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A review of And I Don't Want To Live This Life

by Deborah Spungen

The life story of Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious, written by her mother.

Reviewed by: Michelle Miller Detwiler
About Michelle Miller Detwiler

And I Don't Want To Live This Life Before Courtney Love and before Riot Grrrls, there was Nancy Spungen. Spungen, who enjoyed a fair amount of fame post-mortem as the murdered girlfriend of Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious (enough so that a movie, starring Gary Oldman - "Sid and Nancy" - was made in 1987 detailing their doomed affair), is the subject of the book, "And I Don't Want To Live This Life," written by her mother, Deborah Spungen.

In "And I Don't Want To Live This Life," Spungen tells the horrifying tale of a violent child who, because of the ravishes of mental illness, grew into a monster obsessed with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Nancy's life started in turmoil at birth, and continued to wreak havoc on her parents and siblings. At a year old, she would cry for hours on end, and despite many trips to numerous doctors, nobody was able to calm the girl. From her third month of life, she was given drugs to numb the pain she felt in her troubled mind, and the heroin that inevitably led to her death, as well as the many drugs she experimented with throughout her young life, were no doubt the only avenues she could use to dull her pain.

Nancy's tragic murder (allegedly at the hands of Vicious, who died of a heroin overdose a few months after Nancy's death) was hailed by some as the death of just another groupie heroin addict. But the press and the naysayers failed to take into consideration the fact that Nancy was somebody's daughter and sister. With this book, Spungen attempts to exonerate Nancy from her devil-woman image, as well as express the frustration of raising a child who is out of control.

I love this book because at the time I first read it, I was obsessed with punk rock. I also found myself identifying with Nancy; her frustration with life and her outrageous attempts to make everything better. As a grown woman, I love this book because of her mother's honesty. Deborah Spungen wrote a book not only about coping with a mentally ill, uncontrollable child that she alternately loved and despised, but also about surviving, as well as how one child's actions can damage an entire family - and nearly did.

The book is honest, candid and hard to put down. I would recommend it to any parent with an uncontrollable child, fans of punk rock music, and even young women who have found their lives spiraling out of control.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: And I Don't Want To Live This Life

Copyright © by Michelle Miller Detwiler, 2002

Reviewed by Michelle Miller Detwiler:
-- And I Don't Want To Live This Life - by Deborah Spungen
-- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - by Dave Eggers
-- England's Dreaming - by Jon Savage
-- I'm With the Band - by Pamela Des Barres
-- Our Band Could Be Your Life - by Michael Azerrad
-- Maus: A Survivor's Tale - by Art Spiegelman
-- Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - by Lester Bangs
-- Healing Digestive Disorders - by Andrew Gaeddert
-- U2 At the End of the World - by Bill Flanagan









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