Life with My Sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone (with Wendy Leigh); Simon & Schuster, $26

Materializing right on the heels of pointed suspicion that she's cheating on cheerless husband Guy Ritchie with New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, here comes a Madonna tell-all in the form of a foot-tapping tantrum from her gay brother who has no qualms about spilling the family beans. And these beans, well, they aren't all that earth-shattering, so no need to run frantically to your local bookstore. This, too, shall pass.

Christopher Ciccone (better known as "Madonna's brother") skips through his childhood scrapbook (their mother died at age 30, his gayness developing right alongside Madonna's undeniable "star quality," etc.) to get to the "good stuff." At 17, Christopher is thrust into a gay dance club by his sister, who apparently sees the gay in him before he truly sees it in himself. He visits (and later moves into) her first Manhattan apartment in the 1980s, where she gives him a hit of Ecstasy and a place to sleep on her apartment floor in the company of "5 million cockroaches." Christopher admits that "Everybody," Madonna's early-career hit, didn't really "grab" him as much as her affinity for advantageously dating a swift succession of New York DJs, all of whom were definitely "not her type, but useful."

As time went on, Christopher felt that betrayal would become an unavoidable component of their relationship, along with anger, disappointment, aggression, and rejection. From her "bushy" Playboy pictorial to Sean Penn, "notoriously libidinous" Warren Beatty (who asks Christopher what it's really like to be gay), Sandra Bernhardt, Ingrid Casares ("like Cleopatra's handmaiden"), Vanilla Ice, Carlos Leon, and finally to Guy Ritchie, a clod who Christopher claims is homophobic, with a handshake that's a "trifle unsure," he's seen it all as his sister's confidante, dresser, artistic director, and terminated house decorator.

Whether a detraction or a selling point, Christopher's cattiness is palpable throughout. He opines that his sister's voice is "too thin for the demands she now places on it," and that trusty, longtime backup singer Niki Harris actually has better ("fully trained") vocals. Ouch. He hated her first children's book, and thought she looked ridiculous performing "Like a Virgin" on TV. He goes on to retread many of the things we already know, like the fact that much of Madonna's Truth or Dare documentary is "contrived for the camera," that she is all about scheduling, structure, control, and list-making; that she downplays insecurities, takes an offensive approach to everything; and that, because of their mother's early death, "her soul will always be pervaded by a secret sadness."

In trudging through the fallen ashes of this Ciccone family squabble, Christopher seems to want to place as much distance between himself and his sister as possible, though they remain "inseparable in spirit." He seems to want nothing to do with her. Yet, paradoxically, in publishing this book and having it fly off the shelves by name-recognition alone, Christopher Ciccone, like it or not, has created a marketable product of himself. He is now able to command hard-earned consumer dollars at a furious pace with little or no effort, other than simply to be in the spotlight at the right place and the right time, in full costume and on-cue — just like his sister.