THE travails of Karen Carpenter have overshadowed a talent that critics were reluctant to acknowledge while she was alive. The toxic cocktail of fame, insecurity and music that sounded easygoing to the point of blandness prompted filmmaker Todd Haynes to reimagine Carpenter as a stop-motion Barbie in his film Superstar. Yet Kim Gordon, who championed the singer on Sonic Youth’s “Tunic (Song For Karen)”, believes Carpenter’s troubles were an extreme version of a struggle endured by many women: “A lack of control over things other than their bodies.”
Lucy O’Brien’s empathetic biography offers a
