In Their Lives: Great Writers on Great Beatles Songs review – musical madeleines

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A collection, edited by Andrew Blauner and featuring Rick Moody, Jane Smiley and others, combines personal memories with Fab Four faves

And still, the Beatles. Will we ever get over them? However many remasterings of the records there are, however many dramas, documentaries and memoirs of their life and times, it seems there will always be room for something more. The flood of material about the band will never slacken, because our appetite for it will never be sated.

I fell ravenously on In Their Lives, even if I did balk at the subtitle “Great Writers on Great Beatles Songs”. While nearly all of the 28 essays here feature great Beatles songs (let’s draw the line at “Yellow Submarine” and “Octopus’s Garden”) it’s a bit presumptuous to claim greatness for the other half of the equation. Charmed as I am by David Duchovny (“Dear Prudence”) I’m not sure he’s even a great actor, let alone a great writer. And Francine Prose (“Here Comes the Sun”) really lets the side down by including her nine-year-old granddaughter as co-author (“we’re all& delighted that Emilia likes the Fab Four”). A few others here are too eager to share their generational bonding over the Beatles, though I did like the moment Ben Zimmer asked his son where he would look if he wanted to parse the lyrics of “I Am the Walrus”. His reply: “Goo goo ga Google”. Lennon would have laughed.

I used to believe the Beatles 'belonged' to Liverpool. Time has told me otherwise

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