The book is essentially an auto- biography viewed through the prism of Garland-worship. ‘Judy makes me feel extraordinary things,’ declares Boyt; ‘she allows me to view the world in a way that I like, but scarcely dare. She’s not a problem I wish to solve and nor am I.’ She sets up a supposed encounter with her in a drycleaner’s, along the lines of Henry James’s story ‘In the Cage’, at the same time imagining a meeting in a sanatorium between the damaged star and the drink-sodden poet, John Berryman, an episode which Boyt, an experienced novelist, deftly fashions into a short story. She has fun dressing up in Judy’s leopardskin hat and muff, and visits the grave in Westchester, New York, where her friend, Marc, cleans the tombstone with vodka in honour of ‘the Mightiest Lady of our time’. Her yearning for Judy becomes a dress ‘cut on the bias, which sparkles, glossy and sequinned under lights pink and amber’.

In all its ardour and spontaneity, My Judy Garland Life is one of this year’s most original books. Mercifully we do not need to share Boyt’s adoration, or indeed to give a rap for Judy, living or dead, to enjoy its insights, hankerings and revelations. As a record of the sort of borrowed world few of its readers are likely to have entered with such wide-eyed intensity it appears uniquely memorable.

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