Jude Southerland Kessler's first historical novel, Shoulda Been There, represents a tremendous undertaking. In its 795 pages, Kessler carefully blends fact and fiction to tell the story of John Lennon. The result is a fascinating look at Lennon's life and the early days of The Beatles.
Shoulda Been There is clearly well-researched and well-documented. Kessler provides thorough footnotes and references at the end of each chapter. She also captures the famous Scouse dialect and sense of humor remarkably well. Kessler even provides a handy "Scouse Glossary" at the end of the novel. She also includes a listing of the historical characters complete with short biographies of each one. With such a large number of characters, this helps the reader separate the real people from Kessler's creations.
Kessler tells the story of John Lennon from his birth in 1940 to the rise of The Beatles in the early 1960s. (The novel ends in December 1961.) The story is told from a third person standpoint with particular emphasis on John Lennon. It feels as if the narrator is a fly on the wall throughout Lennon's life. This type of storytelling is definitely risky. Many diehard Beatle fans will try to pick out minute details and search for the tiniest possible errors. However, Kessler effortlessly combines both well-known facts and created scenes in a seamless story.
Shoulda Been There begins with an interesting prologue describing the myths surrounding John Lennon's birth. Kessler goes on to create a more likely (and well-documented) scenario for the story. She quickly introduces readers to the unhappy genius who would become a musical legend as well as his dysfunctional family. When Lennon moves in with Aunt Mimi and Uncle Ge'rge, his life changes forever. A pattern of abandonment and loss begins for him. That pattern tinges young John's life with pain and contributes to his later anger and rebellion. Between Julia Lennon's abandonment and early death and the sudden death of his beloved Uncle Ge'rge, John Lennon's early years were far from happy. He found his escape in the exciting and somewhat mysterious world of rock music. Lennon was able to channel his anger into music. This novel does a wonderful job of explaining the edginess of John Lennon.
Kessler skillfully creates Lennon's world in Liverpool and abroad. The reader experiences the highs and lows of his life with him. Whether he's pulling a prank at Quarry Bank Grammar or falling in love at Liverpool College of Art, there is always a high level of emotion present with John Lennon. Kessler also manages to create suspense in the story of the beginning of The Beatles. Even though I knew what would happen, I found myself rooting for "the lads" as they played one low budget gig after another. The descriptions of some of The Beatles' shows in both Hamburg and Liverpool are so vivid that it feels like the reader is right there in the audience. She captures the improvised playlists, audience chatter, and movements with a journalistic eye for detail. Such descriptions make it very easy to forget that this is a novel, not another Beatle biography.
Shoulda Been There is definitely a must-read for Beatle fans and music fans in general. Regardless of whether or not you are a Beatle fan, there is no way to deny the influence of John Lennon on American music. Unlike the standard biography, Shoulda Been There paints a different portrait of John Lennon. It allows the reader to just focus on the early years, including the years before The Beatles. This is the first book of a trilogy about Lennon's life. If the next two books are anything like this one, readers are definitely in for a treat.
The song "Imagine" by John Lennon is a byproduct of years of participating in and observing conflict about most meaningless issues, different perspectives and selfishness. But imagine is just what John Lennon spent his entire life doing with the most tenacious and passionate vision and "out of the box" thinking anyone else could ever dream. Jude Southerland Kessler takes a reader through the minute events and factors that contributed into forming this iconic, well-loved and really quite misunderstood musical genius!
Shoulda Been There is the first of a series of novels written by Kessler to chronicle the little-known but fascinating facts about John Lennon's life. This first edition spans the years of 1940 to 1965, well before the Beatles landed to mesmerize America and change the world of music forever. While it's impossible to cover the 795 pages within this review, this reviewer was deeply moved by John's story. Raised by an Aunt Mimi and Uncle George who tried to instill a sense of order and responsibility in John's chaotic spirit, John was just as much a byproduct of his free-spirited mother, Julia, who had a similar passion for music, dance and performance. Indeed she was the inspiration behind John picking up a guitar and at first playing in a "skiffle" band, later to become known as The Quarrymen.
But before his musical career haltingly inched forward, there were years of friendship and pranks shared with best friends like Peter Shotton, pranks that kept John in the lower academic ranks and always on the verge of expulsion from school. It certainly doesn't seem like John lacked intellectual ability; he was just plain bored, so trouble was the spark that made school tolerable. John was a voracious reader and talented sketcher as well as evolving musician.
The rest of the novel takes up every step of John's strategy as well as the rejections and small bits of victory that led the band through different players, different managers and different ideas about how to become successful. It was only after John met Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr and a new manager, Brian Epstien, that John finally began to feel they had a chance at becoming "known" and not just in the backwaters of Liverpool.
Shoulda been there is meticulously researched, full of notes and comments debunking myths about John and his family, but all in all is told in fictional form, albeit this reviewer kept thinking of it as more of a memoir than a novel in which the author has imagined the conversations that occurred around historical events in Lennon's life. It's well-told, a bit stretchy with minutiae but a fascinating story for those who would love to read more about the man who gifted the world with an eclectic, memorable, life-changing series of songs and albums that will stand the test of time for sure.
Very, very well done, Ms. Kessler!!! This reviewer is avidly looking forward to your next segment of this story re John Lennon, the Beatle!!!
On first glance, Jude Southerland Kessler's new novel, Shoulda Been There, seems like a daunting tome: it's s a huge, heavy paperback, 795 pages including the endnotes and appendices. Presented as a novel, but really more of a "factional" account of John Lennon's life from 1940 through 1961, it is also nowhere near as imposing as it seems to be, particularly once the reader can get past its sheer size and begin reading. This book is only Volume One of what the author promises to be a trilogy of novelized biographies covering the entirety of John Lennon's 40 years.
Kessler states that the effort to produce this book has consumed much of the last 20 years of her life, and it shows. The research is meticulous, down to the tiniest details, and as soon as one begins reading they are transported into the world that was John Lennon's young life. The story begins with his birth in 1940, and Kessler's insight into imagining the personalities of Lennon's mother, Julia, and Aunt Mimi, are remarkable. The reader can almost imagine oneself in the room as the young mother argues with a nurse during her labor and delivery, and running along the bomb-scarred streets of Liverpool with Mimi as she rushes to her sister's side to catch her first glimpse of the baby whom she would raise as a son.
Indeed, it is this "fly on the wall" approach that is most interesting and endearing about this book. For those fans who have spent years immersing themselves in the minutae of John Lennon's life, who know every nuance, every story, every episode, there is much to savor here. After all, what truly devoted fans have not envisioned these scenes in their heads since...well...forever, and wished they could have been there as it happened? It has often been said that the Beatles' story would read like fiction if it wasn't true, and there is, and has been since the beginning, a certain mystique attached to the story of the four boys from a grimy industrial city in the north of England who rose to unimagined heights of fame and fortune. Kessler manages to bring these people and places to vivid, colorful life with her charming narrative style and keen sense of the diverse personalities involved in the drama. It is here that her research pays off in huge ways -- the reader can "feel" these places, "know" these people -- and understand what made them tick.
The book goes on to discuss at great length the life lessons that made John Lennon into "John Lennon." All the characters are here -- his free-spirited mother, absent father, gentle Uncle George, stern Aunt Mimi, lifelong friends like Pete Shotton and Ivan Vaughn and Stuart Sutcliffe, and of course, most importantly, one Paul McCartney and one George Harrison. It goes into imaginative detail about every single tale that has become part of the myth -- sometimes even if the retelling manages to bust that myth. For instance, though there are various accounts of Lennon being born during an air raid, Kessler points out in her notes that, after researching the date and time extensively, there was no air raid in Liverpool on October 9, 1940. And so, though she tells the story of John's birth and Mimi's run to the hospital that day, the bombs are absent, as it really was that night. It is engaging storytelling like this, not meant to so much as squash the myths as it is to bolster them with researched facts, that make this book so much fun.
The story of the tragic deaths of Uncle George and Julia are here, as are retellings of Lennon's art college days, the formation of the Quarrymen, his meetings with Paul, George and Stuart, the early trips to Hamburg, and countless other anecdotes that are so well known. Kessler has used many sources for her research, some of them books that many fans probably own, and some of them personal interviews and recollections from the actual parties involved. The combination really does make for a unique kind of biography.
The book includes lengthy endnotes detailing all the source materials, a "who's who" enumerating all the real people who populate this story, plus personal photographs and information about Kessler's many trips to Liverpool to document the research. However, she also does one thing that this reviewer, at least, found to be somewhat unnecessary. After a lively and engrossing telling of an anecdote, she feels compelled to put copious amounts of documentation at the end of every chapter, disrupting the flow of the overall narrative. Frankly, since the book is being presented as a novel based in fact from the get-go, these justifications and constant disclaimers that "all conversation is conjecture" unceremoniously tear the reader back into the here and now when all they'd really rather do is remain in Kessler's fully realized world of 1940s and 50s Liverpool, and in fact, tend to become tedious overkill after a while, even seeming like apologetic justifications. If readers are able to skip the sometimes multi-paragraph end notes, this may not be much of an issue, but I found them personally quite distracting at times.
Generally, though, there is much to recommend in this book.
The biggest issue is certainly not the fictionalized, "novel-style"
approach to the material. Clearly this was, and is, a great labor
of love by Kessler, and it shows in every highly documented, beautifully
edited, lovingly constructed bit of this self-published book.
This is absolutely engaging and absorbing, and well worth seeking
out if Lennon-loving readers are looking for something a little
bit different and a heck of a lot of fun to add to a collection
on their Beatles bookshelf.
"Shoulda been there is an actual tour de force!" Bill Harry, MerseyBeat magazine, merseybeat.com, rockandpopshop.com, Beatle author/expert
"Shoulda been there is something special..." David Haber, whatgoeson.com
"Fascinating...really impressive!" Mark Lewisohn, Beatle author and expert
Shoulda been there, the first researched historical novel
on the life of John Lennon, is extraordinary. The book (first
in a trilogy of Lennon novels), written by Jude Southerland Kessler,
covers Lennon's life from 1940 to 1961, and traces the events
that motivated his desire to become a famous rock star and the
day-by-day activities of the early Beatles.
In what Bill Harry referred to in his foreword as a "factional" approach, Kessler blends twenty years of research on Lennon with her ability to create authentic Scouse or Liverpudlian dialogue and with an incredible familiarity with the ins and outs of northern England. Kessler describes events in Lennon's adolescence as if she were there, as if (as Bill Harry noted) she had been a fly on the wall during these landmark events.
Readers live the Quarry Men's first performance at The Roseberry Street Festival and The Beatles days in Hamburg; they walk with John into Liverpool College of Art as a freshman in 1957; they stand beside John at his mother's funeral in 1958. Each moment in John's youth and teen years becomes a moment in the reader's own experience. For 795 pages, the reader is John's shadow. Each reader is John's comrade.
Documented over twenty years with 7 trips to Liverpool and an incredible number of interviews, Shoulda been there is strongly rooted in fact. It is footnoted, and Kessler's end notes debate the veracity of past non-fiction research, pointing out contradictions where they exist. Beatle myths are exposed, and new truths are suggested. Shoulda been there works to present John Lennon as he really was, not as we imagine him to be.
The novel also supplies Beatle enthusiasts with a great deal of documentary material. Kessler's "Encyclopedia of Real Characters" provides 125 short biographies of those closest to The Fab Four. Her "Scouse Glossary" gives a necessary insight into the language of Merseyside. There is more at work here than just a readable novel. The book carefully balances on that tightrope between fact and fiction, plainly telling us when the author leans to one side or the other.
Set at a rather high price point of $29.95 and with a rather sparse appendix, Shoulda Been There is nevertheless an exhaustive work for the early Lennon years. It captures the imagination, but tells the truth. Rarely a happy book, but always a moving one, it tells Lennon's story with honesty and with a compassion that refuses to be sloppy or effusive.
