Many a celebrity biographer is really a rabid fan hiding behind reams of research, smothering the reader in unprocessed minutiae. It’s refreshing then that Susie Boyt — novelist, daughter of Lucian Freud, great-granddaughter of Sigmund and Judy Garland fan extraordinaire — doesn’t disguise her ardor for the leather-lunged one in a mass of production notes, concert dates, etc.

Instead, in “My Judy Garland Life” (310 pages, $25), Boyt has written an effusive exegesis of her own obsession, offering a fresh take on fandom and fantasy, longing and humiliation, loss and joy, and quite simply feeling. “As a child,” Boyt writes of her initial attachment to Garland, “her sensitivity seemed both to mirror and elevate my own.”

Boyt also gives close readings of various albums and TV appearances; interviews Lorna Luft, Liza Minnelli and Mickey Rooney; and recounts visits to Garland’s birthplace in Grand Rapids, Minn., and crypt in Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, N.Y. These anecdotes will likely ring poignant for the aficionado who mourns the criminally destroyed scenes from “A Star Is Born.” But those with only a passing interest in, say, “The Wizard of Oz,” may feel a disconnect with Boyt’s daydream about ironing Garland’s pillowcases.

Still, the author is funny and self-aware throughout, and anyone who has ever fallen sway to a book or a movie, combed through liner notes, listened to a song on repeat or succumbed to an all-consuming passion for that which cannot be consumed, will certainly appreciate Boyt’s examination and celebration of her own fervor.