This is the best book I have read in a long time. The Troubles (the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century) may be living memory for any of us over 30 but for teenagers they are history and a new book is needed to replace the likes of Joan Lingard's excellent Across the Barricades. Naked fills this space brilliantly with a narrative seen through the eyes of naive teenage girl experiencing sex, first love and painful loss of innocence during a blazing summer.
It is 1976, London and Lili is 17, practicing Debussy in the school music room when Curtis Ray, the boy everyone loved, hated, wanted to be or be with, comes in and asks her to join his band. She says yes and finds punk and love, their band feeding into the burgeoning Kings Road punk scene in London around Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's controversial shop Sex. Brooks never forces the issue by name dropping, Curtis' band Naked fits naturally against a backdrop of the Ramones and Sex Pistols. And when they need a new rhythm guitarist brilliant Irish musician William Bonney appears as if from nowhere and is promptly nicknamed Billy the Kid after his namesake. As Curtis spirals out of control through alcohol and drugs Lili learns more about William and his life growing up as a Catholic in violently polarised Belfast and loses her innocence.
What Brooks does brilliantly in this is two fold. Firstly, he writes convincingly in the voice of a 17 year old girl who is affluent but emotionally bereft, charting her growing awareness of a larger world and her own sense of self. And secondly by putting the point of view behind her eyes he shows the horror of the Troubles and the UK bombings in a completely fresh light, as she learns so do we and what we learn is heartbreaking, of shattered families, brutality and fear. It makes for an achingly melancholic book, and the way I would like my 10 year old to learn about this vital aspect of British history that made a generation what it is.
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