Luanne Castle: Poetry and Other Words (and cats!)

The other day I finished reading Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me. It was my daughter’s book, and she read it first. I have a few thoughts, but first thought I would share the NY Times review. It does a great job of describing the meat of the book–what Britney says she has gone through with her family, career, love life, and mental health. It doesn’t mention the quality of the writing. Leave that to me ;).

If you find a paywall in the following article and would like to read , email me at luanne[dot]castle[at]gmail[dot]com.

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The Woman in Me was actually written by ghostwriter Sam Lansky, a music journalist, along with Britney. So I do think that what is most important about the book is exactly what the NY Times reviewer wrote about: Britney’s life as she sees it.

But let me mention why I was interested in reading about Britney. I’m not a big fan of pop music, especially anything post 70s, but I did like “Toxic” and a few other songs; however, I wasn’t a fan per se. I’ve followed her career because my daughter, who is 5 or 6 years younger than Britney, was a huge fan. Such a big fan that when my daughter, a dancer and singer from a young age, was in callbacks for a regional theatre production (that was local to us) at age fifteen, she ran out in the middle in order to make it in time to a Britney concert.

Since she meant so much to my daughter, I kept up with Britney’s outer world. Britney started her career, truly, with her stint on the Mickey Mouse Club where she met other kids who went on to become famous, such as Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Ryan Gosling. My daughter who was very talented at dance from a young age begged me repeatedly to take her to Los Angeles to audition for . . . everything. We lived a couple of hours away, so it wouldn’t have been impossible to do this. But I’ve always thought that we have clear evidence that the life of a child performer is dangerous. It tends to screw up their adult lives. And I think in many cases–and this is true in Britney’s case–it corrupts the adults who are supposed to be safeguarding the child. I (and my daughter’s dad was in complete agreement) would not let her audition for anything out of our local area until she was an adult. By then she was off to college, studying musical theatre.

Reading this memoir confirmed for me that I had made the right decision for my daughter because what she found out as an adult is that the performing world is difficult even for adults. We see Britney now as a vulnerable, mentally ill woman, but what she has gone through has undoubtedly been horrific for her and her mental health. I still believe I was right that the #freeBritney movement was correct. Her imprisonment by her father should have led to his imprisonment in a U.S. prison, in my opinion. I wish there was better mental health care for Britney Spears and the millions of other sufferers, but unfortunately our mental health system is not good. And someone as rich and famous as Britney was a real target–especially by those close to her.

I promised I would address the quality of the writing of the book. Let me put it this way. Last night I asked my daughter what she thought about the book. The first thing she said was that she read it thinking what I, a writer, thought about the writing of it. “It seemed disjointed and choppy. Did you think so?” Yup, I sure did. Events were out of sequence for no good reason. For a ghostwritten book, it could have been so much better. I have no idea how hard it was for Sam Lansky to work with Britney or how much editing she did of the book herself, but the quality of the writing is subpar. Even so, I couldn’t put the book down because I wanted to hear about Britney’s life from her perspective, and that was worth it to me.