Harry Ferdinand is a misplaced North London teenager - in trouble at school, his dad hates him, a victim of racism who flees to a hippy squat where he discovers a drum kit, and then punk... There is little in the way of boil-in-the-bag anarchy here, and the real heart of the novel is Harry trying to impress his uninterested and estranged father, punk's lost boy screaming to fit in over the music's iconoclastic and methamphetamine roar.