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

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The extraordinary and searingly honest personal story of musician Miki Berenyi, revealing the highs and lows of navigating the madness of the '90s music industry. Lush ends in tragedy with the suicide of the band’s drummer Chris Acland in 1996, after which Berenyi opts for a career change and takes a course in proofreading. Her times with her father (including a terrifying hand-to-mouth car journey across Hungary with Nora on board) are told with such love that it’s clear Miki loved her father so much that she would forgive him almost anything. Disrupted communication with family members, abuse and longing fed into the music that conjures up gothic fantasy worlds in the late 80s setting. Miki does not sensationalise these elements in the way that some authors might – this is by no means a ‘look at my dreadful childhood’ autobiography – and she takes great care to not pinpoint these occurrences as an excuse for anything she may or may not have done in her later life.

Berenyi herself becomes the subject of an inordinate amount of flak and it is difficult to conclude that this is not the result of her being a) a girl, b) visually distinctive and c) successful. We learn how Berenyi’s parents split when she was four, after which her mother, Yasuko, a Japanese actor, began a relationship with the TV and film director Ray Austin. Yet 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 'sell-out' international success. They became staples of the weekly music press for a long time, as they played and drank their way through this most fertile time for indie music.

But here to disprove that notion is Fingers Crossed, a frank and captivating read from Miki Berenyi, late of 90’s indie group Lush. Miki Berenyi was Lush's lead singer and frontwoman, sharing guitarist and songwriting duties with former schoolfriend (and music fanzine co-editor) Emma Anderson. But at the heart of the story are Miki’s internal 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; and the struggle to find a middle ground between ‘safe’ indie obscurity and ‘sell-out’ international success. The relationship between Berenyi and Anderson is the most interesting in the book, as the two women have somewhat different personalities which sometimes clash but also a unified interest in making the best and most interesting music possible, sometimes joining forces to overrule producers, managers and promo people who believe otherwise.

Talented and exuberant the band became hot property as they moved from pub gigs to Shoegaze icons and finally Britpop darlings. There is a feeling that, if Berenyi is going to the time and trouble of writing an autobiography, she feels that she must tell the truth at all costs. Fingers Crossed is her candid, often brutally hilarious memoir of the mid-level rock hustle in the shoegaze and Britpop scenes. One of the pictures from that period displays Berenyi, bruised and worn out, on a hospital bed after her desperate stage diving that followed an unpleasant incident with Pearl Jam.As ever, just because I fell into it didn’t mean that once faced with the job I didn’t give it absolutely everything I had! I can’t recommend Fingers Crossed highly enough, even if you’ve never heard of Miki Berenyi and have no interest in Lush. Beginning with the upheaval and trauma of a difficult childhood and her friendship / rivalry with bandmate Emma Anderson, with whom she formed Lush in the late Eighties, it tells the story of attempting to establish herself as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and is scattered with numerous engaging celeb anecdotes. Registered office address: Unit 34 Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EF.

Berenyi handles the emotional and practical complexities of all this dysfunction with a capable hand. Fingers Crossed is easily my favourite book of 2022 and my favourite autobiography since Bruce Campbell’s If Chins Could Kill (a very different book). Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success’ is the revealing autobiography of Miki Berenyi, former member of British shoegaze band Lush and currently Piroshka. The seedier side of Britpop proves an unedifying experience (although it's good to see various groups, like Pulp, come out of it very well), despite the avalanche of good music that comes alongside it.Photograph: Ed Sirrs/Camera Press View image in fullscreen Striking a chord … Miki Berenyi on stage with Lush in 1992.