Clara’s Verdict
Liza Minnelli reading her own memoir is the only format this book could possibly take. Her voice – raspy, warm, alive with theatrical experience – is itself a kind of argument for everything the book is claiming: that she has lived, survived, and emerged with her identity intact. Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! arrives as she turns eighty, and it does not disappoint in the ambition of its self-presentation. This is a woman who has danced with Frank Sinatra, drank at Studio 54, and buried more friends than most of us will ever have.
The question is whether the book lives up to the life. The answer is: mostly, yes – though it wears its revelations with a particular theatrical discretion that some listeners may find frustrating. Rated 4.6 from 174 Audible UK listeners.
About the Audiobook
Born to Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland, Liza grew up in proximity to greatness and to chaos in roughly equal measure. Her memoir moves through her extraordinary rise – Broadway stardom, the Oscar for Cabaret, the Tony, the Emmy – but it is most interesting when it addresses the private cost: multiple miscarriages, the long battle with Substance Use Disorder, the four marriages, and the complicated legacy of being Judy Garland’s daughter. She is frank about her mother’s brilliance and her mother’s devastation in a way that feels genuinely unguarded.
The friendships she catalogues – Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, Halston – read like a compressed history of twentieth-century celebrity. She is loyal to all of them, perhaps too loyal to be fully revealing, but the affection is real. Published by Hodder & Stoughton in March 2026, running seventeen hours and fifty-five minutes.
The Narration
Liza Minnelli at eighty still has the performer’s instinct for holding a room. Her narration has the quality of a very good talk-show appearance – intimate, charming, punctuated by the kind of comic timing that comes from a lifetime on stage. She finds the right register for the harder passages, conveying weight without wallowing. At nearly eighteen hours, this is a substantial listen, but Minnelli’s voice carries you through it without fatigue.
What Readers Say
Rated 4.6 from 174 listeners. The response has been warmly enthusiastic overall, though not entirely uncritical. One Irish reviewer writes: “If you love Liza, Broadway, old Hollywood – this book is for you. If you love none of those things but enjoy candid, heartfelt storytelling, it is DEFINITELY for you.” A more measured UK reviewer notes that the book “feels like a very good chat-show appearance,” offering anecdotes and “just enough about the struggles to give a vague impression of honesty” – but argues that it avoids real revelations. Most listeners, however, found the balance entirely satisfying. The consensus: a memoir as entertaining as its subject.
Who Should Listen?
Recommended for lovers of old Hollywood, Broadway, and the particular golden age of New York nightlife that Minnelli inhabited. Also for anyone who has struggled with addiction or mental health and will find, as one reviewer puts it, themselves “reflected in Liza’s mirror of life.” If you want the full story of one of the great twentieth-century performers, in her own voice, find Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! on Audible UK.
