To Throw Away Unopened

At the launch party for her memoir in 2014, the musician Viv Albertine received news that her mother was dying, and spent a few final hours with the woman who was, in a sense, the love of her life. In the turbulent weeks after the funeral, Viv made a series of discoveries that revealed the role of family conflicts in propelling her towards the uncompromising world of punk. Part radical reinvention of the memoir form; part feminist manifesto; part domestic noir; part polemic on motherhood; To Throw Away Unopened is an indefinable book exploring the nature of intimacy. Unapologetically honest, this is a story of human dysfunctionality which miraculously reveals how we do manage to function, live, and love.

About the Author :
Born in Sydney, songwriter and musician Viv Albertine was the guitarist in cult female punk band The Slits. She was a key player in British counter-culture before her career in TV and film Directing. Her first solo album The Vermilion Border was released in 2012, and her memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys was a Sunday Times, Mojo, Rough Trade, and NME Book of the Year in 2014, as well as being shortlisted for the National Book Awards.

Review :
"Oh Viv Albertine! I salute you. Such honesty!"--Nigella Lawson "Forget Katniss And Tris - Viv Albertine Is Your New Hero."--MTV.com "A fully realized portrait of its author."--Rolling Stone "Viv Albertine, I love your book VERY badly. It's amazing."--Caitlin Moran "To Throw Away Unopened is enthusiastically chaotic...on the page she is wry and vibrant..."--New York Times "In her second memoir, the influential rocker addresses life after punk. Albertine's publishing debut, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. (2014), earned widespread acclaim beyond music circles. Its unflinching honesty and street-wise feminism struck responsive chords as she recounted the formative years of British punk rock and her standard-bearing role in the Slits, a female band that demanded to be taken seriously within punk's male-dominated hierarchy. Now that Albertine's music career appears to be over--or is at least winding down--she has become a writer, with this second book required to follow the breakthrough success of the first. Here, the author dwells little on the music through which most previously knew her--and which she covered so well in her previous book--and more on her roles, mother, daughter, and sister, among others. As Albertine prepared for the book party to launch her memoir, she learned that her 95-year-old mother was on her deathbed, so she rushed with her daughter to be by her side. There, she joined her younger sister, with whom she was once much closer. The two engaged in a horrific battle at their mother's bedside, a hair-pulling, blood-letting fight to the finish between two women in their mid-50s whose years of bottled-up tension was just waiting to explode: " 'You're mad, ' said [sister] Pascal. She was right. I was mad. Completely insane. A deranged, murderous, certifiable, raging lunatic." The narrative intersperses short paragraphs detailing the mother's death as the sisters battled between slightly longer reminiscences about growing up together as their family was falling apart and how their mother did her best to keep them estranged from their father. Albertine also quotes at length from her father's diary and her mother's testimony on the dissolution of that marriage, which she discovered after the death of each, and which frequently contradicted each other (and sometimes her own memory). "Truth is splintered," she concludes. Not the cultural resource that her first memoir was, but still as brave and engaging in the writing." --Kirkus Reviews