Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

List of the Lost by Morrissey

by
December 2015, no. 377

List of the Lost by Morrissey

Penguin, $19.99 pb, 128 pp, 9780141982960

List of the Lost by Morrissey

by
December 2015, no. 377

Like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, Morrissey is among the relatively few figures in popular music deemed worthy of serious academic attention. Scholarly theses on Morrissey are common, dissecting the poetic cadence and social relevance of his remarkable song lyrics, from The Smiths' self-titled début album of 1984 to more recent solo albums. It is not surprising, therefore, that such a 'literary' musician, who bears the strong influence of Oscar Wilde in both his image and his lyrics, would have ambitions towards a novel – especially in the wake of his moderately well-received and decidedly florid Autobiography (2013), which he notoriously insisted be published as a Penguin Classic.

It is unfortunate and perhaps surprising, however, that he has produced something as preposterous as List of the Lost. Here is a novel (or novella) blighted by a disorienting, juvenile, and over-confident stream-of-consciousness style, combined with an inexplicable series of reckless personal rants covering the full spectrum of Morrissey's social causes, indelicately shoehorned between often cursory developments in a flimsy plot. The result is, paradoxically, both dizzying and boring.

Barnaby Smith reviews 'List of the Lost' by Morrissey

List of the Lost

by Morrissey

Penguin, $19.99 pb, 128 pp, 9780141982960

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.