skvěle pojatá biogrqafie. Po přečtení jsem zkusil pár elpíček znova, ale stále mě to nebaví. Nevadí.

[Mieszko Pelc · Rating 4 out of 5]

7

[Anne Carre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful!

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and learning about this incredible artist! Brilliantly written and if you’re a Cohen fan, then a must read!!

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read

[Simon Bate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Who was the proofreader of this book?...Any possible enjoyment was ruined by the errors that were so evident on almost every page

[Nick Shears · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting bookbecause of the subject – my favourite singer/songwriter/poet – and content rather than how it was written. Scores of minor typos implied it was not proofread.

[Carole A · Rating 2 out of 5]

Appallingly proof-read. I did contact Reynolds about it and sent him some (many) corrections, with his agreement. I don’t know what, if anything, he did about them. I never heard from him again.

[Paul Besley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would not read this author again.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars. It was ok. 'Leonard Cohen A Remarkable Life', published 2010, I found to be a somewhat unremarkable biography. Certainly the author Anthony Reynolds has done the homework on his subject, but I just got bored with the continuous turgid details of Cohen's times in the studio or on tour. Maybe I've outgrown this stuff from the discography world of fandom.
There were some brighter details, for instance Cohen's Montreal upbringing, or his sojourn on the Greek island of Hydra, or his stint as a Zen Monk, but these were all just too brief interludes from the rest of the text.
What continually got on my goat with this publication was the total lack of any proof reading of the text, which must be the responsibility of Omnibus Press. The amount of textual errors and spelling mistakes could be corrected by most eight year olds, yet the publishers charge twenty quid for a copy of this book.
Rant over.

[GrimMandarin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, so it wasn't the worst biography in the world. In fact, it's amazing the amount of detail there is in the book considering how private Leonard Cohen is. I really wanted to like it, however the most disappointing (and distracting) feature of this book was the poor editing: spelling mistakes, repeated words, using "their" instead of "there", and so on. And before anyone decides to pick me up on my own grammar/spelling: I'm not doing this as a commercial venture, and I am not writing about the life of a brilliant and meticulous wordsmith. Perhaps Mr Reynolds' publishers might pay a proof-reader/editor to take another look at this book before it goes to a second edition...

Otherwise, a vaguely interesting read that was sort of let down by the fact that once Leonard decided to become a musician, there isn't a lot left in the book between the recording and touring of his albums - except for his trip to Mt Baldy & a few snippets here & there. Maybe there isn't a lot that happened.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ouch. The author must be spitting blood over this. A thoughtful, well-researched and interesting read that appears to have been given the rush-release cash-in treatment by the publisher. It's not just the lack of proofreading; it's the editing. Not good enough for a twenty quid bio of a serious artist.

Aside from that - the section on Death of a Ladies' Man is fascinating, as are the accounts of how Cohen put together his later albums. It might have been down to the difficulty of talking to the people concerned, but his earlier music is given less rigorous treatment; 'Songs of Love and Hate' in particular seems to be rushed through, which is odd. There's a gratifying lack of sixth-form analysis of Cohen's lyrics.

[Martin]

I can honestly say this is one of the worst written Books on the great man I've ever read. Mr Reynolds seems to be unable to make up his mind whether he is a North of England Writer using fragments of that dialect or if he is an American Writer who has picked up some West Midlands and Yorkshire dialectics. It is a badly written book on nearly every level except for occasional flashes of hero worship which Mr Reynolds sets off with even more occasional forays into very weak investigative journalism. As a lifelong fan of Mr Cohen I can only assume I my own expectations were far too high or else that he saw agreeing to this very faulty Biography as a wise financial move which would benefit his Family after he has set down his burden and moved on.

[Melody · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was horrible. Where was the editor? Turgid, purple prose, misused words, alliteration so heinous that one wishes there was a stiff fine for committing it, greengrocer's apostrophes everywhere- and perhaps worst of all, the author's drunken presence at a concert at the start of a book about Mr. Cohen.

Did I finish it? No. Can I judge it anyway? Yes, indeed. I dipped and sampled throughout, just in case it improved. I would love to read a good biography of Leonard Cohen. This is most emphatically not it.

What can I say about this book that isn't vitriolic? Hrmmm. The photos are nice. And it wasn't written in free verse.

[Bill Keithler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this to the end despite that difficult and dense writing that would have benefitted from an editor. Typos and grammatical errors are easy enough to get around but the author seems to get lost in detail that is often superfluous and more appropriate to footnotes (of which there are none). I finished the book because I was interested in the subject. Apparently the author had not only never attended a Leonard Cohen concert but he also relied entirely on third party sources in his research. Hopefully there will be a better constructed biography of this artist in the near future.

[Bethnoir · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very sad to admit this, as I really enjoyed Anthony Reynolds books about The Walker Brothers and Jeff Buckley, but this is not a masterpiece. It's very detailed, but not in an interesting way. The writing was repetitive and uninspiring, which was an unpleasant surprise as AR usually uses words so well. I must admit that I am not an obsessive fan of Mr Cohen, perhaps others would find the level of information more entertaining than I did, but overall I can't recommend this book. Sorry.

[Bebop2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, this should have been edited with a better eye. Other than that, it was well worth the read for me. Reynolds follows Lennie's life, chronologically by his work, from the earliest poems to the just completed world tour. As a lifetime lover of almost everything LC has created, I couldn't put the book down! My four stars are for the content and presentation.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I thought the author wrote a poorly structured story, I found the essence of the saga very interesting - probably because I find Leonard Cohen's music to be compelling with a cadence that fits his poetic mind. Reynolds defined Cohen in much the manner I hear him.