Publishers Weekly
01/31/2019
In a moving and often sad follow-up to his 2016 memoir Porcelain, musician Moby skillfully intersperses moments from his childhood with episodes of his life following the success of his 1999 album Play. As a child, he shuffles with his mother to parties in 1970s Connecticut, often waking up in a room full of strangers who have crashed from the previous night. Moby, afraid to upset his mother during parties, tells of once hiding in a “dark closet, listening to the radio and wondering when it would be okay for me to go back outside.” As Moby enters adulthood, he fluctuates between feelings of joy, narcissism, and self-denigration. In junior high, Moby learns to play the guitar, and in high school he forms a band with friends; by 1984, he’s working as a DJ in Connecticut and New York City and recording his own music. But years later, as Play rises on the charts and the 34-year-old Moby lives the rock star life—dining with David Bowie and with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, throwing a holiday party in his “sky castle” apartment on Central Park West—he writes of feeling worthless, unlovable, and inadequate. He begins drinking heavily, but eventually joins AA and embarks on his road to emotional wellness. This well-written memoir of a man’s search for contentment astutely reveals the sharp rises and the steep descents of fame. (May)
From the Publisher
Reviews for Porcelain: “Riveting.”—Rolling Stone
“Rock memoirs rarely live up to expectations, but… Porcelain is an exception. It ranks with Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band and a handful of others in recent years as a particularly incisive look at not just a life in music, but at the cultural and social circumstances that helped shape it. It is by turns self-deprecating, hilarious and moving.”—Chicago Tribune
"This well-written memoir of a man’s search for contentment astutely reveals the sharp rises and the steep descents of fame."
—Publishers Weekly
"Filled with fascinating characters and memorable meetings with celebrities and politicians."
— Library Journal
"Moby’s writing shines brightest in descriptions of the music he loves. A salacious cautionary tale as well as a nostalgic trip through a memorable time in music."
—Booklist
“A celebrity-filled chronicle of the debauchery and desperation that led to [Moby’s sobriety.]”
—New York Post
“A wildly entertaining journey through the life of a musician whose unassuming exterior belies a wildness to rival any rock ‘n roll memoir you’ve ever read."
—LA Daily News
” Moby is most unsparing with himself. He has no axes to grind, but he’s brutal when characterizing his narcissistic-rocker phase.... His wit is sharp but light, and the memoir isn’t stuffed with references to obscure things no one’s ever heard of."
—SFWeekly
"A must-read."
—Kirkus Reviews
"[THEN IT FELL APART includes] stories that are humorous, heartfelt, heartbreaking, and above all else, revealing…. The level of honesty Moby poured into each page fills the book with memorable moments from cover to cover.”
—Consequence of Sound
"Can't put it down. Honest, heartbreaking and really funny."
— Adam McKay, co-writer of Anchorman, Talledega Nights and founder of the website Funny or Die
"Just three years after his first memoir, Porcelain, Moby is back with an even more revealing book, tracing his dark journey through fame. Tales about David Bowie, Madonna and ex-flames Natalie Portman and Christina Ricci abound."
—Entertainment Weekly
"Charming and funny and very, very revealing."
—John Waters, filmmaker and author of Mr. Know-It-All
Library Journal
03/01/2019
Singer Moby's second memoir (after 2016's Porcelain) is organized into 65 time-skipping chapters, scattered from 1965 through 2008 and filled with fascinating characters and memorable meetings with celebrities and politicians. Angst and drug abuse weave the tales together, but what could have been a meaningful and reflective exploration into creativity, addiction, and recovery quickly reveals itself as a series of self-indulgent journal entries seeking readers' simultaneous sympathy for Moby's celebrity-fueled descent into addiction and awe for that lavish lifestyle. It's difficult to connect to the author's story when it feels more like emotionally detached boasting, especially when he mentions how boring threesomes became while pointing out the brand name and thread count of his sheets. This is less a tale of a poor boy poisoned by celebrity and more of a humblebrag with product placement and name-dropping. VERDICT Only for hard-core Moby fans.—Melissa Engleman, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin
Kirkus Reviews
2019-02-14
The bittersweet continuing saga of Moby's life and career in music.
Resuming where his debut memoir, Porcelain (2016), left off, the author chronicles his days following the 1999 debut of "Play," an album he recorded in his cramped Manhattan loft that the defeated musician considered a "flawed and poorly mixed swan song." His career progressed despite an album tour clouded by addictive indulgences, but it was enlivened by encounters with Natalie Portman, Richard Branson, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and Madonna. Folded into a narrative that frequently dips back to a childhood forever altered by his father's suicide is the saga of an often melancholic, pensive, lonely man eager for human connection and commercial success. Moby offers moving tales of his "bucolic incarceration" at summer camp, losing his virginity, and the joys of learning the guitar, forming his own band, and DJ-ing in the 1980s. As his fame grew and subsequent albums flourished, so did his desire to release himself from the anxieties of stardom and from the grips of a music industry in which feeling worthless could become all-consuming. At one point, he writes, "I laid down…sobbing and apologizing to God and my dead mom for being such a disappointment." Though dalliances with women, booze, and drugs, however soul-destroying, tempered his inner malaise, Moby writes of continually fooling himself with the "basic math" of a life equation that never added up to true contentment: "If you added wealth and fame and awards and sex and alcohol, that had to guarantee I would never again be a sad, scared boy from the suburbs." The narrative plays out with the same episodic flow and emotional turbulence as Porcelain, and fans of the musician will feel his palpable sorrow in his moments of self-pitying misery. But they will also acknowledge his pride and elation when, after years of abusing alcohol to numb his psychic pain, the author fully embraced a substance abuse recovery program to heal inside and out.
A must-read for Moby followers and surely a cathartic and revelatory writing experience for the author.
