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My Summer Reading: Writer Louise Wener

posted Aug 22, 2011, 4:54 AM by Vu Nguyen
From www.theartsdesk.com

My Summer Reading: Writer Louise Wener
Written by Bruce Dessau, Monday, 22 August 2011 00:05

Lousie Wener during happy days in Britpop stars Sleeper
Ed Sirrs 

Louise Wener rose to prominence as part of the Britpop movement in the mid-Nineties. While Blur and Oasis flew the flag for laddism and Suede flirted with camp glam, Wener was one of the scene’s few high-profile women, inspired by David Bowie, Morrissey and Debbie Harry. Her band Sleeper released eight top 40 singles, most memorably “Inbetweener”, and three hit albums. They supported Blur and toured America and Japan, but Wener became disillusioned with the  sexism and machinations of the music industry, where it was often assumed she was the token woman in the band rather than the co-songwriter. Sleeper split up in 1998 and Wener started to write fiction, publishing four novels. In 2010 she published her colourful account of her journey from suburbia to stardom, Different For Girls. It was recently published in paperback under the title Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop.

1. What are you reading at the moment?

I'm dipping in and out of two books, Heartburn and Crazy Salad, both by Nora Ephron. Heartburn is a novel based on the break up of her marriage and manages to be tender, acerbic and very funny all at once. Crazy Salad is a collection of essays and journalism that she wrote in the late Sixties and Seventies. Again, the writing is brilliantly observed and covers subjects like Watergate and the women's movement in a way that makes you look at them afresh. I love her writing.

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