SPILL BOOK REVIEW: RACHEL BRODSKY – LESSONS & LACE: EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT DREAMS, HEARTBREAK, AND MAGIC I LEARNED FROM STEVIE NICKS

RACHEL BRODSKY – LESSONS & LACE: EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT DREAMS, HEARTBREAK, AND MAGIC I LEARNED FROM STEVIE NICKS

HARMONY/PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

BOOK REVIEW BY ROXY MACDONALD

Dedicated Stevie Nicks fans are a bit deranged. We cloak ourselves in lace, fly around the world to hear her sing diss tracks about her ex from 50 years ago, and spend hours dissecting our red-string board conspiracy theories about the subjects of her most popular songs.

As someone who has travelled across the continent to attend the wedding of a woman I knew solely through the Stevie Nicks fandom, I’m proud to be a member of this niche subgroup of chiffon-heads. There’s very little I don’t already know about Stevie Nicks. Hell, I probably know Stevie lore that she herself has forgotten. Therefore, any new book about the woman must deliver previously unearthed gossip or PhD-level analysis of her lyricism to capture my attention.

Rachel Brodsky’s Lessons & Lace isn’t a biography, but rather a series of reflections on Stevie Nicks’ life and work that outlines the various lessons fans can take from the gospel of Stevie. The book is separated into themed chapters with titles such as “Live in a World of Magic,” “Never Stop Being a Romantic,” and “Don’t Have Rivals, Have Friends.”  Visually, it’s a feast for the eyes, filled with gorgeous illustrations and pull-quotes set in lush, romantic typeface.

The first section of the book retreads a lot of the same old stories that every Fleetwood Mac fan already knows: Stevie and Lindsey Buckingham met in high school and struggled a lot to get their music career off the ground. The well-known drama behind the Rumours album sessions, etc. It discusses her affair with Mick Fleetwood and a few others. But most of the accounts are taken from first-person sources, so while Lessons & Lace is mostly free from unverified rumours, it also reads a little bit too much like a sanitized public-relations account of Nicks’ life.

And even though the singer’s much-publicized addiction issues are detailed at length, Brodsky doesn’t spend much text analyzing the root of Nicks’ struggles or her path to getting clean, choosing instead to simply celebrate the fact that she did. Though her approach was somewhat questionable at times, Nicks spoke openly about her addictions to bring awareness to the subject. Once, in what was probably a Klonopin-induced haze, she likened cocaine use to Sara Lee pound cake, and as bonkers as that metaphor was, it was also unmistakably, unapologetically Stevie. A touch of irreverence on Brodsky’s part would have made this section feel more Nicksian.

The fun of Stevie Nicks is that she is totally messy in her personal life, contradicts herself constantly, and won’t hesitate to snap at anyone who annoys her. But she also writes beautifully about love and the raw, soul-crushing devastation of heartbreak. She’s like that eccentric aunt who shows up occasionally at family gatherings dressed all in black and smelling of patchouli, slips you a $50-bill, and casually drops an insane family secret over dessert.

As a long-time Nicks fanatic, Lessons & Lace didn’t feel representative of everything I learned from my witchy mentor. But it would serve as an excellent primer for a new fan, or a charming gift for a casual fan who wishes to spend a while in her world of enchantment.

ISBN-10: 0593981065
ISBN-13:‎ 978-0593981061

PURCHASE LESSONS & LACE: EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT DREAMS, HEARTBREAK, AND MAGIC I LEARNED FROM STEVIE NICKS VIA