Common People

by Martin Knight

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.

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 2000

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 harassment, 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.

[Bernt-erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice lookin into british society middle class.