The Smiths
A Novella
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I am sure that what I remember is not necessarily what actually happened, but I can only write what I remember.
Wildly inventive and magnificently surreal, The Smiths: A Novella recounts the impact of an unconventional pop group from Manchester on one man's life. Taking the form of a flâneuring journey through the landscape of memory, our anonymous protagonist is accompanied by the iconic French actress Carole Bouquet, who becomes his guide and interlocutor, asking about his life during the years The Smiths were together and the profound effect of their music upon him.
As the unlikely couple perambulate from the old Selfridge Hotel to West Hollywood by way of a park bench in Cavendish Square, their conversation interrogates and celebrates the joys of outlandish pop genius, the zealous dedication of fans and the cult of outsider disaffection given uproarious voice. As such, this is not a book about The Smiths but one that emerges from their music, their emotional register and their literary resonance.
Michael Bracewell's novella-cum-fairy tale is at once deeply romantic and laced with comedy - not unlike the band themselves - and perhaps (in fictional form) the most astute and celebratory portrait of The Smiths to date.
Wildly inventive and magnificently surreal, The Smiths: A Novella recounts the impact of an unconventional pop group from Manchester on one man's life. Taking the form of a flâneuring journey through the landscape of memory, our anonymous protagonist is accompanied by the iconic French actress Carole Bouquet, who becomes his guide and interlocutor, asking about his life during the years The Smiths were together and the profound effect of their music upon him.
As the unlikely couple perambulate from the old Selfridge Hotel to West Hollywood by way of a park bench in Cavendish Square, their conversation interrogates and celebrates the joys of outlandish pop genius, the zealous dedication of fans and the cult of outsider disaffection given uproarious voice. As such, this is not a book about The Smiths but one that emerges from their music, their emotional register and their literary resonance.
Michael Bracewell's novella-cum-fairy tale is at once deeply romantic and laced with comedy - not unlike the band themselves - and perhaps (in fictional form) the most astute and celebratory portrait of The Smiths to date.
- Published: Jun 11 2026
- Pages: 128
- 200 x 130mm
- ISBN: 9781399638609
Press Reviews
- Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys
The Smiths is so evocative of the intense and self-defining power of pop: when a listener can feel their emotions uncannily expressed by an artist
- Gwendoline Riley
Bracewell is a writer unlike any other. His prose is astute and bewitching. The Smiths is a waking dream
- Lias Saoudi
As seductive and inscrutably anthemic as its subject matter; like discovering The Smiths for the very first time, twice
- Brett Anderson
Bracewell is so brilliant with oblique detail and his reflections on a dank, forgotten London chime perfectly with the band that he is so lovingly remembering. Again and again I found myself reaching for my notebook for phrases to steal
- Philip Hoare
In an onrush of exquisite observation and sensual recall that is almost pornographic in its intensity, The Smiths is an act of baroque transmission from another time and another place, reported in transcendent prose that goes beyond the limits of what fiction can do. Like the band it celebrates, it is an active, ongoing performance, couched in comic pathos, careering and glorious, to be experienced in one breath. Blink and you'll miss it. Read it and you may wonder what it was all about. You won't know unless you do
- Andres Lokko
I love his language, his almost laughably high pretensions and how he possesses an enviable talent for writing cultural criticism so poetic that it is impossible to decide whether it should be published in regular review form or immortalised between the hard covers of a poetry collection
- Irish Times
A surrealist sortie into a man's love of music, French New Wave film and the city of Manchester . . . A haunting, in-depth exploration of lyrics and music, it's a must for Smiths fans. But it will also resonate with music lovers who lived through those bittersweet years . . . Beautifully written
Paul Genders
Literary ReviewAn imaginative essay, or an experiment in memoir . . . [Its] daydreamy 'imagined' excursions have the quality of a medieval vision . . . Elegant and persuasive