You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Nine Eight Books scoops Lush star Berenyi’s ‘uncompromising’ memoir
Nine Eight Books has scooped Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, the “searingly honest” memoir by Lush band member and founder Miki Berenyi.
Pete Selby, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Jane Turnbull at Jane Turnbull Literary Agency. The memoir will be published in September.
Fingers Crossed is an “incredible account of a trailblazing woman and a seminal band delivered with the vivid, emotional power of an accomplished storyteller”, said the publisher. Berenyi recounts her young life of international travel, frequent relocation and the looming presence of her abusive Nazi grandmother. She found solace in music with her school friend Emma Anderson and they went on to form Lush in 1988.
Alongside her personal life Bereyni details her internal battles, the trials of being a woman in an “infuriatingly” male world and the struggle to find a middle ground between indie obscurity and international success. She also explores her complicated relationship with Anderson and addresses the suicide of her best friend and soulmate, the band’s drummer, Chris Acland.
Selby said: “When I first approached Miki about writing her autobiography she pretty much laughed in my face so I’m thrilled that two years later she has finished something fearless, funny and quite beautiful, which not only stands up alongside the very best music memoirs but is also one of the most evocative books about dysfunctional childhood and coming of age that I have read. It’s a breathtaking autobiography that announces Miki as a major literary talent."
Berenyi added: “Memory tends to prettify the past and reshape it into something more palatable but digging through my diaries and photo albums and press clippings and tour itineraries brought back visceral experiences. I don’t want to be a drama queen but reliving the 30-year span of this book . . . let’s just say it’s been emotional. The madcap ups and dysfunctional downs of my childhood and adolescence (London, Windsor, Hungary, Japan, Los Angeles) set me up for the chaos of being in a band and the eventual overkill of a changing music industry. My story is as much about a disrupted family life, a childhood in the ’70s, an adolescence in the ’80s, alienation, friendship, love, sex, self-destructiveness and optimism as it is about music—what it felt like, as much as what happened.
“There are shocking events but it’s not a misery memoir. Bad stuff happens to everyone and it’s how you get through the crap that I find important—and interesting. I’m not documenting my life for people to gawp or wonder at but inviting them in to experience the highs and the lows and feel what it was like to live through it.”
