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From Here to the Great Unknown

January 24, 2025

from here

From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley, Riley Keough
Published by Random House
Publication date: October 8, 2024
Genres: Debut, Non-fiction, Memoir, Pop culture
four-stars
Bookshop

Those of us outside looking in, mired in our everyday lives, tend to mythologize celebrities and what their lives look like. The greater the star the larger they loom. This is even true for the children of the famous and in that realm, Elvis Presley’s daughter was tabloid fodder from the day she was born. Lisa Marie died last year, but had started writing a memoir with the help of her daughter, Riley Keogh. Keogh finished From Here to the Great Beyond and it’s a tough and touching look behind the glittering curtain of fame and wealth.

This memoir is steeped in grief. For Lisa Marie life was about loss, from her father when she was nine to her beloved son when he was 28. But not just loss from death. For her the world was a very precarious place where it was impossible to know who or what could be trusted. Her first boyfriend sold pictures of her to the press, her mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her. Trust was a foreign concept, one she abandoned early. What was not foreign was addiction. In households that were chaotic and unstable but filled with money and privilege she was able to start drinking and doing cocaine when she was still a young teenager.

From Here is told both by Lisa Marie and her daughter Riley giving the memoir a poignancy that comes from a life being told by the person who lived it and the person who lived with it. There is nothing salacious and sensationalistic to be found in Lisa Marie’s weary tone as she battled addiction and loss while trapped in the blinding glare of the media spotlight. And yet, there is a joy and self-awareness to her, complemented by Keogh’s wry, honest memories of her childhood and her mother.

There are so many unexpected takeaways in From Here to the Great Beyond, whether it’s the reality of Lisa Marie’s relationship with Michael Jackson or the despair of knowing and wanting a life, but never having been taught how to create it. This is no bid for sympathy, just a mother and daughter telling the bittersweet story of the cards they were dealt and how they played them.

*I read the print of From Here to the Great Beyond, but I’ve been told Julia Roberts reads Lisa Marie’s portions of the memoir in the audio and does an outstanding job.*

 

This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org which means if you click on a link and make a purchase of any kind, I get a small commission (at no cost to you).

 

four-stars

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3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: memoir, pop culture

Comments

  1. Lauren says

    January 24, 2025 at 11:58 am

    I’m in line for the audio and now I’m REALLY looking forward to it. Thanks, Catherine!

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      January 26, 2025 at 10:40 am

      I’ve heard it’s fantastic. I actually put a hold on it at the library as well.

      Reply
  2. Susan says

    January 26, 2025 at 3:43 pm

    Yeah Lisa’s passing was really sad and I feel for her daughter — that loss was awful for her. It’s nice they could do the book partly together.

    Thx for your comments on my site. It is a struggling time. Good grief week 1 of #47 was awful. Worse even than I thought if that’s even possible … But I knew it’d be terrible. I like your thinking of 2 years till the midterms. But we need to get thru week 2. I think it’s good to find solace with the 48.3 percent of others who voted for Harris. Apparently she had 774,847 more than T won in 2020. I didn’t realize that till I just read it. She still made inroads. And I think he will sink himself.

    Reply

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