There is a very poignant introduction to this book, written by Julian Lennon: "For far too long, now, Mum has put up with being relegated to a puff of smoke in Dad's life and that is simply not the truth. Now it's time to set the record straight." You can't help feeling, by the time Cynthia Lennon reaches the final section of her memoir - the bit where John runs off with Yoko and calls for Julian about twice every three years, and then complains about his table manners - that "puff of smoke" would describe perfectly how Julian feels as well. It's terribly sad, this story. Even when John Lennon was at his best as a husband and father to this pair, he was woeful - never around, denying their existence in case he lost a few record sales to the unglamorous whiff of breast milk, shunting them from one kvetching relative to another and generally acting like the worst, most piteous, self-justifying, feckless Fay Weldon anti-hero.
However, none of this means that John Lennon wasn't a creative force the world would be a smaller place with-out. Nor does it mean that this is a good book. Cynthia Lennon is a decent person, for sure: if she had even a hint of interior darkness, she just couldn't be this bland. But it is not a good book.
Here's what's wrong, and it is rudimentary (I say this in criticism not really of the author, but of Hodder & Stoughton, which, if it couldn't stump up for a ghost-writer, could at least have hired a decent editor). There is no sense of structure at all; it is all turgidly chronological. Yet it still manages to confuse, because so much extraneous material is included. How can Cynthia start revising for her finals on page three, and still not have sat them by page 97? The detail is phenomenal. No doubt there are Lennon fans hard core enough to want to know about the appearances, marriages, obstetric histories and whereabouts of each of his aunts, but man alive! A Spanish nanny called Mariquilla appears briefly before leaving to train as an air-traffic controller in Majorca. She doesn't say anything amusing, doesn't do anything of note, never meets John Lennon and leaves no impression on anybody else. What earthly narrative purpose, outside of a book about air-traffic control, does she have? There is a three-page exposition of how John's aunt Mimi liked feeding her cats fresh fish, and of how, as an outlandish consequence of this, Cynthia sometimes had to buy and boil fresh fish. It is unbelievable, this stuff. It's rather like doing community service in an old people's home.
That some bits are of interest is, as far as I can make out, purely accidental - it is interesting to learn what an authoritarian dickhead Lennon was when he was young. He once flew into a white-knuckled sulk when Cynthia cut her hair. "Thankfully, on the third day he thawed, put his arms around me and apologised. I never contemplated having my hair cut so radically again." This is pretty much the tone throughout Cynthia's account of their ten years together. She sounds like a battered wife whom nobody can be bothered to batter, which in itself is interesting, both as a character study and as a portrait of the times, but it would be more sustaining and a lot less depressing if she had some awareness of what she is depicting.
Other interesting bits include a throwaway line about how George Harrison, with his first big pay cheque, planned to buy his dad a bus, because he was a bus driver. (How hopelessly sweet is that? No, really!) And then there is the caption to a photo of a letter from John to Cynthia, about how much he loved Julian: "Paul McCartney later bought the letter as a gift for Julian." Now there's a shocker. McCartney obviously didn't buy it from Cynthia, so she must have sold it to someone else. And she must have been skint if she did that, because she's a right softie. So what we're dealing with is a rock god of ludicrous wealth, whose ex-wife had to flog the one scrap of affection he showed during his son's childhood because he wouldn't give them enough money after he walked. What a piece of work is a man. Still, a reader shouldn't have to pick up the interesting bits of a 400-page book from the picture captions.
Alarm bells should have rung when I saw the type, which is mutantly large. Doesn't have a lot to say, I thought. Probably - no, definitely - a very nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say. Good Christ, though, she says it slowly.
Zoe Williams is a columnist for the Guardian
