The pandemic continues to wreck destruction on my shelves of books to be read. The latest casualty is this 2007 book which I bought back in the day, after "meeting" the author on MySpace. It was one of those books that I was excited about, but for whatever unexplained reason, it's number was never drawn until now.
Parkway by Hayley Sercombe
(Authorhouse, 2007)
It's 1994 in London and the Britpop scene is about to catch fire, propelling the city to the world spotlight. As with most underground scenes, it is the teen believers that build it, living and breathing it. This novel follows a handful of teens through the early days of the evolving scene through the period where it really went mainstream in 1996.
It does a good job of portraying the changing values of the '90s. As one who came of age during the underground that existed in '90s, I can vouch for the authenticity. It was a time when wide spread drug use was becoming accepted and invited into teen life, not that it hadn't always been there, but the expansion of the drugs used and the extent to which they were pivotal to the underground was something that was far more pervasive than it had been in the '60s, and cast a wider net.
The characters feel like real people, and Sercombe doesn't moralize their behavior or condemn their bad choices. It's a portrait of a period of time in a particular place and it captures it well. For those who lived through it, the novel has a nostalgic feel, reminding them of bands they may have forgotten about, or in my case, still love. For those who the scene is foreign, it's a nice glimpse into the past.
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