The Secrets of My Life by Caitlyn Jenner; Grand Central Publishing, $30
In March 2015, Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Marie Jenner. The big news became a big public spectacle with a Vanity Fair cover months later, which the author, in her candid memoir The Secrets of My Life, admits did not impress her sons Burt, Brandon, and Brody, but truly embarrassed them. "I did not gauge how a son would feel seeing his father in a cream-colored bustier."
Moments like these, genuine and self-deprecatingly humorous, are sprinkled generously throughout a book that Jenner has co-written with Buzz Bissinger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Friday Night Lights, and of the cover story for the head-turning Jenner article that appeared in Vanity Fair 's July 2015 issue.
At 67, Caitlyn Jenner has lived a full life, just not as the person she'd always wanted to be. Public speculation about her gender ambiguity began years ago and in quite a cruel fashion as compromising photographs began popping up in the tabloids, but Jenner finally disclosed the truth in a frank Diane Sawyer 20/20 interview, with a revealing display of honesty and deliverance about how the frustration and shame of her inner self became the motivator for her new emergence as a woman.
Her memoir moves across those iconic years, basking in the glory of being an Olympic gold medalist, but also describing Jenner's three divorces amidst the "gender issues" that were alive and fighting in her day-to-day life. Just as fascinating are the rituals Jenner undertook in order to get Caitlyn ready, back in her closeted days. She had a female friend purchase her clothing �" standing at 6'2" with "big feet," this was no swift shopping spree at Macy's �" she carried clear plastic wrap as a "homegrown" way of body-cinching, and wore a breast prosthesis that was almost confiscated during a security screening at LAX.
Less fascinating and more frustrating are the details of how the entire ordeal played out as a hyped media event. For example, a public relations representative was one of the first people Jenner called when she'd decided to come out. Her self-interest is played out in several chapters, but if readers can overlook it, they'll find great contributions to trans visibility as well.
The Kardashian clan provides a lot of heat-seeking melodrama for those who prefer the TMZ version of Jenner's ordeal. She doesn't mince words when discussing the PR machine known as her ex-wife Kris, as they both, in the final years of their doomed marriage, were "at each other's throats." There is also the lingering issue of her estranged daughter Khloe, whom Jenner hasn't spoken with in over two years. But Jenner remains tight-lipped about more current familial abandonments in favor of closing the book on a positive note �" that is, until a last-minute addendum.
In typically ornery Jenner style, she adds one snarky final paragraph admitting to undergoing "The Final Surgery" in January this year in an effort to liberate herself, "have all the right parts," stop "tucking the damn thing in all the time," and satisfy the curious "so all of you can stop staring." The staring will never cease, Caitlyn, since you remain in the public eye. Her complaint will fall on deaf ears as long as Jenner continues to cash in on her journey.
While this memoir probably won't win over any of her detractors who feel her Republican leanings are hypocritical or her gender journey nothing but a publicity stunt, Jenner does promote the fact that truth can set you free, and that it's never too late to live the life you've always felt was your truest one.