A nuanced, intimate and imperfect biography ... He’s clearly the right man for the job when it comes to making Kardashian more palatable to dorks and snobs like me ... No authorized biography can be 'completely real.' But Citizen Kim definitely left me with a more authentic — or at least more human — impression of Kim and her family ... While Van Meter is good at explaining why the Kardashians live the way they do, he’s not so great at pondering whether they should.
Citizen Kim doesn’t just make the case for Kardashian’s continued relevance — though it does — but it also showcases the star and socialite and entrepreneur and actor as something of an anomaly, a series of contradictions that say more about us and the times in which we live than her. Though it still has plenty to say about her ... Reads, at times, like something of a hypercapitalist fairy tale.
Van Meter’s witty prose is a pleasure to read—in fact, as easy on the eyes as a SKIMS ad—but that’s also part of the problem. The rosiness spreads far beyond tone ... Of course, an authorized biography is entitled to its sympathies. More curious is where the book seems to want to sit in the larger conversation. In the prologue of Citizen Kim, Van Meter laments the 'dearth of well-written profiles and shrewd cultural analysis' about the Kar-Jenner family ... This, of course, overlooks the work of a number of critics and scholars ... Kardashian may possess no obvious historical analogue, but this book contains two consistent characters: the subject and the writer. The latter elaborates on his experiences at his subject’s various homes, offices, and photo shoots, allowing a desiring reader the thrill of access.
What is promised and what is delivered are not exactly the same. Early on, Van Meter references Kant and the academic Timothy Morton, and later, he invokes Joan Didion’s writing on Hollywood. But any attempts at cultural analysis, shrewd or otherwise, quickly fall away in favour of a more traditional in-depth biography, its wheels greased by regular, intimate access to the Kardashians and many of Kim’s closest friends and colleagues ... At its best, the book does expose some of the Kardashian family’s gothic underbelly ... The Kardashian aura must be strong, because reading this evokes the same sensation as watching their show: it is seductive, hypnotic, but possessed of a sleight of hand that turns everything beige.
Candid, elegant ... Paints a portrait of a hardworking, intelligent and singularly focused woman ... It turns out, there is still plenty to learn about this woman who has been subject to scrutiny all these years. Rather than deadening my brain cells, Citizen Kim set them alight.
Lets you peek behind the scenes ... Avid and deeply interested readers will appreciate the dish about Kim Kardsahian, her life, and her life strategy, things they’ll be eager for. There’s plenty here to satisfy, in the kind of tell-much that makes fans drool. If that’s you, and you just can’t get enough Kardsahian, Citizen Kim absolutely belongs on your sofa, right next to your remote and your bingeing schedule. If you’re absolutely not a fan, though, you might find this book all but untouchable.
