Review: Little Girl Blue, The Life of Karen Carpenter by Randy L. Schmidt

A highlight of the holidays for me is the opportunity to forget about the clock and curl up with my Kobo and read something compelling. This book came out a couple of years ago but it’s new to Kobo (and probably Kindle).   

Karen Carpenter had one of the most beautiful and purest voices to ever grace a microphone. To millions of fans of The Carpenters, Karen was the duo’s heart, soul and sound. She and her brother Richard dominated the pop charts for several consecutive years in the 1970’s. They had personal and professional ups and downs that put their career into a bit of a hiatus until Karen’s tragic death in 1982 from heart failure due to complications from anorexia-nervosa.  The illness wasn’t widely understood back then.  Karen weighed less than 80 pounds at one point and although she was up to 108 when she died, she had done so much damage through medications and starvation that it was too late. Few people, let alone medical professionals, knew what to do about this eating disorder except to try to force her to eat.  Anorexia is based in a mental illness, a fight for control of one’s out-of-control life and Karen’s life was definitely in the hands of others.

In her family, Karen was treated like an add-on to her brother Richard’s “genius” musical talent.  It was Richard who pursued a career in music and his little sister discovered later that she had a natural ability to play the drums and to sing. While fans were drawn to Karen’s beautiful vocals, Richard felt that he never got his due as the producer, arranger and instrumentalist on their records. Instead of basking in the limelight, Karen was constantly told by her overbearing Mother that she was just lucky to be on the ride. The family never wanted her to think she was the star. The Carpenters’ family dynamic was such that even after Richard and Karen were multi-millionaires, in their mid-twenties and world famous, they were still expected to live with their parents. Richard and Karen purchased a beautiful, big home for the family and when Richard announced he was taking the master bedroom their mother threw an indignant fit. “You bought this house for US.  WE are taking the big bedroom!” And so Richard occupied a guest room instead.

Despite having no experience in the music business, Ma Carpenter controlled – or attempted to control – everything about The Carpenters’ music and money. She insisted on managing the finances – or rather, mismanaging them through complete ignorance of proper book-keeping practices until the duo’s manager hired an accountant that had to practically wrestle away the ledgers.  She intervened in musical decisions and convinced Karen that her own solo album, which she took a year and $500,000 to record, was crap, and that Karen belonged with her more talented brother, without whom she was nothing. Mom insinuated herself between any serious beau of Karen’s including orchestrating the break-up of Karen and the likely love of her life.  Years later when Karen tried to back out of her wedding, having realized the man she was about to marry was a scam artist, not the wealthy businessman he had claimed to be, her mother forbade it. “You made your bed, now lie in it”, she said.  Her mother was more worried about disappointing People Magazine than what her daughter would have to go through, marrying a man who didn’t love her. There was no love for Karen but it was showered on Richard. A people-pleaser to the end, Karen never stopped trying to win her mother’s approval. It was only when she became ill that Karen finally attracted the attention and emotions that she craved.

Although a rack of bones, Karen still complained to friends that she looked fat.  No one knew what to do and had the illness reached its peak even 5 or 10 years later, she probably could have been saved.  All people knew was that she needed to eat but they didn’t know how to get her to do it.  Karen did seek the assistance of a man purported to be an expert in the field of eating disorders but she arguably came away from the experience worse off than she was before.  She lied, cheated, hid pills and did whatever it took to maintain her bizarre regimen of binging, purging and taking laxatives.

Karen Carpenter died at the age of 32.  Her heart simply gave out from all of the punishment she put it through. On the one hand, her death raised the profile of eating disorders and helped lead to a better understanding of them.  On the other, it was a tragic waste of a tremendous talent.  The book was, as they say, un-put-down-able.  You want to give her mother a good cuff upside the head and say, this is your daughter – tell her you love her!  It’s an expertly told story of the rise and fall of a very popular music group and what it felt like for them to be on that roller-coaster.

Karen spent her whole life searching for approval and except for some very loyal friends, she never really found it. Even her brother Richard felt compelled to diminish her for his own selfish reasons. She was a one-of-a-kind who was treated by those closest to her like she was run-of-the-mill. The book breaks your heart while it paints a full picture of the woman whose beautiful voice has yet to find an equal, 30 years after her death.