Personality

A review of my latest reading:

Personality
Andrew O'Hagan
Faber

Personality by Andrew Hagan is more or less a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of celebrity.

Child star Maria Tambini is more than loosely based on the tragic life of Lena Zavaroni, who was likewise born into an Italian-Scottish fish-and-chip shop owning family on the Isle of Bute, shot to fame after winning the popular TV show Opportunity Knocks six weeks running, sang for the President of USA in her brief but luminous career, and struggled with anorexia.

Also set in the 1970s, Personality includes cameos of entertainers drawn from Zavaroni's life, such as the appalling Hughie Green, presenter of Opportunity Knocks, who is a kind of grotesque parody of all that is shallow and insincere in the world of "Light Entertainment": ("And I mean that most sincerely, folks").

Around the bones of fact O'Hagan invents a family and community for Maria in remote, clannish Bute.The book begins with Maria's childhood with her single mother, Rosa, grandmother Lucia and uncle Alberto. Maria entertains the locals each night in the pub where she belts out songs in a voice too huge for her diminutive frame. Her talent is 'spotted'; she is sent to London, beginning her swift ascension to fame. She appears on TV, attends the Italia Conti stage school, and begins a gruelling tour schedule and gets to meet all sorts of stars: Dean Martin, Les Dawson and Ronald Reagan.

Told from the perspective of people who know Maria , Personality narrates the way fame gradually erases Maria's personality. Maria becomes obsessed with her appearance, self-absorbed and empty-headed. As the story continues her body starts to disappear as well, as she starves herself to death, in and out of hospital, at one time plummeting to four stone.

No-one in Maria's life seems equipped her. Her mother Rosa, who believes talent is to be used, is happy to send Maria to London but never visits, and is too full of her own disappointment, bitterness and recriminations to have any kind of understanding of her daughter. Maria's manager, Marion Gaskell is a driven, emotionally arid woman who appreciates that Maria "is like me: she sees the point of a day's work". Then there is Kevin, a deranged fan, whose letters and interior monologue become increasingly alarming, who thinks he knows Maria better than anyone, and tries to kill her. (As deranged fans do). With her life programmed and stage-managed for her, in the end the only control Maria has over her life is to starve herself out of existence. Fortunately for Maria, White Knight Michael, the childhood friend from Bute who becomes Maria's lover, rides to the rescue and gradually loves her back to health. Ahhh. Yes, it is all a bit too sweet.

Despite the cliches, however, the story is very well-told. O'Hagan has a sharp perception of character and motivation. Lucia, Maria's self-righteous grandmother, who "kept watch for the moments of grime in other people's lives", and goes to sleep "with the slow breathing certainty that people failed to live their lives decently". Yet Lucia has grime of her own, and gradually unfolds the tragic secret of a lost daughter- a family mystery which underscores Maria's own tragedy. Maria's mother Rosa " goes about her housework as if it were an act of violence" and cries whenever mention is made of the efforts she made in life.

There is a dizzying array of voices and prose styles, from schoolgirl letters to tabloid gossip. Every character gets a say. Yet the cumulative effect is to make Maria more and more elusive to the reader, which perhaps is the point- celebrity being only what you are through other people's eyes.

The moral of the story is obviously that fame can be bad for your health, reducing a person to a "personality". This is hardly a novel observation - star burns out and self-destructs. The shortcoming of this book is that, although well-told, it doesn't "say" any more than this.

Lena Zavaroni died aged 35 of complications from a leucotomy: a brain operation intended to cure her anorexia and depression. Maria Tambini is given a kinder fate, finding love and happy-ever-after. It's a conclusion that doesn't ring true when we know how the story really ended, and leaves me wondering why the author didn't make a definitive choice between fact of fiction.
An enjoyable book where (to quote another reviewer) the parts add up to a good deal more than the whole.
- Jo Frew