Absolute Beginners - Hardcover

Colin MacInnes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0850313295 ISBN 13: 9780850313291

Publisher: Allison & Busby, 1980

Synopsis

In fifties London, a teenager earns a living taking pornographic pictures, but is uncertain about what to do with the rest of his life

About this title

About the Author

COLIN MACINNES (1914-76), son of novelist Angela Thirkell, cousin of Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling, grandson of Burne-Jones, was brought up in Australia but lived most of his life in London about which he wrote with a warts-and-all relish that earned him a reputation as the literary Hogarth of his day. Bisexual, outsider, champion of youth, ‘pale-pink’ friend of Black Londoners and chronicler of English life, MacInnes described himself as ‘a very nosy person’ who ‘found adultery in Hampstead indescribably dull’ and was much more at home in the coffee bars and jazz clubs of Soho and Notting Hill. A talented off-beat journalist and social observer, he is best known for his three London novels, City of Spades, Absolute Beginners and Mr Love and Justice. MacInnes died of cancer in 1976.

Review

The writing is breathtaking. Every word carefully selected to draw you further and further in. Occasionally it becomes reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange with the teenagers having their own language and their own world, only half understood by the adults they hold in so much contempt... Buy this book. And then buy a copy for all your friends as well. (The Bookbag)

Edition details

• Publisher: Allison & Busby
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0850313295
• ISBN 13: 9780850313291
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English