RaveThe Washington PostGabriel approaches the task with a rigor and ambition that matches Madonna’s ... [A] forbidding task ... What the book lacks in musical analysis, it makes up for in edifying connections to politics and art history ... Madonna’s legacy abounds, and the best sections of Gabriel’s biography are reminders ... Though Gabriel’s book contains no original interviews with the icon herself, her investigation into the Madonna archive puts us inside the psyche of a woman who has never been afraid to make people uncomfortable.
Liz Phair
PositiveThe Los Angeles TimesAt its best, Horror Stories is an excavation of what lies in the subconscious as you float through the world. It shows how buried hurts will crop up randomly, at will. In that sense, Horror Stories reflects reality with a blunt irreverence, like many great Phair songs ... But discussion of Phair’s music is puzzlingly limited. It’s up to the reader to determine where Phair was at in her discography during any particular saga ... offers only a handful of these music-oriented reflections. Phair focuses instead on the greater fabric of her idiosyncratic life that produced the songs ... I wish Phair wrote specifically about how her experiences shaped the lyrics to more of her songs in lieu of some of the many pages, some gripping, some clumsy, she spends airing details of failed relationships, bad vacations and first-class flights. I get the sense this would be another story entirely. Perhaps, for the time being, it’s better voiced by the music.
