To Throw Away Unopened

I’m smitten with Viv Albertine’s beautiful, tough, ribald, unsparing memoir. It’s so rare to encounter writing this frank and fearless about love, violence, loneliness, mess of all kinds ... To Throw Away Unopened is a book for all ages and experiences.

‘In To Throw Away Unopened, the former Slits guitarist Viv Albertine’s second book, she tries to locate the source of the anger that has shaped her adult life. Readers hoping for the rock’n’roll hijinks of her first memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys, may struggle to adjust to the domestic settings, but the author’s defiantly nonconformist attitude is all present and correct.’

The former guitarist of the trail-blazing 1970s British punk band the Slits followed up her acclaimed 2014 memoir with a similarly scrapbooky archaeological dig into her family’s complex and contrary background, where selective memory, sibling rivalry and unsettled emotional and psychological debts all played a powerful role. Caustic, catty, clear-eyed and compassionate, To Throw Away Unopened is a riveting sequel.

‘Coal Black Mornings by Brett Anderson, of 90s indie heroes Suede, is a beautifully written account of his working class upbringing in Hayward's Heath and how he found escape through music; while Viv Albertine's To Throw Away Unopened is the second searing memoir from the former Slits guitarist.’