Out of Character: A Memoir with Marci McDonald

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Maureen Forrester’s autobiography is as feisty and uninhibited as the magnificently talented singer, whose career has taken her around the world and won her the adulation of both the cognoscenti and the masses.

Her life story is not precisely one of rags-to-riches; but the old chestnut description of the success story comes fairly close to the truth. Certainly there was no money to spare in her family for such non-essentials as the education of a daughter. By sheer talent and drive, Maureen dragged herself onto the first rung of the ladder upward; a naive, untutored, brash young woman with the gift of a glorious voice.

She was fortunate enough to have a second gift: that of accepting good advice about the voice training she needed, and of profiting by it when she found it. That was the beginning of her ascent to fame. Her biography is a goldmine of anecdote and incident of the music world and the wonderful people with whom she has worked.

What is new and surprising are the personal vicissitudes she suffered en route; the untimely arrival of a beloved illegitimate daughter and a later abortion; her belated but happy marriage to Eugene Kash, Paula’s father; and the career separations that years later brought the marriage to its end. All that the world saw was a smiling face: all that it heard was a golden voice. Here is the larger-than-life-size woman behind the song.