Tracey Thorn’s “Another Planet” blends teenage diaries, historical sources, and contemporary musings to make sense of her youth in the London suburb of Potters Bar. She describes discovering boys and music, and makes interesting observations about the things that we reveal to others and conceal even from ourselves. The strangeness of suburbia, both isolated from the city yet entirely dependent upon it, is at the heart of this memoir.
As a long-time fan of Everything But the Girl, I found it interesting to see what music she was consuming in the years leading up to those great albums of the ’80s and ’90s. There were equal parts disco and punk noted in her diaries, a fascination with the top pop hits as well as interest in the edgy and underground.