To be Someone Book

Louise Voss has drawn on her 10-year career in the music business as the backdrop for her debut novel--a touching story of female friendship and self-enlightenment. Helena Nicholls, cult London DJ and former bassist with globally successful rock band, Blue Idea, is knocked seriously off-track following a hideous, and deeply uncool, accident at an industry awards bash. With a long stay in hospital and an unwelcome, but enforced, career break, Helena has time to ponder on her good, and bad, fortune so far and which of life's difficult paths to tread next. As she remembers back to early childhood and her first meeting with Samantha, the pretty five-year-old who was to become her best friend and life-long soul mate, key moments in time are remembered with a song. To Be Someone is told in alternating chapters of flashback and the present day; each flashback headed with a "Song of the Day"-a clever ploy, as most readers between the ages of 15 and 45 will find themselves nostalgic over such diverse musical memories as Jackie Wilson's "I Get The Sweetest Feeling", Blondie¹s "Sunday Girl", "Lovesong" by The Cure and "This is a Low" from Blur. (Yes, of course The Jam's "To Be Someone" is in at Number 11). When Helena is not remembering her parents move to America in her teens, the rise and fall of her pop career and her deepening attachment to Sam, she struggles to come to terms with the present and the injuries caused by her accident, physical and otherwise. Then, a chance meeting in a hospital corridor with a face from her past leaves Helena wondering if the immortalising path she has chosen is the right one after all? Voss employs a deliberate teenage-diary style for To Be Someone: naïve, arrogant, self-absorbed yet full of pathos and bursting with all that growing-up still to be done. Hugely appealing to a younger female readership, this voyage into adulthood is rocked with the cataclysmic highs and lows of life, death, friendship and the music business. Judging from the dedication at the front of the book, Voss is clearly writing from the heart. --Carey GreenRead More