Strangeland

Reviews / Votes

Her writings are painfully honest . . . Strangeland is more than Tracey's diary, just as her bed and her tent and her blankets are more than private displays that happen to have attracted a lot of attention * The Times * While her best-known art has shown Emin at her most confrontational, in her writing we meet a calmer, more sensitive soul. * Observer * A fantastically engaging storyteller . . . heartbreaking . . . effortlessly funny * Metro * As spare and poignant as one of Emin's line drawings * Marie Claire * Eccentrically readable * Glamour * Frequently affecting . . . read Emin for intriguing, almost incantatory sections on her travels to Turkey, the occasional shaft of two-fingers-up-at-the-world wit and the delight of seeing someone revel in vicious vengefulness * Daily Telegraph * Reveals a funny, sensitive and brave woman, challenging conventions * Grazia * Emin talks with brutal frankness . . . genuinely uplifting * Scotsman * An extraordinary piece of writing . . . Brace yourself. Let's say this is a memoir (and most of the time, it is, although her relationship to the truth is variable: incidents described here have been contradicted by her elsewhere); it couldn't be filmed. The director and half the cast would be arrested . . . she has played the hand she has been dealt as skilfully and tenaciously as anyone could have, while still retaining a belief in beauty. And Strangeland comes over as honest and extraordinary * Guardian * Written with a furious energy * Guardian * A raw and uncompromising read . . . but it is also a tale of hope and inspiration . . . her writings, a combination of memoirs and confessions, are deeply intimate, yet powerfully engaging. Tracey retains a profoundly romantic world view, paired with an uncompromising honesty. Her capacity both to create controversies and to strike chords is unequalled in British life. A remarkable book - and an original, beautiful mind * Evening Standard * A very readable book, and a surprising one too * Independent on Sunday * [An] odd and powerful memoir -- Marina Warner * London Review of Books * A combination of memoir and confession and gives an insight into the mind of one of contemporary art's most intriguing figures * Evening Standard * Beautiful . . . as vivid a piece of writing about a childhood as you could hope to read - unguarded, open-hearted, shocking -- Chris Harvey * Daily Telegraph * Strangeland is a surprisingly lyrical and tightly written account of its author's journey so far * Australian Vogue * Poignant and sensitive * Stylist * Emin writes with fierce clarity * Times Literary Supplement * An extremely well-written and readable book * Glasgow Herald * Strangeland should not . . . be approached as a memoir unless a memoir can be understood to be a Tracey Emin artwork. She is no fake -- Rachel Cusk * Sunday Telegraph * Magical * Sunday Times *