Thanks to HarperVia and NetGalley for this ARC of Stuart Murdoch's 'Nobody's Empire.'

This story of a young Scottish man trying to cope with the monumental changes a diagnosis of ME made on his life in 1990s Glasgow seems very definitely autobiographical. It feels like Murdoch is simply writing what happened but changing the names to protect the innocent and the guilty - it could have been culled directly from a diary, if the author was keeping one at the time..

It's very enjoyably told - honest and wry and with a very light touch about a very debilitating mental and physical condition. It felt very real - not just his description of his illness but the description of the places and times he lives in and through.

Stephen (Murdoch) finds himself emerging from a near forced stay in a psychiatric unit in Glasgow and trying to chart a life for himself while leaving behind most things about his past - apart from the music itself - and living at half speed while the world around him continues apace. It's a story about coping, hiding, and living with a condition that - even now - isn't universally acknowledged as being real and the sense of community that's established among fellow sufferers in Glasgow and farther afield. Maybe unusually, for a rock-and-roll tale, there's a strong element of the author developing a belief in god, religion, and spirituality as part of this efforts at survival and recovery.

In a counterintuitive move, Stephen and his flatmate Richard cash everything in to fund a three month trip to California in order to escape the Scottish winter blues and - ostensibly - seek fellow ME-sufferers in the US where there might be more advanced treatments. While there he continues to develop his songwriting and guitar playing and his confidence in his ability grows and allows him to make strong and instant connections with a variety of characters.

I feel like there could've been a stronger editorial hand, at times. The music was important to him and was important to the story but it felt like I didn't need to know every in-and-out of the various bands and scene at the time and it wouldn't have harmed the narrative and our understanding of his life and passions had we not had all of that.

That aside, Nobody's Empire is a lovely meandering account of a period in the author's life that he's probably now able to look back on with some affection but which, at the time, was obviously a physically, psychologically, and emotionally traumatic period.