Description

Paddington, London 1966: four small girls in a playground, and only one has a bag of sweetsand I wasnt going to be her friend unless she gave me one: Caroline. So it begins, the story of Mala I, fresh from the Commonwealth, Caroline, Janice and Bethany: four very different girls growing upfrom swapping sweets to self-defence classesin the London of the late Paddington, London 1966: four small girls in a playground, and only one has a bag of sweetsand I wasnt going to be her friend unless she gave me one: Caroline. So it begins, the story of Mala I, fresh from the Commonwealth, Caroline, Janice and Bethany: four very different girls growing upfrom swapping sweets to self-defence classesin the London of the late `60s and `70s. Shyama Pereras Havent Stopped Dancing Yet vividly evokes that London, its streets, its fashions, its songs: read the novel as an archive of `70s kitsch. But this is kitsch taken seriously, the pleasure which links otherwise disparate in some ways, desperate lives. Ceylon Such a lovely place. Why dont you go back there: the Powellites, and the skinheads, are part of Malas, and her mothers, everyday lifebut only a part. More pressingthis is, after all, a girls coming-of-age novelare the glimpses of the sexual life to come: sisters with hippy beads and boyfriends from Carnaby Street, Bethanys prostitute mother who teaches French, David Cassidys legendary stay at the Dorchester Hotel. In other words, a world saturated by pop, measured out in magazines, gorgeous boys, and shiny white plastic boots. Vicky Lebeau