Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen was the boss of the Irish Best Sellers list last fortnight with his Born To Run memoir keeping Paula Hawkins’ Girl On The Train and Ross O’Carroll-Kelly’s Game Of Throw-Ins off the top spot with a whopping 3,825 copies sold.

The 504-page tome also debuted at number one in the US, UK and 14 other countries, which is good news for publishers Simon & Schuster who stumped up $10 million in advance, blowing the $7.3m that Little, Brown paid Keith Richards for 2013’s Life out of the water.

From his Catholic upbringing and Asbury Park musical stirrings to conquering the States and meeting Patti, all bases are covered by Springsteen who turns out to be as complete a writer as he is a rock ‘n’ roll star.

Some of the most moving passages are when Bruce talks about the mental health issues he’s had since childhood, and which came to a head shortly after the release of 1982’s perhaps not coincidentally bleak and introspective Nebraska.

“My well of emotion is no longer being channeled and safely pipelined to the surface,” he writes of those dark days. “My depression is spewing like an oil spill all over the turquoise-green gulf of my carefully planned and controlled existence. Its black sludge is threatening to smother every last living part of me.” How he goes on to work through his demons with Dr. Wayne Myers, “an avuncular, soft-spoken man with an easy smile”, is an inspirational tale impeccably told.