Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia

Description

'Tender, wise and funny' - Sunday Express 'Beautifully observed, deadly funny' - Max Porter Before becoming an acclaimed musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living. Returning to the scene of her childhood, Thorn takes us beyond the bus shelters, the pub car parks and the weekly discos, to the parents who wanted so much for their children and the children who wanted none of it. With great wit and insight, Thorn reconsiders the Green Belt post-war dream so many artists have mocked, and yet so many artists have come from.

Tracey Thorn is a singer-songwriter and writer, best known for her seventeen years in bestselling duo Everything But The Girl. She grew up as the youngest of three children in Brookmans Park, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, where she learned the piano, enjoyed underaged drinking, and started her first band while still at school. Since then, she has released four solo albums, one movie soundtrack, a large handful of singles and two books, including the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen, and currently writes a column for the New Statesman. She lives in London, with her husband Ben Watt and their three children. @tracey_thorn | traceythorn.com

A beautiful writer . . . Exceptional . . . Made me catch my breath . . . Her language is straightforward, chatty, easy-to-read. Musical. Though Thorn tells us sharp truths, we gobble them up because she delivers them in such a deceptively pretty, poignant way -- Miranda Sawyer * * Financial Times * * Hugely enjoyable, quirky and funny -- BERNARDINE EVARISTO When Thorn digs into her adolescence, the book sparks with wit and poignancy, helped by extracts from her teenage diaries that she smartly exploits for comedy and bathos * * Sunday Times * * Tender, wise and funny * * Sunday Express * * I adored this. Wise, tender, beautifully observed, deadly funny. A Green Belt memoir classic -- MAX PORTER Readers of Thorn's two previous memoirs will recognise the tone of this book, with its beautifully clean style, careful self-questioning and pervasive likability * * Guardian * * What a wise and funny book. Nostalgic but unsentimental, Thorn beautifully captures the aspirations, ennui and angst of suburban teenage life. I loved it -- DAVID NICHOLLS Tracey Thorn's memoir of growing up in suburbia finds the extraordinary in the ordinary . . . Thorn is a writer who can "give the mundane its beautiful due" . . . [A] delightful, incisive memoir -- Frank Cottrell-Boyce * * New Statesman * * A book that dazzles with a quiet rebellion, resilience and hope -- ELIF SHAFAK Another Planet is about being a teenager in suburbia in the 1970s, and revisiting one's own youth from middle age. It touches on class, culture, music, plum jam and parenting teens. It's wonderful. You'll read it in one go -- NINA STIBBE