Nine Eight Books signs 'era-defining' memoir from journalist Anna Doble

The publisher continued: "It is the tale of a young woman who, through connections made at school, at university, at gigs and in smoke-filled cars, finds the people and the places that will take her to her life."

Selby said: “Anna has captured the essence, thrill and complexity of growing up in the most beautiful and poetic manner. Seen through an ever changing prism of pop music, this is a book about coming of age, identity and musical and sexual epiphanies in Asda. Connection is a Song is an era-defining memoir for anyone who has ever been a teenager. Anna Doble is a remarkable new literary voice.”

Doble added: “You never know at the time that you are ‘in an era’ but in various shoeboxes with their odd mix of cassette tapes, I found the 1990s exactly as I had left them. Music, for me, connects like nothing else: conjuring up the people, places and moments my brain had put on a hard-to-reach shelf. Connection is a Song is a journey through the tracks that carried me from childhood to adulthood: there are bottles of Hooch, clouds of Impulse body spray and an encounter with Nicky Wire’s feather boa. I hope this story gives readers an excuse to smash open their own time capsules, and create new ones too."