The Train in the Night

The Train in the Night

A Story of Music and Loss

Summary

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2012 WELLCOME TRUST BOOK PRIZE

How do you lose music? Then having lost it, what do you do next? Nick Coleman found out the morning he woke up to a world changed forever by Sudden Neursosensory Hearing Loss.

The Train in the Night is an account of one man's struggle to recover from the loss of his greatest passion - and go one further than that: to restore his ability not only to hear but to think about and feel music, by going back to the series of big bangs which kicked off his musical universe.

The result a memoir not quite like any other. It is about growing up, about taste and love and suffering and delusion and longing to be Keith Richards. It is funny, heartbreaking and, above all, true.

Reviews

  • This is a book for anyone who grew up with pop music, listens to it still and has spent too much time thinking about it and talking about it. But it’s also a book about love and loss and middle age and looming mortality, written with grace and the driest imaginable humour. I’m not sure I can recommend it highly enough
    Spectator

About the author

Nick Coleman

Following a brief spell as a stringer at NME in the mid-1980s, Nick Coleman was Music Editor of Time Out for seven years, then Arts and Features Editor at the Independent and the Independent on Sunday. He has also written on music for The Times, Guardian, Telegraph, New Statesman, Intelligent Life, GQ and The Wire. He is the author of The Train in the Night, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Book Prize.
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