Delightful
It's Nick Hornby's World: we just live in it
I won't preempt the piece I've just written for the next issue of Word, but I have rounded up the latest batch of non-celebrity memoirs, and this has meant I've been wallowing in the ordinary - and extraordinary - lives of largely ordinary people, from the latest "heartbreaking true story" of child abuse, Damaged by foster carer Cathy Glass (not her real name), which will presumably sell by the lorryload, since most of the current non-fiction paperback Top Ten are books of similar formative woe, to The Memoirs Of A Punk Romantic, a self-published account of growing up as an androgynous Bowie fan in Leeds by Mick McCann, who I take it is a non-professional writer, but does a very evocative job with dialogue and northern vernacular. My theory is that since the Millennium, our hunger for the past has become voracious, and since Nick Hornby opened the gates in the 90s, the market for memoirs by people who aren't famous has remained buoyant. Publishers have to pay through the nose for famous people's autobiographies, and many of these famously undersell - David Blunkett's, Ashley Cole's etc. The non-celebrity author is a much less risky bet.
One of the latest wave of non-Blunkett, small-advance memoirs deserves special mention, mainly because its author, another first-timer, Imran Ahmad, is a reader of this blog and was kind enough to insist his publishers send me an early proof copy to read. I really enjoyed it - it's the tale of a Karachi-born Muslim growing up in 70s and 80s Britain (a kind of Asian-experience flipside to my own childhood and student years) - and the publishers have rather flatteringly put my quote on the dust jacket between Sue Townsend and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Sue Cook called it "delightful", and I note that it's already attracted its first five star Amazon customer review. (I'm jealous of that, clearly. My average scores for both memoirs are constantly pegged by those who hated them and felt compelled to post one- or two-star reviews as revenge against me for conning money out of them.)
Imran, who I admit I have been in email contact with ever since receiving the book, is a very crisp writer, and although it's incredibly dry, this is a book of immense humour. I met the cultural commentator Sarfraz Manzoor at Christmas, and he's threatening to send me the proofs of his Muslim-growing-up-in-Britain memoir, Greetings From Bury Park, out in June. I suspect that Muslim memoirs may be the next big thing. Imran can at least comfort himself that he got in early.
His website, including details of the charity book launch, is here.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 6:55 PM
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8 Comments:
I've got 24 notebooks containing all my diaries from 1979-1986 which I think would make a smashing book. There's even a really good anecdeote about Charlie Higson. Shall I bundle them up and send them to you, for your comments??
I thinks it's pretty sad that 'The Moon's a Balloon' and Dirk Bogarde's epic telling (re-invention?) of his life have been replaced by Jordan, Beckham and Rooney. Any bets against Shilpa having a book out by the summer?
I got HKIMN for a penny on Amazon (worth every erm.. penny). I really enjoyed it. Not sure your memoirs can be classed as non-celeb though AC..?
Interesting point, Rob. I don't think of myself as a celeb. And I don't believe my first book was published because I was one. It is, after all, about a normal kid growing up normal. The follow-up, which you got for a pound, is the same. Unlike a celeb autobiography, it doesn't matter who I grow up to be in either book. If you read Jordan's book and she didn't turn out to be Jordan, you wouldn't read it.
Ishouldbeworking: I think you're being ironic. Are you? Hard to tell on the page.
I think the problem is with some of these "Celebrity" memoirs is that there is the assumption that because the people concerned are famous, then the book will be good. However this is often quite clearly not the case and many of these books end up in bargain bins. As Andrew Collins' books and others like it illustrate, all you need is a normal childhood and a good writing style and you have a bestseller whether you are a celebrity or not.
I had a little chuckle to myself at a comment Stuart Maconie made in an article about his new book, Pies and Prejudice, in this month's Word mag: "You can find it in all good bookshops now, probably slightly less prominently displayed than Chris Moyles' thoughtful memoir". Brave words considering they're both published by Ebury, and the Moyles' book has sold in unfathomably large quantities. I'm ashamed to say I've read Moyles' book - I was lent it, honest! - and can say that it was written for the mindless.
AC, I know irony can be hard to detect on the written page - but I know rising panic when I read it! Have no fear, you are not in any danger of receiving my 24 volumes (which means you sadly forego the Charlie Higson anecdote). I only get them out and read through them when I feel I am not suffering enough.
I can't say I blame you for not considering yourself a celeb. It's become a dirty word.
The reason I read and enjoyed WDIAGR (and the one I got for a penny + postage) was not because of who you became, but because you're roughly the same age as me and from a similar background (middle class ; provincial town). I also noticed you seemed to have been brought up on and enjoyed the same kind of music..and you were a goth. All of which I found out because of who you became.
When's the next volume out?
Andrew, I have just received a copy of this book, Unimagined, which I ordered on your say so. I'm looking forward to reading it.
By the way, Sarfraz Manzoor used to be a regular in my internet cafe I had from 1995 to 2000 in Luton. He is a very nice man.
We used to always have music playing in the cafe and he used to ask us to play his new cds that he had just bought in the shops. I hope his taste in music has improved a bit!!
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