Personality by Andrew OHagan

Personality Reviews

• 
  Bookread2day

  I am very angry with the list of who Andrew thanked at the back of Personality. He thanks Hughie Green, Opportunity Knocks. But Hughie Green died 3rd May 1997. This book would not have been published in 2004 if it wasn't for my friend Late singing star Lena Zavaroni. But Andrew O'Hagan has failed to thank any of Lena's family, or her managers. Apart from that with Lena's name changed to Maria Tambini I really enjoyed reading Personality. Maria seems to have a bit wild side to her in the way she speaks and some of the things she does. Naturally a character has to be made larger than life or the character would not become interesting to read about. Lena was not like that she was very quitetly spoken. We wrote to each other and we was always chatting and laughing together. I must say though that as I enjoyed reading Personality so much that I will be reading more of Andrew O'Hagans books. I do highly recommend reading Personality.
  Review by ireadnovels.wordpress.com
• 
  Gail McConnell

  A man dies to the sound of laughter escaping from Blankety Blank. A nurse loses her temper with a bunch of flowers too cumbersome for their vase. A woman goes up in the lift to see the mother she has never met. Porters smoke on the stairwell and remember the worst and the best of Friday night. A Pakistani gentleman says prayers to himself, too old to wait, and ignores the football commentary coming from an adjacent radio. A doctor checks a chart and remembers his wife's birthday, and out in the corridor a confectionary machine jams and keeps the money. A bone is set, and a lady who grew up in Cornwall remembers the long walk to school.
  
  
  There will always be the words to other people's songs, but Michael is here now, and I am here, and the fresh air my God you wouldn't believe it. When I look up I think of all the miles the air has come to reach us, I think of it passing stars and planets, falling through clouds, and blowing over the English Channel, our mouths open to catch the air and to say what we want to say, to speak now, to speak out loud, and before long the land begins to appear over there, another coast. The day is beautiful, we are far from home, and the boat moves like a prayer over the water.
  
  (160; 327)
• 
  Ryan

  This is where O'Hagan's fiction first grew its wings. It has much in common with the unfussy style of his essays and shares their fascination with celebrity, national identity, a vocation and its corruption. Though the main character is Lena Zavarone plus tweaks, O'Hagan has done his homework, read his Susie Orbach, and produced a powerfully convincing portrayal of anorexia. Despite his gift for empathy, he is quite the low-key satirist. After watching him deftly skewer Hughie Green and Nancy Reagan, I wished he had gone even further.
  
  I recommend the novel and the essays collected in The Atlantic Ocean (especially the masterful 'The End of British Farming’).
• 
  Emily

  A little bit hard to get into in the beginning, but worth it. Part coming of age story, part mystery, part meditation on celebrity, Personality is a satisfying and interesting read.
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  Rebecca

  This book took me forver to read and I totally didn't care at all. I took it for free at a hostel I stayed at and it blew. Thank god I returned it at the used bookstore in town and got some money to get it out of my hands.
  
  Girl with italian roots grows up in the middle-of-nowhere-Scotland and has a great singing voice and becomes super sucessful. The story kept flash-backing to stories with the girls' families' past, but I couldn't keep anything straight. I am not really a fan when books do that because it totally confuses me. TV, totally love it (see LOST), but in books, I know it's lame, but I get confused easily. Whatever.
  
  Grade: N/A
• 
  Craig Smillie

  Hearing what the subject of the book was had put me off reading it for several years - however I was totally wrong. I found the novel to be a really sensitive examination of celebrity culture and eating disorder. The multi-vocal approach to narration allowing us to hear the thoughts of many characters about their lives on a small Scottish island put me in mind of MacKay Brown's "Greenvoe" - as did the lyricism of the prose. Even the reverie of Hughie Greene as a young Canadian pilot humanised that annoying little plonker. All in all, quite a beautiful read - and culminating in one of the most tender yet at the same time erotic love scenes that you will find anywhere.
• 
  Julie

  O'Hagan shows a unique slice of Scottish contemporary history- the Italian community that has both integrated into and been held apart from Scotland's cultural identity. He wraps this into a story of a budding celebrity in the 1970s. The voices are a bit distant, but there is enough wry and loving humor to make the characters sympathetic and the story an engaging read.
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  Sandra

  Hugely disappointing, the more so because Andrew O'Hagan's writing can be so exciting, but this felt like being drowned in sheet after sheet of "character description" exercises, none of whom I found in any way likeable.
  This isn't the first I've read where someone has taken a true story and used it as the basis for a novel; only Colum McCann's, about Rudolph Nureyev, really worked for me.
• 
  Christy

  A young Scottish girl gets her big break on a reality TV show and is whisked off to London where she becomes a star, and realizes the immense struggles that ultimately accompany her new rise to fame. Interesting story, but felt a bit disorganized.
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  Sydney

  I loved the dialogue and insight in this story, as well as the Scottish experience, but because of the cliched plot points, I gave it just three stars.
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  Vikki

  Love his non-fiction but this wasn't so good.
• 
  Lisa van Zyl-Jones

  Tried to read this book off and on for months. Just. Couldn't. Too. Dull.
• 
  Maxine Dale

  3.5
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  Joan

  This was a fictional account of the life of Lena Zavaroni a child singer who famously won Opportunity Knocks in the 1970s and after a period of great success suffered from anorexia for years. I liked the sense of background in Bute and her italian family background was interesting and well captured. However Maria (Lena's character) was always a mystery to me and I think this was done on purpose - what is it drives a young girl to leave her family and pursue fame and fortune with such dedication? I felt slightly let down as I would have liked the answers to these questions, I didn't even feel clear about who was important to Maria - it seemed like no-one was more important. If I look at it from a mental health perspective maybe Maria's quest for perfection was the blueprint for her anorexia and feeling of isolation. So I liked the book but somehow wanted more from it which is why I only scored it a 3.
• 
  Ceri

  Very well written, if fairly unsettling, book which is clearly based on the life of Lena Zavarone.
  Brilliant characterisation but that of Maria still felt like a stranger .. feel like this was done deliberately though and added to the character dimensions
• 
  Ken

  to_read_nation