Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me from Success: Rough Trade Book of the Year

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Berenyi is particularly scathing about how lad culture successfully reframed sexism by putting it in jokey air quotes. She clearly adored her father Ivan Berenyi, even though he comes across as shiftless, unreliable and a consummate womaniser. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I was quite late to the party with Lush; so late, in fact, that the party was over and all that remained were half-empty wine bottles and cheesy nibbles ground into the carpet.

Steve Rippon left fairly early on, replaced on bass by Phil King, who seems to have always been something of an outsider in the band.Miki talks about Emma with incredible fondness and is never less than complimentary about her musicianship and song writing skills, but she doesn’t hold back from letting us know the things that bug her about her former band mate and the ways in which these contribute to the eventual dissolution of Lush. There are frustrations apparent in the relationship, mainly stemming from communication issues - at one point Anderson decides to quit the band because she has taken up a position she assumes is completely at odds with everyone else and is shocked to find Berenyi already in 100% agreement with her - and their different views on the musical process. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

Fiercely honest and emotionally acute, it is evenly divided between Berenyi’s early life and her nine-year stint as the singer in British dream-pop outfit, Lush. I had an absolutely crazy day which started with my guitar getting knocked over by Pearl Jam and its neck-snapping.

While she is willing to change the names of some of its participants to protect them from having their faults exposed, this is a luxury she denies herself. She meets Emma Anderson, Lush guitarist, at school, where they bond over bands and start their own fanzine.

Self-harm, poor self-esteem and promiscuity are the result of the abuse and dereliction Berenyi suffered and it is difficult to read her accounts of the impact this childhood had on her teens and early twenties without desperately wanting her to find some kind of peaceful resolution. No longer the centre of Dad’s attention, I become bored and begin yawning, and he has the perfect excuse to usher his catch home. But here to disprove that notion is Fingers Crossed, a frank and captivating read from Miki Berenyi, late of 90’s indie group Lush.The daughter of a Hungarian sports reporter and a Japanese actress (Yasuko Nagazumi, who had regular roles in The Protectors and Space: 1999) who split just a few years after her birth, Berenyi grew up in two very different worlds. Rivalries and finances rear their head and are what eventually breaks the band up, as is often the case. A tumultuous childhood and chaotic coming of age propel Miki in to the famously stable world of rock and roll. If you’re expecting Fingers Crossed to be a rollercoaster ride of rock ‘n’ roll excess, you might be disappointed, but that’s more about your inflexibility than any failing the part of the author. Peppered with anecdotes involving a cast of hundreds (including Blur, Sean Connery, Tracey Emin, Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers), this uncompromising autobiography documents Lush’s thrilling rise, dispiriting fall and subsequent bounceback, reliving the tours, recording sessions and problematic managers they experienced along the way.

The band were fizzling when their sharp, wry drummer Chris Acland, to whom Berenyi was particularly close, suddenly took his own life in 1996, a denouement that still knocks the wind out of you even though you know it’s coming. They made music that ranged from ethereal 4AD fare to indie pop belters, but never seemed part of a scene as such, both their music and the people who made it not being so self-limiting. Sure, there is an unflinching examination of the excess that came with music industry success in the 1990s in there, but that’s restricted to the latter half of the book. The Britpop years, and the lad culture that grew around it, are brilliantly eviscerated in a five-page rant in which Liam Gallagher and former Loaded editor James Brown, among others, don’t exactly emerge covered in glory.

But at the heart of the book are Miki’s own battles: the conflict between her mouthy public persona and her thin-skinned private identity; the trials of being a woman in an infuriatingly male world; the struggle to find a middle ground between safe indie obscurity and sellout international success. One of the most artful elements of Fingers Crossed is how Miki describes that childhood dichotomy of totally loving your parents even when their behaviour isn’t quite up to scratch.