Rock Spot: To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine
By WTJU Rock
Book Reviewed by Annie De Blanco
To Throw Away Unopened is a memoir by Viv Albertine, a former punk rocker with The Slits who is now in her early sixties. The central figure is her mother, and the book covers the days leading up to her mum’s death, with long flashbacks to growing up, and the lives her mother and grandmother led.
Being of the same generation as Albertine, a lot of her observations are familiar to me. Life wasn’t simple by any means, but it was simpler than today. There were fewer choices. Just three television channels; you liked the Beatles or the Stones, (although at my school it was Donny Osmond or David Cassidy) and sometimes there was no choice, cornflakes for breakfast. Bread and jam for tea.
But this book is less of a remembrance and more of an examination of feminism, child raising, secrets and lies and the lessons taught by and learned from the women who came before us. All supported by the most amazing quotes that lead each section. I shall throw in a few of them along the way. It is also a very funny book.
Feminism is fueled partly by anger from the treatment of our mothers and grandmothers. My grandmother had to stop working the day she got married. My mum was able to work. She was a teacher for the choices for most women of her generation were teaching, nursing or secretarial.
Albertine’s mother’s feminism was fueled by anger at her husband. They divorced when Albertine was 12 and from then on her mother always pointed out when women were placed second to men, whether on the telly, in advertising, anywhere. Albertine was raised to be angry and there are some rather funny moments in the book when she expresses her anger. It usually involves alcohol leaving receptacles at high speed towards unsuspecting (but deserving) targets.
“Bad girls aren’t villains; they’re transgressive forces within patriarchal cultures. Made to choose between wreaking destruction and accepting their own powerlessness, they pick destruction.” Judy Berman.
Other things that really made me sit and think:
Her mother placed value on ‘effort and trying’ rather than success or failure and always encouraged Albertine in her endeavors, even when she became a punk rocker. Effort and trying. Throughout her school days these were the qualities for which she received praise.
Another childhood memory, after her parents’ divorce, her mother asks 12 year old Albertine and her younger sister if they want to stay in their nice house and get a lodger or move to a council house and be by themselves. Albertine muses, ‘there is a fine line between including your children in big decisions and burdening them so that they go through life thinking they messed up the family fortunes.’
To Throw Away Unopened were the instructions written on a package Albertine found in her mother’s house. Obviously that was not going to happen. In the package were the diaries her mother and father wrote to be used as evidence of ‘good parenting’ in the custody proceedings of their divorce. The secrets and lies part of the book. How truthful could diaries be when written with such a goal in mind?
“You shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd.” Flanery O’Connor.
Reviews of this book praise Albertine for her honesty and one part that had me laughing out loud was her description of her own hairiness. The Hair. She has a lot of body hair from head to toe, and she described a dream where she was walking down the street and all her dream-exaggerated body hair was coming out of the bottom of her jeans and dragging along behind her. A funny image. But.
In our society women are brain-washed, hair-washed into where we can and cannot have hair. I often ponder my own faint moustache, wishing it would disappear, (although on certain days I think it rather suits me) which makes Albertine’s honesty and openness about The Hair quite comforting.
After all these musings and stories of her life, raising a child, having cancer within months of giving birth, writing a book, the Hair, her mum’s final days bring her and her sister together at the bedside. And there, at that bedside of a dying mother, she and her sister get into an almighty fight that will take your breath away.
I give away some books after reading them. This is one I keep because it is fun to dip into every now and then. There is always something new, often a hilarious comment or incident. But the honest, reality of this mostly ordinary life is something that makes me think that no lives are really that ordinary. I think I will continue to dip for some time to come.
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