The Importance of Music to Girls: A memoir

Publisher: Faber & Faber
Price: £15.99
Website: www.faber.co.uk

Ever since I was a music-bore teenager, I have been struck by a dearth of books by girls about music. Nick Hornby cornered the music-obsessive market with High Fidelity, prompting the press to agree that only boys 'soundtrack' their lives with music. Not so, I screamed, as I catalogued my Billy Braggs and hastily made another 'trip' tape.

The Importance of Music to Girls has bizarrely few market-fellows. Oh, Jo Brand wrote a book about punk but she's allowed because she's an honorary bloke and has short hair. Poet Lavinia Greenlaw (who has long hair and boobs...) has written opera libretti and songs as well as two novels, so she is well qualified to comment on the impact of music on girls (who, after all, also like music).

She's also, rather handily, a very good writer in the way that poets writing prose can be. This book tells of growing up and how music makes you want to do things and how things make you want to do music.

Unlike other more genre-obsessive accounts, this book is for genuine music-lovers and treats music as a complete entity, not a lifestyle choice.

It affords as much importance to punk as to classical music but, like the boys' books, also explains the life-changing feeling that finding music you 'get' fosters. Hazel Davis

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