When I first saw the film Blinded By The Light, about a young British Asian man and his fandom for Bruce Springsteen, I thought it was a nice and entertaining story with a positive message. As the credits rolled though I spotted that it was based on a book, and that turned out to be the true story of Sarfraz Manzoor called, rather brilliantly, Greetings From Bury Park: Race, Religion, Rock ‘n’ Roll.

While the basic elements of Blinded By The Light remain, Manzoor’s book doesn’t just go deeper but tackles many issues in a far more serious way, but throughout relating it all back to his own relationship with the music of ‘The Boss’.

Told in a non-linear way each chapter, named for a different Springsteen song and with a fitting lyrical quote opening it, deals with a different aspect of Manzoor’s life, generally focusing on aspects of growing up in England as an immigrant from Pakistan and a Muslim.

Being from Guernsey I’ll freely admit that my experience of Asian immigrants and their culture is extremely limited and so the opening chapters particularly were fascinating.

Manzoor explains how his father first moved to UK to work before his family, including the infant Sarfraz, moved to join him in Luton.

In this we see the struggle of both Manzoor’s father and his family in this change of culture and how his Pakistani and Muslim culture clashes with that of England in the 1970s and 80s in both obvious, public, ways and the more personal and private ones.

For me this was fascinating as it provided the kind of first hand detail I’d never heard of this experience and, while Manzoor doesn’t shy away from some of the darker aspects, particularly as we head into the growth of the NF as well as his own personal and cultural clashes with his family, it shows something of a world previously hidden to me and I’ll admit to feeling now far more educated on some of even the most basic aspects of life as a Muslim (devout or otherwise).

Within this though there is also something of a universality, albeit possibly heightened, as Sarfraz details his father, mother and elder siblings’ outlook on life and how it differs to his own as he wanted more from his life than that prescribed by religious tradition.

Linked with this comes that love of Springsteen, that at times borders on the obsessive (but who am I to criticise that?) and show how The Boss’ Music, though stemming form life as a catholic boy in New Jersey, relates as much to someone from Bury Park as Asbury Park, bringing the whole thing full circle in a sense.

Manzoor’s style is brilliantly light and deft making for a book that flies by as he recounts his story and, while not laboured, he does a great job of bringing us into his world with his childhood home being particularly vividly drawn, while he isn’t afraid to show his own failings and disappointments as well.

Ultimately though he is able to come out the other side of this showing that even in the most challenging circumstances, several of which arise later in the book as we reach September 2001 and then July 2007, there is positivity that in many ways lives up to the adage that ‘everything will be ok in the end, and if it isn’t ok, it isn’t the end’ as well as fitting the outlook of much of Springsteen’s music making for a book packed with meaning and purpose but also positivity, passion and music in a way unlike any I’ve read.