Mamma Mia! It’s a big book

THERE’S a certain futility to commenting on a book on the Swedish pop phenomenon ABBA. It’s like offering that Webster’s New World Dictionary is too wordy, or observing that the Yellow Pages would be a breezier read without “G,” “T” and “Q.”

Because the target audience for the new book “Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You?: The Inside Story of Mamma Mia! and the Songs of ABBA” is the millions of fans of both the group and the musical. And they are likely to see this glossy, 4-pound tome -- honest, we weighed it -- not as optional reading but essential reference material.

There are a lot of chiquititas out there. The stats, 2006: There are more productions of “Mamma Mia!” playing around the world than any other musical (a new one opened in Moscow last month), generating more than $8 million a week in ticket sales for a show that has already grossed more than $1.6 billion at the box office. More than 18,000 people see the show, somewhere, every night.

And my, my: Even for those hardy souls capable of surviving a day without ABBA, this photo-filled extravaganza, written by Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus (the two “Bs” in ABBA) and Judy Craymer, producer and creator of “Mamma Mia!,” is attractive and as jellybean-colorful as the stage show.

The text, edited by Philip Dodd from his own interviews, eliminates narrative filler in favor of the words of Andersson, Ulvaeus, Craymer and numerous others, including Tim Rice, who collaborated with the two Bs on the Broadway musical “Chess.”

Missing from the mix, however, are the voices of the two A’s, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog, though they are frequently referred to as “the girls.” This indefatigably cheery book refers only cryptically to the demise of the group in the 1980s in a quote from Andersson: “ABBA took a break and we’re still in a break. It’s just that the next ten years will never happen.”

-- Diane Haithman