Coal Black Mornings

a tough-minded and emotionally acute account of the Suede singer's childhood and teenage years, about his relationship with his parents and the route map that pop music provided for him to march away from his suburban origins * Herald * Richer and stranger than any tale of narcotic excess and success * Guardian * It shouldn't have come as a surprise that one of British pop's most original lyricists would write a book almost poetic in its language and painterly in its eye for detail, but this illuminating, moving and generous memoir by the Suede frontman still had the power to confound . . . Coal Black Mornings is a thing of beauty and a work of art * Sunday Times * Few rock memoirs are worthy of critical note. Brett Anderson's richly melancholic Coal Black Mornings was an exception. Eschewing the coke and gold discs template, the Suede singer recounts a childhood of bohemian poverty and traces his band's vivid prehistory -- George Eaton * New Statesman * As an antidote to all the drug-fuelled destruction, I recommend Brett Anderson's elegant Coal Black Mornings, in which the Suede frontman looks back on his pre-fame days * Telegraph * Revealing, funny and moving * Mail on Sunday * Personal and moving, unpolished and demure . . . Coal Black Mornings is a bravura performance * Times Literary Supplement * His memoir is melancholy and evocative, a dreamy ballad recalling the time before the drugs and the band break-up * Sunday Express * Perfect prose, thanks to which Coal Black Mornings does the job of describing the beauty in the banality better than any music memoir since Patti Smith's sublime Just Kids * Classic Pop * Generous, funny, poignant * Financial Times * An ineffably romantic coming-of-age story; a beautiful reminder of the magic that happens round the edges * Sunday Times * a thrillingly energetic, bracingly entertaining snapshot of a writer hitting his first full flush, leaving you wishing two things. One: that you'd formed a band. Two: that he changes his mind about documenting the coke-blurred mornings to come * Record Collector * Coal Black Mornings is excellent: evocative, thoughtful and frank; an instant hit in a minor key. Anderson is particularly good on his unusual upbringing . . . as accomplished a writer of elegant prose as he was of narcotically enhanced lyrics about urban ennui -- Neil Armstrong * Mail on Sunday * Beautifully crafted and brilliantly well-written . . . his memoir is a thought-provoking meditation on how our childhoods form the people we become, as well as a love letter to London . . . The book is perfect as it is, but there's no question that we need a second volume -- Anna van Praagh * Evening Standard * A rich, sad and honest tale -- Olivia Cole * GQ * Fascinating . . . gorgeously written. On more than one occasion it made we well up . . . most certainly not just for the fan club * Guardian * Coal Black Mornings is a triumph . . . a bracingly honest work raised way above the celeb book fray by Anderson's obvious talent for writing . . . revelatory and delivered with writerly panache -- John Harris * Mojo * A remarkable feat, utterly true. This decade's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius -- Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X and Girlfriend in a Coma