Tome Time - Cybill Disobedience by Cybill Shepherd

Started November 15th, finished December 29th.  421 pages.

This was an impulse free purchase.  I discovered it whilst hunting around for free/very cheap Kindle books.  I was very surprised to find it for free.  I've always quite liked Cybill Shepherd and thought her autobiography would be popular.  Especially due to the Elvis bits.  Then I began to wonder if she'd missed out all the juicy bits and that's why it was free....

Well, I couldn't have been more wrong really.  This seems to be a no holds barred account of the way she sees her life.  Unless she's led a much more exciting time and she's only given us the tip of the iceberg.  I find this unlikely though as she doesn't look haggard enough.

She starts at the very beginning and we learn of her childhood.  Which doesn't seem altogether the happiest.  there are some dark parts to it.  She's taught early on the value of her looks.  Which she seems to view as a help but also a hindrance at times throughout her career.

I really expected to like Cybill and thoroughly enjoy this book.  She's always come across as beautiful, bright and fun with what seems like a wicked sense of humour.  The tales of her tomboy behaviour at the start of the book further confirmed this.  However as the book went on I found myself not taking to her quite as much.  It seems wrong to state that the author of an autobiography seems self-centred, that's what they're here for.  It just seemed that she saw things from her perspective and nowhere else.

Early on in the book a relationship falls apart, which may have done anyway but she hastened it on.  That's never going to warm the reader up.  But I put this aside as she was honest about her involvement and she was pretty young at the time.  She always seems to come across as though she's a little hard done to throughout the book.  Maybe she was?  The problem was I don't know anything about anyone else mentioned so I can't compare.

The chapters of her life including Orson Welles were interesting.  Hell, she shared a house with Citizen Kane :-)  The parts about Elvis were creepy rather than anything else.  She did well getting out of there.

I hate it when I read an autobiography and I like the writer less afterwards.  I don't hate the woman.  I still have her to thank for episodes of Cybill when I was grounded on Friday nights.  I would love to know the views of those that she was less than complimentary of.  The ones she thinks stabbed her in the back.  You've got to give her credit, she did well in a male dominated world.  She was successful and I'm guessing she did have to stand her ground a lot.  Maybe I'm doing her a huge disservice.

The problem with reading a Kindle book is that you don't get to read the cover and dedications etc, as easily as a real book.  There is a ghost writer here, Aimee Lee Ball.  I forget these things when I read on a  Kindle though.  I have no idea what her input was.  The book read well enough though.

I certainly couldn't complain that there wasn't enough juice in there.  This book is raw and a gossip's dream. Not one I'll ever read again though.

2.5 out of 5 pawprints

Next - Le Dossier by Sarah Long