Product Description

John Hay is one of the Common People. Growing up on the Common council estate in a London suburb in the 1960s and 1970s is at first idyllic. The Beatles, "Blue Peter" and "The Beano" fill the senses and soccer, scrumping and splits provide the pastimes. But encounters with the police, paedophiles, pretty girls and bullies soon bring down the curtain on childhood innocence. With his friends from the estate, John passes through comprehensive school and out into the world of work. Experiences with drink, drugs, petty crime and hooliganism quickly follow, and the boys enter a lifestyle of sustained nihilism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #193316 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Blistering piece of literature
Read this novel on a friend's advice and am now passing that advice on. A simple book that manages to cover a range of issues and points that more famous writers have tried very hard but with less impact to achieve. In some ways not much happens but on the other hand it does. It's all here: racism, crime, drugs, murder, first love, childhood but all in a highly authentic and entertaing way. But its the characters that make it. The suburban pyscopath, the easily led junkie, the entrepreneur, the bully, the bullied, the flash schoolmaster. We all know them. Read it and you'll see. An exceptional book by an ordinary bloke.

A Common Coming of Age
South London in the 1960s and 70s is brought to life in this vivid coming of novel that is reads like an autobiography. John Hay narrates the first forty years of his life, starting with childhood on a council estate in the suburbs, moving through the traumatic and formative teenage school years, and then into early adulthood. The novel isn't really plotted in any way, rather it straightforwardly describes growing up as a working class boy, from running wild at school, to running wild in the streets. The thrill of being part of the Chelsea mob, the emergence of the skinhead subculture, police harrasment, experiments in drugs, fights, girls, etc.-it's all here. By the end, John has grown up and become a normal adult, at least until the final page, where there's a final twist lurks. If you like writers like John King, Irvine Welsh, and Howard Baker, you'll probably dig this.

Stunning realistic reading about a working class childhood.
Superb read which really brings back childhood memories.The comparisons to early experiences is astounding right down to the scruffy kids at school to the "Zoom" lollies.The book captures pefectly the paths we take as youths to adulthood often loosing friendships along the way.Drug and alcohol use appear frequently in this novel but at the right time which gives it a realistic but honest and in no way glamorous account of growing up in a modern working class society.Its all here, the first fumble up a girls skirt, the dreams of youth and the final evaluation that things don't always turn out as you would expect, mix this up with a jaw dropping ending and you have the makings of a modern day classic.
I read this book in one day cover to cover something I have never done before.Buy this book !