Anna Doble

A 1990s coming of age story of how music rewired a young girl's life.

It is 1994. In a loft bedroom in North Yorkshire, fifteen-year-old Anna sits on a bedroom carpet immersed in the pages of Smash Hits, listening to cassette tapes that she keeps in a shoebox. She is dreaming of living inside the songs. The very same year, British music is about to be transformed and w ill leap from pop to rave to Britpop. This new universe w ill change Anna's life. Connection is a Song is a journey through the sounds of the 1990s; the story of a life-defining love of music and the tracks that shaped this girl's journey through the decade. It travels from the impossibly mournful 'Nothing Compares 2 U' by Sinead O'Connor to the delirium of the KLF's '3 a.m. Eternal' via the cartoon sw agger of EMF's 'Unbelievable', Madonna's terrifyingly sexy 'Vogue' and the guitar indie heart of the '90s w here Elastica's 'Connection' beats Blur and Oasis in Anna's ow n Battle of Britpop. This is a pow erful, universal coming of age story - and also a coming out story - about grow ing up in an English provincial tow n, w ith its suspiciously sticky nightclub floors, the lingering smell of Impulse deodorant, kisses that taste of cider and songs that give Anna feelings that she has never felt before. It is the tale of an outsider w ho, through connections made at gigs, mysterious black feathers and conversations in smoke-filled cars, finds the people and the places that w ill take her to her life.