Inner Music in fiction

Giving up the Ghost

At the start of her memoir, Giving up the Ghost (2003), Hilary Mantel describes how inner music features at the early stage of a migraine.

“It may be that a tune will lodge in my head like a tic and bring the words tripping in with it, so I am forced to live my life by its accompaniment. It’s a familiar complaint, to have a tune you can’t get out of your head. But for most people the tunes aren’t the prelude to a day of hearty vomiting. Besides, people say they pick them up from the radio, but mine are songs people don’t really sing these days…” (p. 3)