The Hare Krishna Years
Paperback
Ships in 2 to 5 working days. Delivery quoted from your address at checkout.
Read the opening free
5,387 words · no email, no account
No. 168 · Music · Rock
The Camden Flat
a biography of Amy Jade Winehouse
What the book is
July 23, 2011, the third-floor flat at 30 Camden Square in north London. Amy Jade Winehouse, twenty-seven, is found dead in her bed by her bodyguard Andrew Morris at 3:54 p.m. The coroner's inquest will rule the cause of death alcohol poisoning — a blood-alcohol level of 416 mg per 100 ml, more than five times the British legal driving limit. She has joined the 27 Club: Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain.
Donovan Hadley's biography opens earlier — in Southgate, north London, where Amy was born in 1983 to a Jewish-cab-driver father named Mitch and a pharmacist mother named Janis — and follows the arc through the Sylvia Young Theatre School expulsion, the Sylvia Young replacement Brit School years, the 2003 Frank debut album, the long Blake Fielder-Civil relationship and the 2007 marriage, the Back to Black of October 2006 and the long crack-and-heroin years of 2008-2009, the Rehab Grammys of February 2008, the Belgrade concert collapse of June 18, 2011 that the family had treated as a turning-point, and the morning of July 23.
What emerges is a portrait of the British soul singer whose two albums remade the early-2000s pop sound and whose body the press apparatus had been writing about for the last five years of her life.
At a glance
- Subject
- Amy Jade Winehouse
- Shelf
- Music · Rock
- Written by
- Donovan Hadley
- Chapters
- 20 across 190 pages
- Narrated by
- Desmond Vale
- Editions
- Paperback · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
- Content notes
- substance use · fatal alcohol poisoning · eating disorder
Contents · 20 chapters
- 01The Jazz Singer's GranddaughterRead free
- 02The Sylvia Young Years3,879 words
- 03Frank3,240 words
- 04Blake2,606 words
- 05Back to Black3,338 words
- 06"Rehab"2,421 words
- 07The Paparazzi2,715 words
- 08Heroin2,822 words
- 09The Grammys2,643 words
- 10The Marriage2,514 words
- 11St Lucia2,370 words
- 12Reg Traviss2,014 words
- 13The Priory2,317 words
- 14Belgrade2,337 words
- 15Camden Square3,221 words
- 16July 232,739 words
- 17The Aftermath2,755 words
- 18Lioness2,355 words
- 19Lioness Reborn2,626 words
- 20The Voice2,439 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 190 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90623-133-8 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Desmond Vale
ISBN 979-8-90623-237-3
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is The Camden Flat about?
Amy Jade Winehouse. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Camden Flat — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 5,387 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 59,000 words, 20 chapters, 190 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
06Does this book carry content warnings?
Yes: substance use; fatal alcohol poisoning; eating disorder. They are listed before you buy rather than discovered afterwards. The material is handled as evidence, not as spectacle.
The writer
This book deals with
- substance use
- fatal alcohol poisoning
- eating disorder
Listed before you buy, not after.
