The Smiths

The Smiths is so evocative of the intense and self-defining power of pop: when a listener can feel their emotions uncannily expressed by an artist * Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys *
Bracewell is a writer unlike any other. His prose is astute and bewitching. The Smiths is a waking dream * Gwendoline Riley *
As seductive and inscrutably anthemic as its subject matter; like discovering The Smiths for the very first time, twice * Lias Saoudi *
Bracewell is so brilliant with oblique detail and his reflections on a dank, forgotten London chime perfectly with the band that he is so lovingly remembering. Again and again I found myself reaching for my notebook for phrases to steal * Brett Anderson *
In an onrush of exquisite observation and sensual recall that is almost pornographic in its intensity, The Smiths is an act of baroque transmission from another time and another place, reported in transcendent prose that goes beyond the limits of what fiction can do. Like the band it celebrates, it is an active, ongoing performance, couched in comic pathos, careering and glorious, to be experienced in one breath. Blink and you’ll miss it. Read it and you may wonder what it was all about. You won’t know unless you do * Philip Hoare *
I love his language, his almost laughably high pretensions and how he possesses an enviable talent for writing cultural criticism so poetic that it is impossible to decide whether it should be published in regular review form or immortalised between the hard covers of a poetry collection * Andres Lokko *

Michael Bracewell is the author of seven novels and four works of non-fiction, including:

• Perfect Tense
• Re-make/Re-model: The Art School Roots of Roxy Music
• The Rise of David Bowie (with Mick Rock and Barney Hoskyns)
• Modern World: The Art of Richard Hamilton
• Souvenir

His writing is included in The Faber Book of Pop (Ed Jon Savage and Hanif Kureishi), and his selected writings on visual art were published in The Space Between (Ed Doro Globus). His most recent book, Unfinished Business (2023) is a sequel to his novel The Conclave (1992).

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