I'll Never Write My Memoirs

The book I was waiting for! Grace has alwways something to teach, both to the readers and to her companion starlettes.Inspiring and suggestive. An important witness of 70's and 80's coolness.

Grace Jones nos encanta, su música, ella es lo más. El libro nos ha encantado, una vida muy interesante. Mola mucho.

Totally worth reading. Grace makes me want to be born in the 70s or 80s. Looking forward to the next chapters of her life.

Grace's memoirs have really surprised me. I knew her delivery would be provocative and outrageous, imperious and Diva-like. After all, this is Grace Jones telling the story, but her writing voice is also poetic and at times shows the mystical/other worldly influence of her childhood in Jamaica. As a long time fan, I enjoyed learning the details of her crazy past, especially the years leading up to her music career. She's quite frank with her pronouncements but doesn't spare herself in the process. The NY Times review was titled, "Her Muchness," and was no doubt meant as a left-handed compliment, but I think it's apt- Grace is Much; it's what draws fans to her work. I think she herself relishes her muchness; it makes Grace Grace. Or Bev Grace. That was a fun fact to learn.

Grace Jones would never lie. Her book I'll Never Write My Memoirs is only a 'memoir' in the loosest sense of that literary form. Wildly entertaining, occasionally stunningly poetic, and based on the rough outlines of Jones' incredible life and illustrious career, I'll Never Write My Memoirs is something - as she spends pages proclaiming she does with her music - utterly new and unique.Perhaps the key is in the "as told to" credit. I'll Never Write My Memoirs is like listening to your dotty old aunt reminisce about her glory days: she intimates that shocking things happen but always maintains plausible deniability of any wrongdoing. And she frequently, always fascinatingly but somewhat maddeningly, wanders off topic mid-anecdote into an entirely new self-aggrandizing digression.Jones writes/talks movingly of her Jamaican childhood and the abuse and religious fervour that scarred her and helped shape her persona. That conventional narrative of an unconventional early life does not last. From there on in I'll Never Write My Memoirs skips through time and space with wild but always compelling abandon.The gossipy sections are surprisingly the weakest and Jones is as coy and contradictory about her sex life as she is about her drug use. The best tidbit is when she describes a photo shoot arranged by BFFs Andy Warhol and Keith Haring with the intention of getting Dolph Lundgren naked so they could assess his endowment. The descriptions of her time at Studio 54 and The Garage are fascinating but skimpy on dirt (she references a night where she sat between Divine and Woody Allen but that is it for what is surely at least an anecdote).Jones has intriguing things to say about race, gender, sexuality, AIDS, disco, modeling and especially the creation of music. She writes of rooming with Jerry Hall and Jessica Lange in Paris, joking with the Queen of England, losing men (repeatedly) when she brings a woman home as a threesome gift, battling with co-workers, and even includes her current rider for a performance: lots of champagne, luxury and "2 Dozen Findeclare or Colchester Oysters on ice (unopened) - (Grace does her own shucking)"Full review at: http://drewrowsome.blogspot.ca/2015/10/ill-never-write-my-memoirs-grace-jones.html