Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray
Portobello Books, £12.99
Tiffany Murray was brought up at Rockfield Studios, a little slice of rock’n’roll glamour on what used to be a farm in rural Monmouthshire, where her father was a record producer and her mother was the in-house chef. It was there, on the border between England and Wales, that Dave Edmunds recorded I Hear You Knocking – the studios’ first number 1 hit – and a pile of stones in the paddock inspired Noel Gallagher to write Wonderwall.
Murray, whose first novel, Happy Accidents, was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, is now a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Glamorgan. This, her second novel, is set at Rockfarm, a residential recording studio on the border between England and Wales where they pray each night to the ghosts of Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson.
The author’s alter ego, the narrator of this novel, travels under the unlikely name of Diamond Star Halo because her mum – the in-house chef at Rockfarm where her dad is a record producer – was a big fan of Marc Bolan whose classic teenage anthem Get It On goes: “You’re built like a car, you’ve got a hub cap diamond star halo / You’re built like a car, oh yeah / You’re an untamed youth, that’s the truth, with your cloak full of eagles / You’re dirty sweet and you’re my girl.”
The book – arranged in four parts and set in 1977, 1988, 1996 and 2006 – is partly about growing up, partly about the dynamics of (a dysfunctional) family life, partly about rural communities (with a nod in the direction of Cold Comfort Farm) and partly about rock’n’roll, with savvy namechecks for everyone from Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell and Patsy Cline to Patti Smith, Iggy Pop and the Velvet Underground via Bolan, Bowie, the Osmonds (there are Crazy Horses on Rockfarm) and Black Sabbath (ditto War Pigs).
Some of the stories are so outrageous they could only be true – a wild pony wanders into the studio and eats the reel-to-reel tape – and, although some of the dialogue could have been tighter, it is written with wit and verve. It’s not afraid to tackle the darkness on the edge of town – one singer dies with a needle in her arm and Halo’s mum succumbs slowly to cancer – but it mostly fizzes with a trashy energy of which that glam rock god Ziggy Stardust would have been proud.
Keith Richmond
About The Author
