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A review by kevin_shepherd
And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder by Deborah Spungen
4.0
Nancy Spungen was the American girlfriend of Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols’ “guitarist” and “vocalist.” She was murdered in 1978 in a hotel bathroom in New York City. Sid was charged with the crime but he himself died of a drug overdose before his case was ever tried.
As near as I can tell, no one, outside of her family and Sid, liked Nancy. She was widely known as “Nauseating Nancy,” a moniker that no doubt broke the heart of her mother Deborah Spungen. Deborah eventually wrote this book, years after her daughter’s murder, to help set the record straight and to show the world the side of Nancy that no one else knew.
Nancy was Jewish, grew up in Philadelphia, and at 15 was diagnosed with schizophrenia. After being booted out of college, she wound up in London just as the punk rock scene was really taking off. It’s not clear if she was a prostitute or a groupie (or both). At some point she became involved with Sid Vicious. What followed was a lot of drug abuse and domestic violence and antisocial behavior, ending in 1978 when Nancy took a knife to the stomach.
I read this when I was in my twenties and thirty years later I can still remember feeling incredibly sorry for Nancy’s mother. Is there any pain greater than losing a child? And then having to see that child demeaned, degraded and ridiculed in the forum of public opinion? This is Deborah sharing a very private part of herself so that we can all see who her daughter really was, the Nancy she knew before mental illness marshaled her into a world of violence and drugs and public disdain.
As near as I can tell, no one, outside of her family and Sid, liked Nancy. She was widely known as “Nauseating Nancy,” a moniker that no doubt broke the heart of her mother Deborah Spungen. Deborah eventually wrote this book, years after her daughter’s murder, to help set the record straight and to show the world the side of Nancy that no one else knew.
Nancy was Jewish, grew up in Philadelphia, and at 15 was diagnosed with schizophrenia. After being booted out of college, she wound up in London just as the punk rock scene was really taking off. It’s not clear if she was a prostitute or a groupie (or both). At some point she became involved with Sid Vicious. What followed was a lot of drug abuse and domestic violence and antisocial behavior, ending in 1978 when Nancy took a knife to the stomach.
I read this when I was in my twenties and thirty years later I can still remember feeling incredibly sorry for Nancy’s mother. Is there any pain greater than losing a child? And then having to see that child demeaned, degraded and ridiculed in the forum of public opinion? This is Deborah sharing a very private part of herself so that we can all see who her daughter really was, the Nancy she knew before mental illness marshaled her into a world of violence and drugs and public disdain.