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

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From the bohemian lifestyle of her Hungarian father’s social circle to the privileged glamour of her Japanese mother’s acting career, Miki’s young life was a blur of international travel, celebrities and peripatetic schooling. The things that I review are chosen by me and as such, are more often than not, things that I’m attracted to in the first place.Soon it would be time for her to fulfil her main purpose, which was to act as bait for an “appropriately attractive woman”. Miki doesn’t trash Lush; she looks back on it with with happiness and pride, but is keen to point out that it wasn’t always the glorious experience that some might think it was. Once the story moves into the 1980s and teenage Berenyi and new-found friend Anderson become music fans, things really kick off: a chance encounter with one of the Thompson Twins sees them being introduced to the world of record production and then starting their own music fanzine, Alphabet Soup.

Miki also explores her complicated relationship with Emma – one that has fluctuated between camaraderie and rivalry over the years – and addresses the devastating tragedy that led to the band's split. Formed in 1988, Lush were part of the London gig scene during one of the most vibrant and creative periods in UK music.Neuware - 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. After the band lands on the solid soil of the 4AD label in 1989, the four find themselves confronted by the challenging forces of the music business. 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. We have a regular newsletter with the week’s new releases that goes out every Thursday or Friday too. Bad stuff happens to everyone and it’s how you get through the crap that I find important – and interesting.

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. Re-living the tours, recording sessions and music-industry madness they experienced along the way, this uncompromising memoir documents Lush's thrilling rise and untimely fall. Frequent relocation, parental neglect and the dark presence of her abusive Nazi grandmother resulted in crippling shyness, mental health problems and a vulnerability to exploitation.It's also an at-times bruising, personal story of abuse and neglect, with periods of over-drink With a lack of proper care from the former and some distant care from the latter (Yasuko moved to the US together with her second husband Ray Austin), Miki has to avoid the company of abusive grandmother Nora and learns how to be a good friend even when the receiving part does not appreciate it. While the band, who toured the world and enjoyed a handful of Top 40 singles in the 1980s and 90s, had their dissolute moments, they had nothing on Berenyi’s family life, which was characterised by extreme chaos and dysfunction.