Viv Albertine announced herself as a writer with Clothes, Music, Boys, her hit memoir about life in the punk band The Slits. Now she probes deeper into her background in To Throw Away Unopened, part radical reinvention of the memoir form; part feminist manifesto; part domestic noir; part polemic on motherhood.

In conversation with Erica Wagner, she discusses the book, which explores the role of family conflicts in propelling her towards the uncompromising world of punk, and her relationship with her mother, who died shortly after the publication of Clothes, Music, Boys.