Cocaine: A Novel

by Phil Strongman

Pete is a freelance journalist who thinks he's got a scoop on the big band of the moment and whose life revolves around the next party and, increasingly, the next line of coke. Set in the fickle Soho music and media world, this is a sharp, often funny, but by no means amoral novel about the music and drugs businesses.

Genres: Fiction

244 pages, Paperback

First published December 4, 1997

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant writing on the musical scene in which this is set.

When I first started reading it did not gel with my mood at the time. I returned to it again during "lock down"; pleased I did.

Phil Strongman is/was a music journalist. This shows clearly in the novel. It is an interesting insight into the “business”. It reads as autobiographical, being told in the first person. The title of the book is so right; it is the story of the white stuff - within the music scene and centred around London in the last years of the (19) 90s.
The author’s insightful commentary on various music scenes and more, is quite awe inspiring. I knew a lot of the haunts in town, particularly some of the various music venues in which this is set.
It was good to be able to re-visit them through this.

It’s hard to think of this as a novel though. It has a theme, see above, and it centres around Pete, the narrator and user but its story line and ending further make my point.

Highly quotable, here’s a sample:

“Modern music, its rhythms and mannerisms, did, undoubtedly, reflect the drug of the time – 1969: Summer of Love, acid; 1988: acid house, E. Get on one, matey! We really thought we’d had Summers of Love – but it was all just a chemical imbalance in the brain……
And some of that emotion was real, chemically inspired or not. Some of it was real. Some of it always is.”

The main character is Cocaine, closely followed by Pete, the user. All the positives and negatives of using it are here.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entertaining, probably pretty realistic picture of a specific time/place/metier: music journalist/ligger in mid/late '90s London.

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can only read about a man generally being a bad person when I’m on a holiday.

[Godzilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book rattles along at a fair pace, and to this extent drives you onward through the spiralling life of the main character.

[Drew Pyke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book of its time with the 90s music scene and its excesses. Not much taken from this debut novel though