Lavinia Greenlaw

Gorgeous telling of the Chaucer's story of Troilus and Criseyde, pared down to the essentials and all the more beautiful for it. Gets to the heart of the eternal themes of obsession, pursuit, and separation that have made this story connect with us through the centuries.

A review I read somewhere characterized "The Importance of Music to Girls" as a feminine "High Fidelity." I think it's much more emotionally unsettled, ambiguous and thorny than that, although it does share the same fundamental passion for music as an informing thread in one's formative years. And yes, the mix tape as love letter and personal statement makes appearances here, too.

Uneven at first (perhaps attributable to some of the pieces being published or read elsewhere), the collection show more picks up momentum and cohesiveness and gains focus as Greenlaw gets to punk music and, ironically, struggles with what she wants to do with her future. "Unquiet," which links Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and Shakespeare's Hamlet with Joy Division's enigmatic and tragic Ian Curtis, is particularly moving. show less

At one point in her book The Importance of Music to Girls Lavinia Greenlaw makes this observation: “I don’t know how to think or how to talk about what I think. I haven’t learned anything for years. I don’t listen. I can’t speak. I am watching myself happening or not happening . . .”

For some reason when I read that passage I immediately thought “AHA! That’s it, that’s the problem.” Because I really, really wanted to love this book and it somehow left me a little cold. . . show more

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Recommended by Ben Apatoff

A memoir of music and identity from a doctor's daughter, the second of four children, growing up in London and Essex. Always a lover of music, Lavinia explores soul, disco, rock 'n' roll, and punk. Chapters are short, and more or less chronological, it seems, though not always, and it's difficult to tell how much time is passing; in the end, the book seems to cover only her childhood and high school years, with a sort of epilogue bringing her daughter home from the show more hospital seven years later.

Quotes

This is a work of memory - facts have been altered.
Names have been changed.

If you don't hear this kind of music at the right time, can it ever make sense to you? (27)

What takes three minutes to play seemed to take ten minutes to listen to....It was, for me, a rehearsal of feeling. (28)

One thing I grasped from the start was the cachet of obscurity. (46)

There are times when we need the rocket fuel of singing and dancing to power us through an act of blind faith. (76)

When punk came to town it didn't take any notice of me and I failed to go out and meet it, but it left behind a sense of disturbance that affected only certain people. It was as if it hit their natural resonant frequency and set something off, the way a car starts to shake when it reaches a particular speed. (100)

After three years of trying to fit in, I liked the idea of being different. (102)

Luke showed me that loving music didn't have to mean wanting the same song all the time, or believing it perfect, and that what you loved didn't have to add up, let alone define you. (114)

I made myself strange because I felt strange and now I had something to belong to, for which my isolation and oddness were credentials. (159)

Identity was worn rather than embodied. (160)

I listened and, not able to manage my own feelings, had instead the feelings of the songs. (173)

Film added nothing to music; it took something away. (175)

I was gripped by what I was discovering and resistant to what I was taught and could not connect my intense interest in the world with what was left of my education. (187)

I was about to go into the world and it kept pulling itself out from under my feet. (191) show less