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What Happened, Miss Simone? by Alan Light – review

Written By Unknown on Monday, March 21, 2016 | 3:41 AM

From her raging, handwritten letters to late-night phone calls with David Bowie, this biography gets up close and personal with the tempestuous Nina Simone

Her handwriting rages across the page, its strokes straight, its tone unmistakable. “I love you – but you make me sick – cause you’re dead … You don’t even love me – you worship me but that’s a far cry from love, motherfucker.” This is Nina Simone’s voice in the ink, blazing, harsh and direct, far from the deep, soulful sound that soars out of her records.

But both voices are Simone. The tumultuous life story of the extraordinary musician has been documented before, most notably (and erratically) in her 1992 memoir, I Put a Spell on You. Autobiographies aren’t always reliable things, especially when their subjects have struggled with drugs and debilitating breakdowns. But that’s not to knock Simone’s powerful personality. As determined as she was fragile, as intelligent as she was sometimes submissive before men (although that’s her husband-manager, Andrew Stroud, being annihilated in that handwritten note), capturing her on the page is a challenging task.

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