All Picture Indian

What An Absolute Beginner

My newly extended commute has provided me with an extra three hours a day in which to read to my little heart's content. Therefore I have been a loyal patron of Brighton library, which, thankfully, is not the usual Catherine Cookson-stuffed affair that is the norm for Sussex libraries. No, Brighton has a huge selection of great titles which I am on a mission to read (and even self-checkout machines, which thankfully don't screech at you like supermarket ones.) I really enjoy our fortnightly trips to the temple of books, laden down with hardbacks, only to leave weighed down with more.

One of my recent literary adventures has been with Colin MacInnes' 'Absolute Beginners'; a novel that celebrates the teenage empire that was 1959, London in all it's versatile glory and the dangerous race riots on the city streets. I was lured in my the blurb's promise of neon Soho, jazz halls, teenage romance and the culture of one of my favourite eras. On those fronts, Absolute Beginners perfectly captures the zeitgeist; the language, the desires, the dreams of the first ever 'teenagers'. They were a whole new tribe who revelled in both the new-found celebration of their identity, and also the fear that it inspired in 'grown ups'. MacInnes literally takes hold of your coat sleeve and drags you through all of London, in its' Fifties glamour, glitter, dirt and destruction. I loved every second.

However, I forgot that this was not my first encounter with the nameless protagonist, his ex-love, Crepe Suzette (Suze) and best gay friend, the Fabulous Hoplite. In fact, whilst sheltering from the rain on the first day of Vintage at Goodwood festival last August, I had stumbled in to the cinema tent, a few minutes in to a showing of Absolute Beginners, the movie. It was a fairly surreal moment; having not a Scooby about the storyline or premise, I couldn't work out whether the film was set in the 80s or the 50s or a weird hybrid of both, what Patsy Kensit was doing singing in the role of Suzette, and why David Bowie was doing a tap dance on a giant typewriter?!

Having now read the novel (which is always advisory before watching a cinematic interpretation, in my humble opinion) I think it's time to revisit that crazy movie, and here's a little taster, to inspire you to do the same.