Richard: A Novel

A captivating, hauntingly sad story of music, madness, and the Manic Street Preachers, this is a dazzlingly written fictionalized account of the lead singer's tortured lifeRichard has everything to live for, but it doesn't feel that way to him—not as long as he has a voice in his head telling him he'd be better off dead. The one thing that might save him is that he's in an increasingly successful band; but the demons that nag him won't be persuaded. In February 1995, Richey Edwards checked out of a London hotel instead of flying to the U. S. with the rest of the Manic Street Preachers. There were a few subsequent sightings but then nothing. His body was never found, and he was declared legally dead in November 2008. Now Richard tells the story of his life—and disappearance—as he might have told it; set in the 1980s and 1990s, it's a compelling, tragic account of one man's battle with his own worst enemy—himself.