Overwritten and just too long, this is only partially successful as a biography. It feels more like a personal account than a definitive account of Paul Simon himself, and as an unauthorized biography certainly doesn’t feel authoritative. For music buffs there’s a lot here – Carlin goes into the songs in great depth – but I would have preferred more about the man than the minutiae of the music. I ended up skipping quite a bit. It’s simply not objective enough and feels more like the gushings of a fan rather than a considered portrait. Informative, and obviously painstakingly researched, it’s an exhaustive but unfortunately also rather an exhausting biography with rather too much speculation. Paul Simon deserves better.

This is an exhaustive biography of the Singer Paul Simon. The author is not afraid to to write about the good and the bad. There was a fair amount of new to me information esp the early years. I also liked reading about the behind the scenes of the music business. I was surprised at how early Paul learned to be ruthless in the music business. Since the book does contain a lot of information it also got a lit bit repetitive and boring. I had a hard time finishing the book. The book could have used some more editing.