KIRKUS REVIEW

It's hard to guess how many times the strings of your heart will go zing but let's say right off that this is not Finch's intention. But still the saturation-competition is hard to overlook--particularly in the teeth of Gerold Frank's gaudiest, longest, mostest Judy. Finch is the first writer not to exploit her--he has made a serious attempt to understand that sad trajectory from nowhere to fame to failure and he has written about her with style and intelligence. Without retracing the facts (they're here--so is a good deal of animating personal history) Finch has evaluated her talent (that mimicry; timing; ability to ""lift a lyric out of the ordinary""; energy) and her films and that divided self which never managed to overcome the problem of her father and his bisexuality on the one hand, or her ""losing battle with the process of fictionalization"" assisted by all ""the myths, half-truths and outright lies"" of studio-press agent hokum to which she also contributed en route. But in the end, after ""galaxies of pills had intervened,"" and psychiatrists, and men who were not husbands or lovers or fathers, it was as in the beginning--Judy Garland was still the Baby Gumm of her ""surrogate childhood."" By the way--a big by the way--this full length text (358 pages) will appear with 100 both new and exceptional black-and-whites in the same pictorial format as the Mailer-Monroe. Rainbow's end? Finch's cogent, un-sensationalized interpretation should make any other book gratuitous.