Customer Reviews

To Be Someone

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an impressive debut from Louise Voss and will appeal to all those thirtysomethings who love music and who still remember well the agonies of growing up.

The novel is cleverly constructed, the characters are well drawn and there are some great jokes. This is a moving evocation of the struggles of coming of age and achieving self-acceptance; it contains many poignant moments that chime powerfully with this reader's own experiences. To Be Someone will get you humming along. Enjoy it; I did.

I have finished reading the book today, and it felt really good reading it!
I went through all kind of emotion's while reading it.I felt love, sorrow,pain,lost,hapinness,and it felt so good.

I love this book!I like music very much, and that was another link with the book.I love the way the author linked songs with the feelings of the main character Helena.

It's a beatifull story about the friendship between two girls and it has touched me .

I loved the last chapter, because it was so full of emotions,and for a while I couldn't stand not knowing how this all would end!
I like the end of the book.

I have just finished reading this book today,actually some hour a go.This book really inspired me!The friendship between Helene and Sam is really something special,and when Sam was in the hospital, I could actually feel her pain, as well as Helene's.

It's a great idea ,linking story with the music, beacuse we are all do have song's that reminds us on something.I like the last few pages the most,and it ends in the most beautifull way.

It's a great book ,very emotional and I think I will always remember it.

Wow, I was wondering if perhaps PW read a different book? Everything they mentioned as being bad I thought was GOOD. The characters were wonderfully drawn, the plot was clever and well-played out, and the flashbacks were the best parts of the story - not at ALL tiresome!
As a regular reader of "Brit-Chick-Lit", I say this goes far above a lot of other books I've read in that genre and I really really liked it. Can't wait to see what this author writes next. Bottom line: If you like Brit Fic or the 80's, this IS the book for you.

I picked this up because, I hoped, it would unite the things I love most: music and reading. I wasn't disappointed. Louise Voss writes wonderfully. The prose flows and keeps you wanting to turn the page, and she moves between the present and past fluidly. The music stuff is great fun (I loved the way she linked music and memory; using songs to create a soundtrack to someone's life) but at the heart of the book is the story of the friendship between two women. I confess - it made me blub. It also made me laugh, and dig out loads of records I haven't heard in years. A cool, entertaining, moving book. What more can you ask for?

I was very impressed with this debut novel. I really didn't want to read another "Bridget Jones" style book and this was NOTHING like that. It's truly a beautiful and very funny story about friendship and growing up in spite of yourself. I strongly recommend it.

To Be Somebody is a wonderful book. The story is at once funny and sharp witted as well as poignant. I was touched the most by the interior life of the main character as she sifts through her past, the memories accompanied by her all time favorite top ten music play list. The dialogue flows and the story carried me through a reading marathon. I read it over one weekend! I highly recommend this book and look forward to more work by Ms. Voss.

I saw that the title of this book was nabbed off the LP of my favorite Jam album, immediately became excited, and bought it. It started out with an interesting and very clever premise and plot (I loved the idea of writing memoirs with an accompanying soundtrack, and was impressed that Ms. Voss included Glenn Campbell alongside the Brit Pop and Big 80s). It was a pleasureful, quick read that kept me smiling in recognition of the pop culture snippets of teenagerhood "in the charts."

However, the characterization of the work felt rushed, and I found myself more interested in finding out what was behind the dialogue and motivation toward action rather than big corporate record company politics. If you liked "High Fidelity," you'll love this book.

I look forward to reading more of the author's work in the future.

This first endeaver by Louise Voss is enchanting. The idea of making a soundtrack for you life intrigued me. We meet Helena Nicholls, a British DJ with the coveted morning show, but her show is unlike others. She would play requests, but only after the person would tell the entire listening audience why the song was so important to them, how they were feeling when they heard it, what they were wearing and so on. The novel moves between the present and the past, so we get to relive Helena's life with her. Each chapter is titled with a song and it truly is the soundtrack of her life, which has hit rock bottom. She has a horrific accident which leaves her scarred and missing an eye. She is fired from her morning slot and offered a graveyard shift. As she begins to heal physically, Helena begins to form the Plan. She will write her autobiography, beginning with her childhood and end it with her first day back at the radio station, playing her soundtrack and then ending it all.

The author sucks you into Helena's world effortlessly and you really want to know what will happen to her. Helena starts with her upbringing in England, meeting her best friend, Sam, who has a tragic end, to moving to the States and joining a rock band.

It really is nicely done and I will be watching this author to see what else she does.

Thanks for reading!
~pandora

Helena Nicholls was once a successful and well known rock star. Now in her early thirties, her star has faded a bit since her glory days and she's working as a morning DJ in London and creating quite a buzz with her all-request format highlighting important glimpses into her listeners lives. While Helena's working life seems to be in order her emotional life is quite another story. After meeting up with a former band member at an awards ceremony Helena is coerced into temporarily mending her woes with a dose of cocaine. This poor choice leads to a horrifyingly stupid and very public accident that leaves her badly disfigured and makes all the tabloids. Her weaselly boss visits her hospital bed with news that he intends to give her plenty of time to heal and that she can come back to work doing the graveyard shift (what a guy, eh?). She's furious and terribly depressed and comes up with "The Plan". "The Plan" will be her ultimate goodbye to the world in which she'll write up a request list of her own. Each song she plays during her final show will remind her of a special memory from her past which she'll share with her listeners.

This book tackles some weighty subjects; serious illness, imperfect selfish parents and suicidal thoughts but it is also just witty enough to keep one from feeling thoroughly depressed. 30ish Helena is a broken, jaded, lonely and emotionally drained young woman who, being on the road for a good chunk of her life, never took the time to form close friendships outside of her male bandmates and her childhood friend Sam. As she's recovering from her accident she meets Toby, a cute guy with a young daughter and a comatose wife. Toby and Helena make an immediate connection, becoming fast friends and nearly falling in love (all while Toby's wife lies helpless just a few doors away). If this were the only version of Helena I'd have put the book away in disgust.

Fortunately, Helena's life is doled out chapter by chapter (alternating between current day and the past) and we get to know her intimately. We watch her suffer all of life's little and much larger hurts as she stumbles through life. Helena is easy to relate to as a chubby heartbroken youngster pulled ruthlessly away from her best friend Sam when her parents relocate from London to America. Her awkwardness and desire to fit in are realistically described and are often painfully funny. Eventually Helena finds her own niche in the world as she discovers her passion, bass guitar, and meets up with and becomes bandmates with Justin (an unlikely match since he's the school hunk and she's still chubby and thought of as a bit odd). The two begin a band called "Blue Idea" and become incredibly famous but Helena's life is filled with an impending sense of doom when Sam becomes ill. The band eventually breaks up and when Helena doesn't quite know what to do with herself and wallows in complete self-despair it is easy to sympathize with her pain and feelings of hopelessness.

Helena's playlist for the "The Plan" highlights the most important points in her life and once I started I found it extremely difficult to put the book down. "To Be Someone" is often painful to read (I dare you to get through this without wetting a few tissues) but it's very real and filled with life, emotion and humor. I'm nearly as jaded as Helena (but not nearly as famous!) and very few books move me to tears or laughter these days but this book involved me emotionally from beginning to end and I'm very glad I took the time to read it.