Overview

I am sure that what I remember is not necessarily what actually happened, but I can only write what I remember. Wildly inventive and magnificently surreal, The Smiths: A Novella recounts the impact of an unconventional pop group from Manchester on one man's life. Taking the form of a flaneuring journey through the landscape of memory, our anonymous protagonist is accompanied by the iconic French actress Carole Bouquet, who becomes his guide and interlocutor, asking about his life during the years The Smiths were together and the profound effect of their music upon him. As the unlikely couple perambulate from the old Selfridge Hotel to West Hollywood by way of a park bench in Cavendish Square, their conversation interrogates and celebrates the joys of outlandish pop genius, the zealous dedication of fans and the cult of outsider disaffection given uproarious voice. As such, this is not a book about The Smiths but one that emerges from their music, their emotional register and their literary resonance. Michael Bracewell's novella-cum-fairy tale is at once deeply romantic and laced with comedy - not unlike the band themselves - and perhaps (in fictional form) the most astute and celebratory portrait of The Smiths to date.

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9781399638609

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Reviews

The Smiths is so evocative of the intense and self-defining power of pop: when a listener can feel their emotions uncannily expressed by an artist * Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys * Bracewell is a writer unlike any other. His prose is astute and bewitching. The Smiths is a waking dream * Gwendoline Riley * As seductive and inscrutably anthemic as its subject matter; like discovering The Smiths for the very first time, twice * Lias Saoudi * Bracewell is so brilliant with oblique detail and his reflections on a dank, forgotten London chime perfectly with the band that he is so lovingly remembering. Again and again I found myself reaching for my notebook for phrases to steal * Brett Anderson *

The Smiths is so evocative of the intense and self-defining power of pop: when a listener can feel their emotions uncannily expressed by an artist * Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys * Bracewell is a writer unlike any other. His prose is astute and bewitching. The Smiths is a waking dream * Gwendoline Riley * As seductive and inscrutably anthemic as its subject matter; like discovering The Smiths for the very first time, twice * Lias Saoudi * Bracewell is so brilliant with oblique detail and his reflections on a dank, forgotten London chime perfectly with the band that he is so lovingly remembering. Again and again I found myself reaching for my notebook for phrases to steal * Brett Anderson * In an onrush of exquisite observation and sensual recall that is almost pornographic in its intensity, The Smiths is an act of baroque transmission from another time and another place, reported in transcendent prose that goes beyond the limits of what fiction can do. Like the band it celebrates, it is an active, ongoing performance, couched in comic pathos, careering and glorious, to be experienced in one breath. Blink and you'll miss it. Read it and you may wonder what it was all about. You won't know unless you do * Philip Hoare *

The Smiths is so evocative of the intense and self-defining power of pop: when a listener can feel their emotions uncannily expressed by an artist * Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys * Bracewell is a writer unlike any other. His prose is astute and bewitching. The Smiths is a waking dream * Gwendoline Riley * Michael Bracewell proves himself to be nothing less than the poet laureate of late capitalism -- JONATHAN COE * praise for Souvenir * A tone poem of clean reflection and hallucinatory detail -- JON SAVAGE * praise for Souvenir * Michael Bracewell's exquisitely written book is a suspended act of retrieval, a partisan recall; a sustained, subtle summary of our recent past and an epitaph for a future we never had -- PHILIP HOARE * praise for Souvenir *

The Smiths is so evocative of the intense and self-defining power of pop: when a listener can feel their emotions uncannily expressed by an artist * Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys * Bracewell is a writer unlike any other. His prose is astute and bewitching. The Smiths is a waking dream * Gwendoline Riley * As seductive and inscrutably anthemic as its subject matter; like discovering The Smiths for the very first time, twice * Lias Saoudi *

Author Information

Michael Bracewell is the author of seven novels and four works of non-fiction, including: Perfect Tense, Re-make/Re-model: The Art School Roots of Roxy Music, The Rise of David Bowie (with Mick Rock and Barney Hoskyns), Modern World: The Art of Richard Hamilton and Souvenir. His writing is included in The Faber Book of Pop (Ed Jon Savage and Hanif Kureishi) and his selected writings on visual art were published in The Space Between (Ed Doro Globus). His most recent book, Unfinished Business (2023) is a sequel to his novel The Conclave (1992).

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