Life with My Sister Madonna

Authors: Christopher Ciccone, Wendy Leigh
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

28 reviews
Sales Rank: 935

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3

ISBN: 1847374387
EAN: 9781847374387
ASIN: 1847374387

Publication Date: July 14, 2008
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours

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Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

A really good read September 18, 2008
I am not a big fan of Madonna but decided to give this book a go. I really enjoyed this book and found it hard to put down. In fact I was really disappointed when I finished it. I felt Christopher gave a fair view in the book and it was a great insight into Madonna's life and her lifestyle. I loved it.

1 out of 5 stars

Grow up you moronic loser September 16, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I have never been a huge fan of Madonna and so read this book wih an open mind. This book is really much a do about nothing, it has obviously been written to line the pockets of a bitter, twisted person who is jealous of his sisters success.
He starts the book being in awe of his sister but by the end he is unable to contain his jealousy and resorts to whingeing e.g. "Her house is bigger than mine" etc... YAWN!
He seems to forget, that had it not been for Madonna's success he would be flipping burgers for a living- he should've spent his money more wisely, instead of blowing it all (no pun intended), buying his way into the celebrity circuit. It's interesting to note that as soon as Madonna kicked him into touch, so did his so called celebrity pals (Demi Moore, being a prime example).
As for Madonna herself, who knows? It is very doubtful she will ever resort to releasing a similar book, so we will never know the reasons behind her treatment of Christopher. BUT as an outsider looking in, it would appear that she grew tired of his party lifestyle and constant whining about money... And he has now done the worst thing a "loving" relative can ever do... sell out

3 out of 5 stars

Myth busting? September 9, 2008
Christopher Ciccone is Madonna's younger brother and, as the only gay man in the large family of 8 children, naturally fell into the creation and masterminding of the woman who would become the most famous icon of our time.
Reading this bitter, and 'myth-busting' autobiography, I couldn't help noticing that despite the explicit aim of the book - to reveal all about Madonna - she still remains elusive and almost outside the frame at times.
Why else are so many people still so fascinated with her?
Ciccone gives us no insight into why she can disregard and fail to understand the needs of others so easily, neither does he explore why exactly it is she is so, in his words, 'profoundly different' from the rest of us.
The result is, unexpectedly, that Madonna may have emerged from this tell-all with little damage done. The myth-busting, for example her early days in New York which were far less waif-and-stray than she has always made out, has already been covered by biographers such as Andrew Morton, and her famous temperament - the iciness and the tantrums - is there everytime you open a newspaper or magazine. She would tell you herself, because she doesn't understand why not to.
I enjoyed the vignettes - the 'random incidents' that Madonna herself has alluded to when recounting those years and which Christopher seems to have been able to attract too. No amount of money or fame seems to inure the cast of celebrities to things not going according to plan, and that is interesting.
If the author emerges as subservient and lacking the wit to get out at the earliest opportunity then this has to be balanced against why he may have stayed: Madonna, as she has tried to project in her work towards millions, helped him form his identity, and if the skewed morality of what followed from that is at times funny and at times hard to understand, then it's clear how important this is to people.
You only have to look at Madonna's latest change of image, to see how enthralled people still are with hers.

5 out of 5 stars

Insightful look into Madonna's life August 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

This is an entertaining look at Madonna's life through the eyes of her obviously embittered brother Christopher. It's probably Christopher's bitchier comments about his sister that are the most revealing. You get the sense of a classically complicated brother-sister relationship. Very tellingly at the end Christopher relates a conversatin with his father where he calls himself a 'Loser'. I came away feeling sorry for Christopher, and thinking that it wouldn't be that hard for his older sister to forgive his irritating ways and take him back into the fold.

There's no real depth to the book, and you leave it feeling as slutty as if you've just read a back catalogue of Heat magazine. However, it's grossly intriguing nonetheless.

5 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable read that ultimately reveals more about Christopher himself than Madonna August 24, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Barcode: 9781847374387

I bought this book to read over the holiday and both being a massive Madonna fan as well as hearing all the fuss over this book in the media i was intrigued to find out what the book was really like.

Having finished it, it is fair to say that there is very little in terms of 'dirty laundry' or 'shock horror revalatory statements' to be found here. The book didn't change my opinion of Madonna at all, simply becoming another element that makes up her incredible legacy as a performer.

Thus, despite pretty much purely focusing on Christopher's life in terms of his relationship with Madonna, it becomes far more a story of himself. Now, each to their own but i actually found Christopher pretty likeable - the writing style casual and on the whole pretty well-written for this kind of book. That said though, he is not without his faults and my lasting impression is of someone who grew overly used to opportunites and bonuses being Madonna's brother provided him with, only to feel the blows twice as hard when he reached tough times.

Christopher seems keen to say he has carved his own place in the world, and the passion he clearly shows towards his art and design is commendable but as towards the later stages of the book when he complains of poor accomodation and a whole host of financial difficulties he does begin to rub you up the wrong way. Without a doubt the worst part of the book is Christopher's decent into a drug-fuelled life of super-models and suchlike and the reek of self-obsession is at its highest in his catty emails to Madonna.

So, put simply, this is the story of two siblings who came from a large, very traditional Christian family and while Madonna, for all her quirky lifestyle bits and pieces is well, still amazing, Christopher seems to have got worse over the years. You feel sorry for him when Madonna refuses to pay him for various design jobs and while i'll maintain he does overall seem like an OK guy, he's grown accustomed to an extravagent lifestyle that he never really had in the first place.

Christopher's relationship difficulties with Guy Richie seem petty as well, he bigs up the fact that he has some kind of homophobic agenda against him and that Guy has driven him out of Madonna's life but he hardly seems to have tried investing in any kind of friendship with his brother-in-law at all, apparently just letting this quasi-bitterness keep hanging between them.

Taking a chronological route, starting from the Ciccone siblings' childhood right up to the present day - it's interesting to see personalities develop over the years as well as Madonna's stratospheric rise to global fame. There's a good balance of most areas of her life and the book flows well as a whole. Even if you aren't keen on this book or Christopher, i feel there is still some worth to it as it will have provoked an opinion, which is clearly this book's key intention.

The essence of it all essentially is Christopher presenting himself to the reader, you can like him or not and in many ways, i did find this as an outlook on Madonna refreshing. There are so many unnoficial biographies of her out there and whatever degree of truth there is to Christopher's stories about her (you never can tell 100%), at heart it is a first hand account of just how close you really can get to the Queen of pop before you lose it all.

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