John
by Cynthia Lennon
393pp, Hodder & Stoughton, £20
John Lennon, who produced several slim volumes of poetry and whimsical fiction, never wrote his autobiography, and spoke scathingly of associates who made their reminiscences public: "They all get one shot. Each chauffeur and ex-wife and ex-lover and ex-servant gets one book if they're lucky." This quote is understandably absent from Cynthia Lennon's John
Like most memoirs, John is being marketed as a story told "for the first time", but Beatles scholarship is a thoroughly strip-mined quarry and the scope for fresh discoveries is meagre. Cynthia gamely plays the part of the reticent ex-wife breaking silence, so her earlier autobiography, A Twist of Lennon - quite a lot of which is recycled here - is never named. She admits to having given "a couple of interviews" over the years, but eventually the number multiplies and she alludes to her regular chat spots at Beatles conventions and on TV. Given longer to reflect, she might have owned up to the features in Hello! and Q, too. Still, as she justly points out, she had bills to pay and her share of Beatles wealth was not generous. Yoko inherited an endlessly regenerating fortune; Cynthia got a brisk divorce settlement. "My final offer is seventy-five thousand pounds," John reportedly told her on the phone. "That's like winning the pools, so what are you moaning about? You're not worth any more."
John is Cynthia's attempt to prove how much more she was worth. In theory, the disclosures of Lennon's loyal partner from 1958 to 1968 cannot fail to be valuable. On the page, the potential withers. "The story of the boys' first trip to Hamburg has now passed into legend," Cynthia burbles, "but I had my own unique perspective on it through John's many, detailed letters. He wrote about every aspect of their stay, including those he would never have wanted his family to know about." A pity, then, that Cynthia destroyed or sold off these letters, and must rely instead on what sound suspiciously like editor-penned cribs from other Fab Four books, personalised with the occasional detail such as "John and I would go across the road for fish and chips" or "the butties were long since finished".
In A Twist of Lennon, Cynthia was reluctant to speak ill of anyone, even Yoko, whom she did not blame for taking John because "he had never been mine". The passing decades have made her somewhat more frank about her grievances. Unhealed hurt renders the post-divorce parts of John fitfully interesting, as Cynthia deplores her faithless husband's emotional cowardice and Yoko's unfathomable control-freakery. John's neglect of his first- born son rouses Cynthia's maternal indignation; she scores a rare bull's-eye when she remembers Julian saying: "Dad's always telling people to love each other, but how come he doesn't love me?"
By contrast, Cynthia's recollections of the early years - the bulk of the book - are either common knowledge, facile nostalgia or trivia. The young John is jealous, prickly and occasionally violent but Cyn forgives him. Paul McCartney has a girlfriend called Dot. Ringo is good-natured and George has, according to the index, "Indian spiritual beliefs" on page 261. "The late fifties was a wonderful time to be young", skiffle is all the rage and John is terribly upset when his mum gets killed. Cynthia cooks Vesta beef curry and rice with a sliced banana on top. John's aunt Mimi, with whom the newlyweds live for a while, gives Cynthia the smelly job of feeding her three cats, and - on purpose, Cyn is almost sure - lets these animals spread their hairs all over Julian's carry-cot. Mimi also hogs the phone whenever John calls from Hamburg, so that Cyn barely gets to say hello before the money runs out. This is not Spinal Tap, this is epidural anaesthetic.
By the time the Beatles are conquering the world, Cynthia is left at home, knitting bootees, excited at the boys' success but unable to "grasp just how big they were becoming". John is that most pathetic of paradoxes, an insider story characterised by remarks such as "Sadly I was told to stay away". But then, even on the rare occasions when she tags along, such as on a 1964 jaunt to America, the whole thing is over in a few vapid paragraphs. Cyn stands in the crowds, deafened by girls screaming. A security guard blocks her from re-entering her hotel, mistaking her for a fan. The Beatles meet Muhammad Ali (no details). Then it's home to England, reunited with "bacon butties and proper tea".
John's trajectory towards someone like Yoko was blazingly obvious all along, but even today, Cynthia clings to rosy memories of the time when "all our dreams had come true, we were happy, healthy, successful and secure in our new home with our beautiful son". In cherishing the cosy evenings when the family would "cuddle up in front of the TV", she unwittingly corroborates John's own dismissive recollection of "a happily married state of boredom". Then she concedes that John wasn't actually at home much and that, when he did show up, he could be abusive, intolerant and paranoid.
Lennon, as the whole world knows by now, was a complex character, brutal and humane, crazy and wise, conflicted as hell. Cynthia, a Nice Person without imagination, is simply not equipped to analyse the man who wrote "Imagine". Her memoir's stated purpose is to counteract the way she's been airbrushed out of history, to prove that her marriage to John was not the irrelevance he claimed it was. Instead, she paints herself even further into the background, with prose so characterless and bland it might as well have been produced by a half-asleep hack. After 393 pages of relentless cliché, Cynthia concludes: "But the truth is that if I'd known as a teenager what falling for John would lead to, I would have turned round right then and walked away." Is she capable of deeper insights than this wistful gossip? There may not be time for a third autobiography.
· Michel Faber's short story collection, The Fahrenheit Twins, is published by Canongate. To order John for £18 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 036 0875.