Mikael Niemi - "Popular Music"

This book was orginally recommended to me a couple of years ago by a French friend. Of course, it's not really about music at all - apart from as a soundtrack to a young man's reminiscences about his childhood in the wilds of northern Sweden. A sort of Nordic Nick Hornby. What was weird was that I found an awful lot I could relate to here. Growing up in a small mining community in the Midlands, I can still remember winters where we had to wade through waist-high snow drifts to get to school and fog that was so thick, you really couldn't see more than a couple of feet in front of you. And spending all summer playing in the woods and on Shillitoe's farm, wandering around the countrside for miles, climbing stiles, dodging cows etc. It's so far removed from the way I live now, and even the way society is now, that I sometimes wonder if I imagined it. And yet the details are really clear, in a way that, for example, my recollections of the first year of university aren't. Anyway, the fact that I could identify to an extent with the author meant we were off to a good start. Then there's the wonderful Nordic quality to it all - that raw, harsh way of life, bound up inextricably with the elements. The long winters and the short summers. And I love the fact that there's a reference to (Abba's Benny Andersson's band) the Hep Stars in there. There's an innocence to it all, and a slightly melancholy nostalgia for a slower, simpler time. And bags of humour too. Grandad's birthday, which turns into a mammoth drinking binge, is wonderfully funny, as is the kids' drinking competition in the disused factory. I found it amusing, poignant and well-observed and I'd quite like to check out other books by the author. Which is always a good sign, isn't it?