Reckless: My Life as a Pretender

I'm still a little mad at Dwight Garner. I've loved the Pretenders almost as long as I've listened to records, but when Garner, usually my favorite New York Times reviewer, panned Hynde's memoir as "slack and disappointing," I let myself be talked into putting it aside. I picked it up again much later (just in time for the paperback release), and whaddya know, I loved it after all. (Maybe it helps to have your expectations lowered.) Her life as a Pretender doesn't arrive until the last fifth of the book; the rest covers her long apprenticeship in rock & roll—the lifestyle as much as the music—from Akron to Kent State (yes, she was there) to Cleveland to London to Paris back to Ohio and Paris and London again until finally she becomes an overnight star at the ancient age of 27. She's neither nostalgic nor disgusted about her reckless years, and she captures their ragged, restless appeal without ever making you think she'd want to live through them again.