Susie Boyt first heard Judy Garland sing Over the Rainbow when she was an extremely shy and sensitive three-year-old; she has been in love with the tragic Hollywood legend ever since. Although Boyt was only five months old when Garland died in 1969, her “profound kinship” with the star has helped her deal with countless emotions and personal problems. “Matters of life and death hang in the balance when Judy sings,” she writes.

Part memoir, part biography, part love letter, My Judy Garland Life makes for a very peculiar, if funnily written journey. Boyt grafts her personal reminiscences - growing up in west London as the daughter of a bohemian artist and the painter Lucian Freud - onto episodes from Garland's own life: the actress's time at stage school, her five marriages, her on-stage triumphs, her mental breakdowns. As a girl, Boyt listened to Garland's music almost continually, using it to fend off “dark thoughts”. She attended 2,000 dance classes in the hope of becoming a musical star like Judy, in spite of being too chunky, or, as her mother put it, “too intelligent”. She relates her own problems with weight back to Garland's experience of bullying at stage school, where her teachers called her the “little hunchback”. Rather poignantly, pictures of Boyt as a girl on stage, and of a towering cream cake captioned “the perfect snack”, appear alongside pictures of Garland in various roles and costumes, including one photo the author always carries with her.

Sympathising with Garland's bouts of depression, Boyt uses the book to list her own sadnesses. Her parents' separation caused her “physical pain”, she confesses, but her connection with Garland, even as a child, helped her immensely. Even the most fleeting moments - entering a flower shop, buying shampoo, washing the dishes - still remind her of Judy.

Boyt's research on Garland's life is tireless. She listens repeatedly to concerts and interviews, parses diaries, address books and letters, meets former co-stars, associates and all Garland's children. “Last night,” she enthuses, “I was introduced to the son of the man who played the Cowardly Lion.” She visits Judy's birthplace and grave, the stages on which she performed, the places she lodged. She even meets Garland's dry-cleaner, still working next to the Chelsea house in which Garland died. At the same time, Boyt tries to get to the bottom of her obsession by contacting more than 100 fellow fans, whom she divides into “good” and “bad”. She questions whether Garland (and her destructive behaviour) is worthy of her adoration at all.

Certainly, it's difficult to empathise fully with Boyt's hero worship, unless you're a crazed fan yourself. Boyt's previous books have all been fiction, and there is a faintly unreal quality to this one. My Judy Garland Life is neither a proper memoir nor a satisfying biography; as an examination of the pressures of being a celebrity, it is interesting but hardly forensic. Oddly, there is little about life as the child of a celebrity. Boyt doesn't seem remotely hung up about her status as Freud's daughter; if anything, she is rather proud of the fact that her great-grandfather Sigmund, the father of psychoanalysis, had an indirect role in Garland's life. Unlike her ancestor, though, Boyt stops short of deep probing: in an interview with Liza Minelli, she can't quite bring herself to ask the star about her mother. Perhaps, like any die-hard fan, she is afraid of tarnishing her idol. And even after all her self-questioning, when she performs a Garland song on stage in New York in the book's final scene, her adoration for her heroine remains undimmed. “Judy,” she writes, “is now stronger, brighter and sharper than ever.”

My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt
Virago £15.99 pp320

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