Nick Hamlyn

Music For A Desert Island Nick Hamlyn

Harrison Ashby is a music fan. 'Obsessed' is how his wife Carole would have described him. Born at the start of the nineteen fifties, Harry finds his teenage years underscored by the music of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. He also finds his life unexpectedly entwined with that of a successful folk singer by the name of Jed Brandt. As though he were a guest on the long-running BBC radio show, Desert Island Discs, Harry chooses eight pieces of music that seem to represent different areas of his life particularly well and describes how this works for him, as he tells the story of his life. It is an account that is part love story, part teen memoir and coming of age narrative, and part musical discussion. It will interest anyone else who loves music, whether or not they are as overwhelmed by it as much as Harry is, and anyone who remembers the sixties and seventies as he does, or who is drawn to finding out what those decades might have been like for a music fan. In addition, Music For A Desert Island is probably the only novel to include a discography at the end.