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From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley, Riley Keough

35 reviews

kkopacetic's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.25

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

Title: From Here to the Great Unknown
Author: Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 5.00
Pub Date: October 8, 2024

T H R E E • W O R D S

Unprecedented • Remarkable • Transcendent

📖 S Y N O P S I S

In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir.

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I wouldn't consider myself an Elvis connoisseur and cannot say I knew much about Lisa Marie's life either, yet when I saw several glowing reviews for From Here to the Great Unknown, the memoir she started but that would end up being completed by her daughter and published posthumously, I knew I wanted to listen to it.

This is very special audiobook, one unlike any other I've listened to before. The combination of their voices - Julia Roberts reading Lisa's parts, Riley narrating her own additions, and sound clips of Lisa herself - was incredible. It's heartbreaking to think it took her dying for this book to come together in the manner it has.

Lisa's story is so deeply moving, a story marked by extreme fame and overwhelming grief. It adds valuable insight into many aspects of her personal life - her complicated relationship with Priscilla, the effect her father's death had at such a young age, her short-lived marriage to Michael Jackson, her journey in motherhood, her struggles with opioid addiction, and the death of her son.

From Here to the Great Unknown reads like a conversation between mother and daughter both attempting to heal all that has come before. It is deeply personal with a lot of unpacking, yet I am so grateful Riley was able to finish what her mother started. By doing so, she has paid homage to her mother's story and brought to light some of Lisa's biggest strengths. Listening to it was an emotional journey, worth every moment.

📚 R E A D • I F • Y O U • L I K E
• celebrity memoirs
• themes of grief
• mother/daughter relationships

⚠️ CW: death, death of parent, child death, grief, suicide, mental illness, addiction, drug use, drug abuse, alcohol, alcoholism, toxic relationship, suicidal thoughts, child abuse, pedophilia, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, sexual assault, adult/minor relationship, pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, cursing, infidelity, medical content, pandemic/epidemic

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"This was a huge lesson for me—the only way out is through. You must allow pain in to free yourself from it."

"Grief settles. It's not something you overcome. It's something that you live with. You adapt to it. Nothing about you is who you were. Nothing about how or what I used to think is important. The truth is that I don't remember who I was."

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lauraweiss105's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

This is really more by Riley Keough than Lisa Marie. I’m not interested in the Presleys and knew nothing about Lisa going in. You have to listen to the audio version, because it’s narrated by Riley Keough and Julia Roberts with snippets from recordings with Lisa Marie Presley. I wanted to read it because I am grieving the death of my brother and knew from interviews I saw online that Riley Keough had lost her brother and mother just a few years apart. Despite neither Riley nor her mom graduating high school, Riley especially is a great writer. I found it really impactful and relatable in some places aside from some celebrity goofiness like “the holistic doctor who lived with us,” “Deepak Chopra spoke at my brother’s funeral” and references to Scientology without really getting into it. The parts that aren’t about grief though are really interesting in terms of thinking about people who are thrust into fame and how that affects them. It’s notable how much Lisa Marie still put her father on a pedestal while being very harsh on her mom, who was groomed by Elvis. I’d definitely recommend this quick read (the audiobook is only 6 hours.)

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lynsiex's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.75

Above all, this is a book about grief. The grief of Lisa Marie over her father, and later her son, and the grief of her daughter Riley over the loss of them all. I loved the way it was written, with different font for Lisa Marie's own words and those of her daughter to fill in what she couldn't finish before her death. A great look at a life marked by extreme fame and extreme sadness, but Riley does her best to let the good parts of her mother shine through all the trauma.

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actuallythemillennialdiaries's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

I don’t think I’ve ever read a sadder, more inspiring book. Equal parts funny and utterly heartbreaking, I highly recommend it if you’re at all interested in Elvis and his legacy, Lisa’s own legacy, music, addiction, mental health, or, surprisingly (to me, I had no idea she was a member) Scientology. Riley Keough, Lisa Marie’s eldest child, is the co-author, as it was published after Lisa Marie Presley passed in 2023. Lisa's writing is brutally honest, funny, poignant, and at times, absolutely devastating. Riley's writing is so full of love for her mother that even when she's talking about heart wrenching moments of deep pain in her own life, you would never doubt for a second that Riley and her mother shared a deep and profound bond. The way Riley writes about her mother, you can tell that they love they shared as mother and daughter was, and is, absolutely unconditional. I give From Here to the Great Unknown 5 stars.

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jodonn07's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

You never really know about someone until you've walked a while in their shoes. I'm glad that I read this book. I used to often think about how sad Elvis's young daughter must have been when he died, and it turns out I didn't know the half of it. The sheer number of content warnings I had to add should warn you of how much she went through. And yet, Lisa Marie did for her children what her father did for her, albeit for a limited amount of time. Elvis basically invented the idea of "living like a rock star" and while his daughter and grandchildren followed in his footsteps in that regard, they also describe wild and beautiful childhoods in the secure warmth of parents that loved them deeply.

Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough's perspectives intertwine in an intimate story of the ups and downs of an extraordinary life. It is full of love and sadness, but the love wins in the end I think. This was an excellent audiobook with Julia Roberts and Riley Keough telling the stories from Lisa Marie's and her daughter's perspectives. Highly recommended.

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