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Like many of you, I too shed a tear while watching Susan Boyle’s audition for Britain’s Got Talent on YouTube. The moment when Susan Boyle showed the world why we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, will remain in my memory at least, one of the most beautiful ever captured on film. Thank God for the internet and YouTube. Only in this age of the information super highway, can a woman generally regarded as past her prime, become an international sensation literally over night – and it is this phenomenon, that is the focus of the book “Susan Boyle: Living the Dream”.
One of two unauthorised biographies rushed into print to meet public demand for information about this lady, Susan Boyle: Living the Dream, charts her meteoric rise from a small village in Scotland, to the international stage.
Biographer and former Fleet Street journalist, John McShane, has combed through thousands of newspaper and magazine articles and websites, and watched hundreds of hours of television news coverage, to piece together a portrait of Susan Boyle that offers very little in the way of new information about the woman behind the ‘SuBo’ phenomenon. For a more complete portrait of the lady, readers will have to wait until Susan Boyle releases her memoirs later this year. The focus of this biography is not so much Susan Boyle herself, but rather the public reaction to her story. After all, the real story here is ourselves and how life has killed the dream we dreamed and yet we remain hopeful – eternal optimists, each and everyone of us.
Recently, an 80 year old grandmother from Scotland was being touted in the media as the ‘next Susan Boyle’. But there will only ever be one Susan Boyle and as much as we may want to, we can never return that precious moment in time, when talent was all that mattered. Sadly, since then the world has returned to the way it was and probably always will be and as much as it pains me to say it, Susan Boyle has become the exception rather than the rule. But I remain hopeful.
Susan Boyle: Living the Dream by John McShane is published in Australia by Wilkinson Publishing