Louise Wener

I first saw Sleeper at the Shepherds Bush Empire in May 1994, where they were supporting Blur on their Parklife tour. Their performance left more of an impression on me than the headliners': Louise Wener in her wide-eyed, breathy-voiced splendour, slashing at her Telecaster and singing punky songs about libido. The music press loved her, of course, continually sticking her on front covers and asking her how she felt about teenagers masturbating over her posters – a question that was rarely put, one noted, to Liam Gallagher or Thom Yorke.

Her Britpop memoir is smartly written and very easy to read; funnily enough, my favourite bits were actually the early parts, before she was famous, where she evokes the experience of growing up in the suburbs in the 80s and 90s really well. When she finally gets into the band stuff, she is somewhat light on details – we hear that she is touring with Elvis Costello, or going on Top of the Pops, but it's all a bit detached, and there are no details of, for instance, how particular songs were written, or where they came from.

Sleeper, despite their media-friendly exposure, were never quite a top-tier band, but perhaps that helped them avoid the worst depredations of heroin-based debauchery that seemed to overtake a lot of their compeers. ‘Fame,’ Wener concludes succinctly, ‘is a fiefdom of wank,’ and, as in The Last Party, one senses the nakedly aggressive competition that obtained between a lot of these Britpop groups. ‘We all loathe each other beyond redemption,’ she says, only half-joking.

Sleeper's own decline and fall was exacerbated by inter-band tensions – Wener was originally dating the guitarist, Jon Stewart, but left him for drummer Andy Maclure while touring – and when their tenth single went in at number 28, it was all over. By that point, only three years after I saw them on stage, Britpop had become mainstream business and there was no room left for mid-list underperformers. Surveying the landscape of the British music industry in the late 90s, Wener is understandably downbeat about how the movement worked out:

What happened to that battle? That slice of rock and roll sexual equality that we came for? It started with an attempt to level the playing field, but ended up in something altogether tamer and more dilute. You wake up one morning in the midst of the beer-swilling, coke-fuelled, self-important, macho parody that is Britpop's death rattle and say, haven't we been here before? Justine aping Christine Keeler on the cover of Select, Sonya Echobelly falling out of her shirt in i-D, Cerys Catatonia pouting half naked on the cover of a lads' mag, and how the hell did I end up being photographed in a wet-look PVC catsuit carrying a gun? I look ridiculous. Like sexy liquorice.

Wener is still married to Maclure – they have kids and live in a little terraced house in the suburbs. She sounds quite sanguine about the celebrity merry-go-round having left her behind – although, as she puts it: ‘the further pop life recedes into the distance, the more I think I didn't grab it and snog it nearly hard enough.’ Sleeper actually reformed last year for a few special gigs, so it's nice to think she managed to slip 'em the tongue a few more times, in the strange Britpop afterlife that this engaging book evokes so well.… (altro)

So I bought this book because I thought it would be about poker. And it was, kind of, but mainly that cover and blurb is doing some serious bluffing because it's about much more.

Audrey Ungar should be satisfied with her life--she's in her early thirties, she's traveled the world, she's a math genius, and she has steady employment, loyal friends, and the perfect-for-her boyfriend. However, for Audrey, there will forever be one thing missing: her father. Suffering from a gambling addiction, her father abandoned the family when Audrey was eleven years old. Audrey does everything she can to bring her wayward father's attention back to the family: she becomes a math prodigy and, when her genius gets her everyone's admiration but his, she turns to shoplifting. Because of his abandonment, the adult Audrey feels the need to obsessively control everything in her life.

Audrey's world is shaken, however, when her step-father reveals that her father tried to keep in touch with her long ago, but her step-father discouraged him because he felt the impact on Audrey could only be a negative one. This admission causes Audrey to seek out her father through the only thing he loved: the game of poker. Doing so brings Audrey into contact with Big Louie, an agoraphobic, obese, former card hustler who promises to teach Audrey the game and use his tournament connections to help Audrey track down the man who gambled away her childhood happiness. Such help doesn't come freely and Audrey finds that she has an impossible debt to pay for Big Louie's help.

The Perfect Play has very little to do with the game of poker and is more about the chances, gambles, and fortunes that shape our own lives. In learning about poker, Audrey's really seeking to understand the man who left her behind. But the danger in doing so is that Audrey probably already understands her father better than she realizes: both are mathematical geniuses, both have obsessive personalities, and both have a laser-like focus that shuts everyone else out. As Audrey becomes better at the game, we begin to wonder if Audrey realizes how precariously close she's coming to living out the sins of her father and risking everything and everyone she should value.

Louise Wener also sets up some clever bluffs throughout the narrative. Some things that seem a little cliche or implausible are turned on their head by the novel's end and a few of the plot lines that I scoffed at as predictably heading toward a particular end cleverly dodge in a different direction. Her strongest suit is creating believably flawed, yet incredibly likable characters. I really, truly like Audrey--something I can rarely say of women in fiction. The dialogue is often witty and funny, in a day-to-day sort of way. These conversations sound like those real people with genuine senses of humor and close relationships would have.

If the novel has a flaw, it may be that the poker game we all knew the novel would eventually be heading towards happens at the very end and seems somewhat rushed, lacking any real sense of tension. But, really, in the end, the novel isn't about the game anyway. It's about the players.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder… (altro)

Those who like novels where everything ties up nicely and where every event has some significance in the final analysis will find much to enjoy here. Having enjoyed the light, chatty feel of the story I was surprised, not to say impressed, when I reached the end and realised how many important little details had been sneaked into the plot.

Beginning in Florida with the events of the space shuttle disaster of 1986, an event most people my age and above will remember well, there is a celestial theme running doggedly through the novel, even finding its way into the title, but it is rather more a story about relationships and the people and culture of Miami. Particularly impressive were the sections taking place in that city as the narrator Claire befriends wannabe star Tess (“I’m managed by a friend of Lenny Kravitz’s hairdresser”) – they felt as though they had been a lot of fun to write and consequently were a lot of fun to read. There was a serious side to the novel too, and in particular I thought the paragraph where Claire describes her late father was an outstanding piece of writing.

The were one or two negatives for me but they were very minor. First person present tense usually starts grating on me after a couple of hundred pages, like an overdose of something syrupy, and it was the same here. And I found it curious how Claire arrives in Florida after years and years away from the USA and starts talking about people “fixing coffee”. Nobody fixes anything in the UK unless it’s broken, or it’s a snooker match. Maybe it was meant to be a case of “when in Rome...” but it felt odd. Those things aside, I liked this very much and hope to read more by this author.… (altro)