To Throw Away Unopened - Viv Albertine

TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED –

VIV ALBERTINE

As is my wont, after reading a book I tend to write down a few thoughts and reflections on it though it's purely for my own benefit, I might add; it being a bit like visiting somewhere and taking a photograph of that place. It's never a review or a critique of the book as such but rather a lot of doodling, really. A blurry snapshot taken on an old Box Brownie.

Having jotted down my reflections (which is usually in a notepad as I gaze blankly out of the train window at the sea on my daily commute) I sometimes then google the book I've just read to see what other people have said about it – on Goodreads, Guardian Review, etc. A lot of these writers, book reviewers and critics, however – they're not very good, are they? Do half of them even read the book they're reviewing or do they just skim through it, I wonder? Have they even read the same book as me I sometimes even ask?

After reading Viv Albertine's debut book, Clothes, Music, Boys, one of the things I noted was that in as much as the book is about the Slits and Viv's life post-Slits, it's also very much about her mother. In fact, it was Viv's mother, I wrote, who was the true heroine of the book and that she deserved to be honoured in some way for her services not only to Punk Rock but to creativity, art, and womankind. 'Thank you, Mrs Albertine, for giving the world your daughter', I wrote 'We salute you'.

I lay no claim to having any special insight into these things. My perception is in no way unique. So this being the case, how come no-one else seemed to pick up on this and give it a mention? How come no-one else deemed it relevant to mention that the underlying theme of Clothes, Music, Boys, isn't Punk Rock or the author's personal demons but Viv Albertine's mum?

And so to Viv's second book, To Throw Away Unopened, where in a lot of the online interviews with Viv in which she discusses it, she tells us how she started writing it as a work of fiction about an angry, middle-aged woman with murderous thoughts, before changing course after realising that actually Viv was writing about herself. Why not just go the whole hog, Viv told herself, and be honest about the matter and write about herself in the most truthful and open way as possible?

And indeed, Viv is extremely open and truthful in what she writes – at times startlingly so. The thing is, however, To Throw Away Unopened isn't really about Viv but like her last book it's about her mum again. I say this with the caveat of it being about Viv as well but only in the sense of the impact Viv's mum has had upon her and in particular, the impact of her mum's death.

It was from the arena of Punk Rock that Viv sprang during her time in the Slits and it was seeing the Sex Pistols and Johnny Rotten in particular that gave her the impetus to pick up a guitar in the first place. Both Viv and John went to to become iconic figures and because they're from this same cultural gene pool it's interesting to compare how they dealt with the same experience as in the death of parents – an experience, of course, that we've all faced or are all going to face at some point in our lives.

Following the death of his mother, John recorded Death Disco with Public Image Ltd, a song that subsequently enjoyed good radio play and engendered appearances on all the relevant television music programmes at that time. 'Final in a fade, seen it in your eyes. Words cannot express', John lamented to the tune of Swan Lake.

Death Disco was John's mother's epitaph. To Throw Away Unopened is Viv's mum's epitaph.

In his song Public Image, the debut single from Public Image Ltd, John declares that there are 'two sides to every story', and again there is an unspoken link here with Viv's book. Having been thrown to the wolves during his time with the Sex Pistols and his personal identity blasted and mis-represented by Malcolm McLaren and a thousand-and-one journalists, John was asserting his own truth and his own actual identity, starting simply by using his own surname - Lydon - rather than Rotten. 'I'm not the same as when I began', John informs us 'I will not be treated as property'.

In To Throw Away Unopened, Viv is relentless in her search for the truth about her parents and the reasons as to how she's ended up as the person she is. There is absolutely nothing that Viv is unwilling to write about. There are no secrets to conceal and no opinions to withold. Ever forward she ploughs through the details of her family background, her family life, her relationships, her sex life, her bodily functions, her darkest thoughts, her parent's private diaries even.

At times what Viv writes is disturbing and upsetting, particularly when going through the diaries of her parents and when at her mother's deathbed. There is no stone left unturned to get at the truth and to be truthful, and it's this that makes Viv's book so powerful. The fatal flaw in it, however, is that through no fault of her own Viv ends up not with the truth but with a version of the truth. Her version.

As John Lydon declared, there are 'two sides to every story' – and on occasion even a million. Truth is semantic. Whether there is but one Universal Truth or not is a question the greatest of philosophers have mulled over since time began. In regards to the lives we live, there is no one single truth – in my opinion. The world and life itself is fragmented, fractured and multi-faceted. It's a hall of mirrors. It's never simply black or white, or a question of right or wrong, or of Left or Right but rather it's in blazing, psychedelic technicolour and all rules are already broken. There are no rules. Life is essentially anarchist by its very nature. The world is a free-for-all.

In the final paragraph on the very last page of To Throw Away Unopened, Viv writes three very simple words that after all the spilling of guts, the pulling of skeletons from closets, and the standing naked before the world slips by almost unnoticed: 'Truth is splintered'.

This is the open-ended truth that Viv arrives at and what a relief it comes as. This is the lesson that Viv has learned and the lesson Viv departs to the reader. It is the lesson Viv's mum has passed on to her daughter. There is nothing more really to say or to add to it, leaving only the reader with the clear realisation that To Throw Away Unopened is a very good book indeed. Powerful, disturbing, fascinating, and emotional with flashes of anecdotal incidents that are not only humorous but inspirational to boot – calling herself Mrs Fuck Bollocks, throwing drinks over men who annoy, and ejecting 'posh twats' from bus seats. It begs the question, however: What might Viv write about next for her third book? It's almost too scary to think about.

John Serpico