Nineteen Seventy Nine: A Big Year in a Small Town

by Rhona Cameron

Nineteen Seventy-nine takes place in a small fishing town called Musselburgh, situated on the east coast of Scotland. It's about a young girl who is very naive yet incredibly self-aware in the year that changed her life forever - an evocative, moving and at times hilarious true-life story about growing up gay in a small town, finding out you're adopted, and losing your father at the age of 14. Always an outsider, the Rhona of 1979 was desperate to fit in at any cost, and here lies the bittersweet humour. At the heart of the book is the Clubhouse, a place that symbolises all that is normal, happy, and secure. Sons with their fathers; 15 year-old boys with their girlfriends for their first underage drink. Wives with their husbands for the Christmas disco. And behind the club, outside, Rhona and her friends are smoking, fighting, kissing and drinking. In this darkly funny and deeply biographical first book, Rhona Cameron takes us back to a year when everything seemed to change. A new British government came to power, the Eighties were approaching and at times life felt so precarious that it really looked like she and her family might never make it through the next year, let alone the next decade...

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Lesbian, LGBT, Memoir, Autobiography, Biography Memoir

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Larissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

so i stumbled upon this book in a charity shop and was drawn in purely by its cover. i had no prior expectations, nor any idea who Rhona Cameron was. i was instantly intrigued by the picture inside of a badass woman with cool thin eyebrows and shag haircut, giving off a distinctly kinda lesbian vibe.

i was struck by the remarkably direct prose; the writing is to the point, a candid and open-hearted approach that makes the most startling revelations feel like hard facts. the shocking and taboo subjects, particularly instances of child sexual abuse and intense bullying are described with such a stark, casual tone. i love it though as it's not a lack of sensitivity but feels like an incredibly accurate reflection of how these traumatic experiences were lived through by a young person lacking the emotional vocabulary or adult perspective to contextualise their severity at the time.

now, onto my favourite parts of the entire book: rhona's obsessions. they are hilarious. her detailed 'fact files' on girls like alison calder and joan carlisle, while disturbingly invasive and bordering on creepy, are presented with such earnestness and confused sexual awakening that they can't help but being endearingly innocent. the intensity of her crushes (spying on alison from the bowling club roof) perfectly capture the overwhelming, all-consuming severity of emotions experienced by a 13 year old girl struggling with her sexuality. the things that particularly broke my heart and made me want to CRY were her beliefs that becoming famous would make miss carlisle love her or that a specific boy could be a "cure" for her same-sex attractions. it just reminded me so much of the desperate and tragically misguided logic of adolescence.

i have to say something about the epilogue as well. detailing her adult encounter with jamie ritchie was touching and unexpected. it provided a really satisfying sense of closure and a deeply human resolution to (what i think is) some of the book's most challenging narratives. what i found so impressive and, honestly, hard to grasp in its generosity, is rhona's lack of resentment towards jamie. yes she feels "choked up" but her understanding that "he was just a young boy" is remarkable. it also highlights how his behaviour, while horrific, was kind of the norm within their small fishing town. jamie's explanation that:"You were always off-limits, Rhona. We a’ kent you were gay, and we could n’ae go out with you. To us you were one of the boys, but we a’ tried tae shag you – it’s just what we did" really shows the ignorance of their shared adolescence. but i did like his jamie's insight "It wis nae that you were gay. It wis that you were gay in a small town", i feel like it gave a lot of clarity and validation.

i don't want to go too into her father's plot line, cos i might cry, but i do want to talk about "Let me play the fool". the fact that her father frequently recited this line when she would misbehave, despite the full quote itself being an argument for embracing mirth, laughter and living live fully rather than succumbing to "mortifying groans", really made me laugh. after her father's death, she copies down the quote and keeps it in her blazer pocket. such a beautiful act of physically holding his words. i did have more to say, but i'm going to leave it here as i've had enough of typing lol.

[Natasha Holme · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE it. 1979 knocked me sideways. How did I not hear about this book before? HOW? This is a staggeringly close account to my own teenage lesbian school teacher stalker experience. I was laughing myself silly with recognition.

This:
"I learned her timetable by heart. At any given hour, I knew which class she was teaching and its finishing time, so that I could get a glimpse of her for a few moments as she passed by."

This:
"I wrote her millions of letters and poems. I would go to the staffroom every single day to deliver them. I don't think the poor woman got a proper tea break in her entire career. [...] She would stand in the staffroom door with a cup of coffee in her hand and a bewildered expression on her face."

And re. a fellow pupil stalkee, this:
"[...] for hours while I scanned the place with my binoculars, waiting for that millisecond in which I might catch a glimpse that would feed my need for another day or so."

Rhona's physical and emotional dedication to stalking the objects of her affections is breath-taking. I found myself exclaiming, "God, she's good!" I felt almost jealous that she managed to trace information about her teacher's parents, but comforted myself with my memory of spending hours at the local library, moving methodically through copies of the Yellow Pages for every area of the UK, noting down details of everyone with my teacher's surname. If I were to become pregnant by her brother later in life, I would have to find him, after all.

On reading that Rhona discovered her teacher's date of birth, I was a little shocked to realise that I still knew my teacher's date of birth twenty-five years later.

I do hope the teacher that I so mercilessly stalked, reads this book, and that her own bewildered expression might perhaps morph into one of understanding or, just possibly, amusement.

1979 is an enchanting and hilarious memoir, one of very few books that I shall read again.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

In which Rhona Cameron overshares, rather wonderfully.

[Stargazer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unflinchingly honest account of pubescent angst. I found this more interesting knowing beforehand a little of her chart as after reading her other book I looked at her blogs and she is into astrology. It made a world of sense astrologically, all those inner planets in Scorpio! I laughed, had tears in my eyes more than once, gasped, cringed, thoroughly enjoyed it in other words!

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I unexpectedly loved this book and was sorry it ended. The book is in turn weird, compelling and heartbreaking.

[David Kintore · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the current frenzy of interest around Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ series, now would be a good time for the publishers to release a new edition of this gripping memoir by Rhona Cameron about her experiences as a thirteen year old going on fourteen in the small town of Musselburgh just a few miles south of Edinburgh.

Warm, sad, uplifting, sometimes horrific, and often very funny, there’s a bit of everything in this great book.

The mix of original diary entries written by Cameron when she was a teenager together with the adult narration works very well.

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and well-told personal story about being a lesbian and being fourteen years old in 1979. Although some details are specific to the place and time, to Scotland, to the UK, to the nineteen seventies, to being a lesbian (rather than queer in some other way), much of the emotional content will be recognisable to anyone who has been told their sexuality is deviant, anyone who has been sexually harassed as a teenager, or anyone who has lost a parent.

[John Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up because I liked Rhona Cameron as a comedian years ago and had forgotten about her. The book covers a year in her life where she comes to terms, sort of, with her sexuality and deals with the loss of her father. I found the details of how she was taken advantage of by her peers saddening but despite this the tone is generally upbeat and the reader can reflect that growing up gay if not easy today it is certainly easier than it was in the 70s. A worthwhile read.

[Susan Butts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Badly written and dull

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her Dad sounds lovely - one of those people who make life better just by being around. Have stopped smoking after reading the last few chapters.

[hannah :) · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading a book about growing up queer in a small scottish town hits different when it's literally about your specific small scottish town

[Plum-crazy]

"A candid, open-hearted memoir....startling" says the cover & indeed to begin with it was....though not in a good way! I nearly gave up after the first two chapters as the recounting of the twelve year-old Rhona's "fumblings" (for want of a better word!) with the local heart throb & whichever of his mates he decided to share her with, made me a little uncomfortable.

Teenage years aren't easy for anyone but being a lesbian in a small town, Rhona certainly had more angst than most. While most of us will have had same sex crushes, especially on teachers, Rhona takes it to a whole new level!

Not a light-hearted read, quite sad & wistful in parts nor was it full of 70s nostalgia that I could really identify with but one I imagine Ms Cameron found cathartic to write.

[Ian Fiddes · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10. Very frank account of growing up in a small town in Scotland. Both funny and sad. Recommended.

[M.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A funny and sad story about a struggle to find true identity, expressing one's youthful feelings towards the same sex, facing sexuality, and expressing one's self.

[Beth Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is like reading my own autobiography. The similarities to her childhood/teen years to my childhood/teen years are uncanny. A top read about a small-town lesbian who becomes a famous comedian.