"John Lennon: The Life" by Philip Norman; Ecco, 822 pages

Two incarnations of John Lennon emerge in Philip Norman's already controversial new biography.

One is violent and profane, cruel and misogynistic, prone to unpredictable fits of rage and sick displays of humor.

The other is warm and sensitive, a little boy, forever insecure, afraid of losing the people closest to him and finding himself alone.

Both make up the man who became a legend as a Beatle, a standard-bearer for peace and a martyred hero mourned by millions after he was shot and killed in 1980.

Norman, an Englishman who established himself as an authority on the seminal British band with 1981's "Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation," has written what amounts to chapter and verse on Lennon.

His definitive biography draws impressively on exclusive and extensive interviews with Yoko Ono and, for the first time on the record, their son Sean.

Norman also received assistance from Paul McCartney, Beatles producer George Martin and many other key figures.

Despite recent protestations by Ono that Norman is being "mean to John," the book rings true — in no small part thanks to quotes from Lennon's widow.

Densely detailed, intricately woven and elegantly told, "John Lennon: The Life" neither condemns nor condones, nor does it consecrate its subject. It does, however, examine the lingering myths and uncomfortable realities of the life of Lennon — some of them shocking even today.

Chief among them: Lennon's incestuous musings about his mother, Julia, who was struck and killed by a speeding car (driven by an off-duty policeman) when he was 17. Norman also examines whether there were homoerotic underpinnings to Lennon's feelings for McCartney and whether a rumored tryst with manager Brian Epstein ever took place. (Lennon had told others, more than once, that he had "briefly responded" to Epstein's advances, but he later told Ono otherwise.)

According to Norman, Ono thought there had "been a moment when — on the principle that bohemians should try everything," Lennon "had contemplated an affair with Paul but had been deterred by Paul's immovable heterosexuality."

Also up for review: Lennon's monumentally callous treatment of his first wife, Cynthia, and his obsessive, controlling behavior around Ono, including forced tandem trips to the bathroom.

Many readers, however, are just as likely to be swept up in the multitude of intimate and defining moments of Lennon's life that led to unparalleled art and inspiration.

Julia, for instance, putting John to sleep as a little boy, singing a song from a Disney movie he remembers as: "Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell."