Cher: The Memoir, Part One

Few celebrities have held the public’s devoted fascination as long as Cher. Her engaging, outrageously honest, and surprisingly introspective memoir lives up to her legend and is packed with revelations. Her mother’s early life is a tale of severe poverty and rampant family addictions. “Addiction doesn’t just run in my family, it gallops,” she writes. At 15, Cher dropped out of high school. She met Sonny Bono in 1962 when she was 16, and their musical partnership began. Although they told the public they married in 1964, they quietly wed in 1969. They had five singles in the top 20, something only Elvis Presley and the Beatles had accomplished. “Becoming famous is hard, but making a comeback is almost impossible,” writes the queen of the comebacks. The duo recreated themselves from kooky singers to suave Las Vegas entertainers to TV stars. After their divorce, she continued hosting their TV show with Sonny—while pregnant by her second husband, Gregg Allman. This first volume of the memoir ends in 1980, just before Cher morphed into an award-winning film star.