Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: That’s How the Light Gets In, Vol. 3

The final volume of Posner’s (The Early Years, Vol. 1; From This Broken Hill, Vol. 2.) biography of Canadian singer-poet Cohen covers the last 30 years of his life, from the late 1980s to his death in 2016 at age 82. It starts with his career back on track: full houses in Europe and record releases. When Cohen’s manager dies, he hires his assistant to replace him. Seventeen years later, Cohen finds himself in a battle over $5 million missing from his accounts. It turns into a blessing, though: he returns to work to refill his coffers. Chronically depressed, Cohen turns to Zen Buddhism for relief—but remains a practicing Jew—spending five years in retreat with aged Zen master Roshi (later involved in a sex scandal). Cohen was an inveterate womanizer and, however engaging in interactions with people, fled intimacy. The book is told through interviews, paragraph-long snippets tied together by Posner’s narrative. It’s an engaging approach at first but eventually becomes repetitive: too many present the same portrait of Cohen and his last, heartbreaking days.