Laurie Moss seemed to come out of nowhere, but behind those songs, behind that powerful voice, lies a history.
Say Goodbye takes you from her Texas roots to her first recording contract, from her struggling days in LA to her final tour – and beyond. It's also the story of her relationship with the legendary singer and songwriter Skip Shaw, whose passion for self-destruction illuminated her career like a bonfire.
The battlefield for Say Goodbye may be the music industry, but its themes are universal: success and failure, love and loss, obsession and forgiveness.
Head of Zeus * Fiction
01 Aug 2019 * 245pp * £6.99 * 9781789541243
REVIEWS
This uncanny novel purports to chronicle the rise to almost-stardom of a singer-songwriter named Laurie Moss... The details are note-perfect: the wounded titles of her songs; the ancient musky odor of the garage where her band plays together for the first time; the tender admissions of the narrator, a rock critic who is 'at least two-thirds in love' with his subject. The completeness of the world Shiner creates brings Laurie to life, and lends a sense of fatedness to her panicked walk toward fame'
New Yorker
'Say Goodbye is a dream of a book, perfectly imagined, perfectly imparted'
Karen Joy Fowler
'Honest, unpretentious and heartfelt, this novel remains a haunting refrain'
Publishers Weekly
'Shiner has written a fine novel about rock 'n' roll by believing more in musicians' human nature than in their mythologies'
New York Times Book Review
'Lewis Shiner has written the Citizen Kane of rock and roll novels, a human and moving piece of work'
George P Pelecanos
Author
Born in Texas, Lewis Shiner is a musician, rock music journalist and award-winning author, writing across genres. He has published six short stories collections and eight novels, including Glimpses, winner of the World Fantasy Best Novel Award.
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