True Confessions: Making Peace with the Past, Celebrating the Present, Embracing the Future

Best known for reputedly bending spoons using only the power of his mind, ""paranormalist"" Geller (Mind Medicine) teams up with Rabbi Boteach (Kosher Sex) for this collection of letters (or perhaps e-mails?) between the two unlikely friends, who live in Europe and share a weekly Sabbath dinner. Aside from the obvious question why they wrote letters at all when they see each other and speak frequently on the phone, the entries don't read like personal missives between confidants. The rabbi lectures on Judaism, ethics and what's wrong with the world today, while Geller tells anecdotes, mostly involving famous persons he knows. Stories about John Lennon giving Geller an egg-shaped stone that Lennon claimed was a relic from an encounter with aliens, and about witnessing the obscene mass of riches hoarded by the wife of the president of Mexico, may hold readers' interest briefly, but cannot sustain the book. Both Geller and Boteach admit to a strong desire for fame, and this communiqu seems merely a device for them to write a book together in the service of furthering that objective. Name-dropping, religious proselytizing and musings about UFOs overshadow the occasional glimpse of intimacy between the two men. Both from broken homes, they share memories of Jewish childhoods, discovering their respective life's work, coping with fame and loving their wives and children. Unfortunately, the infrequent peeks into the real men behind the public images are too few and far between in a book that is largely an exercise in self-advertisement. (Sept.)