A review by stanro
Nina Simone's Gum by Warren Ellis

mysterious medium-paced

3.75

This is called a memoir of things lost and found. My edition being audio, I am directed to the publisher’s website to access material contained within the printed book and on an accompanying CD. So with the link and a Spotify account at my disposal, I looked at images and played music as it was mentioned. And late in the book music plays - no words, just ethereal, sounscape music composed by Ellis. I liked that experience. 

A quick comment on audio quality. Nick Cave’s introduction had a surprising amount of background hiss, as did a few other pieces by other narrators. 

As for the book itself … Do I care enough about Warren Ellis to read this? Time will tell and it is not a long book. 

I’m well into it now and I think I have reached the point in its telling where Ellis goes deeply beyond the things into how those things connect him to his past - people who mattered to him, new knowledge gained, emotions  unexpectedly experienced. 

But Ellis goes further. He attributes to Nina Simone’s gum a power to bring creativity from him, to bring it in others when in its presence. He is a strange man, investing deep meaning to his various objects and writing about it for us. 

And then it is even more, for it becomes about recognising a life’s significant turning points - for Ellis it is his life of music. 

And in my own way I understand what he is sharing with us, for I have my own stuff that does the same for me. Don’t we all?