Reviews for Kids, wait till you hear this! : as told to Michael Feinstein
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A great American character claims her double legacy of genius and addiction. Calling herself “the original nepo-baby,” the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli offers a raw and revealing look at a life shaped by fame and personal struggle. At the heart of Minnelli’s story is her fraught relationship with her volatile mother. While stressing that “our love was what mattered,” life with Judy was no picnic. The night before her fifth birthday, she accidentally kicked her mother in the head while watching TV, permanently scarred by lesson that “if Mama got angry, she was the most terrifying person in my life.” Garland’s addictions made her unstable and unreliable, forcing her daughter to take on adult responsibilities at a very young age. A veteran performer by the time she was in double digits, she won the first star in her EGOT crown (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards) at age 19 for her role in the musicalFlora the Red Menace. This was also her first work with John Kander and Fred Ebb, musical collaborators in her most iconic successes:Cabaret, Liza With a “Z,” andNew York, New York. Minnelli describes taking her first Valium in 1969 at the time of her mother’s death from an overdose, unwittingly assuming the mantle of addictions that would mar her public and private life for decades. In and out of the Betty Ford Center, she finally achieved sobriety in 2015, on the eve of her 70th birthday. As the title suggests, she has great stories, and, with the help of her dear friend Feinstein and co-writers Getlin and Evans, she leaves out none of the juice. From her torrid, cocaine-fueled romance with Martin Scorsese (both were married at the time, and she cheated on both husband and lover with Mikhail Baryshnikov) to her falling-out with Lady Gaga at the Oscars in 2022, she spares neither herself nor anyone else and, in the process, reclaims her once very tattered dignity in a moving and remarkable way. An old-school Hollywood tell-all with all the trimmings, traumas, and bold-face names. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly
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Decorated entertainer Minnelli’s debut delivers on the razzle-dazzle intrigue of its title. Narrating her life story to musician Feinstein, her longtime friend, Minnelli invites readers to join her at the piano bench and soak up the highs and lows of her storied career. She begins on the MGM lot, where she grew up the only child of filmmaker Vincente Minnelli and superstar Judy Garland in the 1940s and ’50s (“We were living our own version of Meet Me in St. Louis.... But it wouldn’t be all blueberry pie for long”). First witnessing the cracks in her parents’ marriage soon after her fifth birthday, Minnelli became a keen observer of her mother’s addictions to “pills and alcohol” before grappling with her own addictions in adulthood. Among other chatty showbiz anecdotes, Minnelli recalls breaking an ankle during rehearsals for her Broadway debut and making career-defining turns in the film Cabaret and its companion TV special, Liza with a Z. Through multiple marriages and divorces, successes and flops, she catalogs the pendulum swings of her life with gumption and good humor (“One day it’s kicks, then it’s kicks in the shins”). Fans new and old will appreciate this portrait of a woman forever committed to putting on a show. (Mar.)
