To Throw Away Unopened

from Bishopston Voice August 2023

bishopstonvoice

by Viv Albertine

Review by Bob Deacon of Bishopston Library

VIV Albertine is a musician, singer, songwriter, director and author. She is best known as the guitarist for the punk band The Slits. To Throw Away Unopened is her memoir. The text is interspersed with passages in bold type containing her thoughts and recollections, as she sits at the hospital bedside of her dying mother Kathleen, accompanied by her daughter Vida and her sister Pascale.

Viv takes the reader back and forth through her life, chronicling her childhood, her marriage and divorce, her cancer diagnosis and recovery, her infertility treatment and her relationships with her mother, her daughter and her sister. We hear about the lovely time that Viv and her mum spend together, celebrating her mother’s last xmas, despite having to throw away the turkey which was found to be raw when cut open. We jump back to Viv age 12, when her mum asks her and her sister if they preferred to take in lodgers to the family home or move to a council flat on the departure of her father. We hear how she used the two hundred pounds she received following her grandmothers death to purchase a guitar enabling her to start her musical career. Viv contends that one of the reasons why she and many other women of her generation became feminists was that they were brought up by repressed and unhappy women who had become adults during the war, had learnt new skills, tasted independence and then had to dissolve back into the shadows and watch from behind their ironing boards as the sixties unfolded. She points out that all the members of The Slits had absent fathers, enabling them to fight every obstacle with a zeal that would have been impossible otherwise. Viv acknowledges that her mother was instrumental in helping her become a strong independent woman by never stopping encouraging her to try, fail and to take risks and by applauding her exploits, instructing her to never rely on a man, to make sure she was financially independent and to never let a man own her. This is a riveting, brutally honest memoir with Viv detailing her fractious relationship with her sister, her disastrous dates and unsatisfying sexual encounters as well as the joys and challenges of being a single mother. If you are not already a library member, please visit us at 100a Gloucester Road and obtain a library card giving you free access to two million books including this engaging memoir.