Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet Book

Paddington, London 1966: four small girls in a playground, "and only one has a bag of sweets--and I wasn't going to be her friend unless she gave me one: Caroline." So it begins, the story of Mala ("I", "fresh from the Commonwealth"), Caroline, Janice and Bethany: four very different girls growing up--from swapping sweets to self-defence classes--in the London of the late ‘60s and ‘70s. Shyama Perera's Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet vividly evokes that London, its streets, its fashions, its songs: read the novel as an archive of ‘70s kitsch. But this is kitsch taken seriously, the pleasure which links otherwise disparate-- in some ways, desperate-- lives. "Ceylon! Such a lovely place. Why don't you go back there?": the Powellites, and the skinheads, are part of Mala's, and her mother's, everyday life--but only a part. More pressing--this is, after all, a girl's coming-of-age novel--are the glimpses of the sexual life to come: sisters with "hippy" beads and boyfriends from Carnaby Street, Bethany's (prostitute) mother who teaches "French", David Cassidy's legendary stay at the Dorchester Hotel. In other words, a world saturated by pop, measured out in magazines, gorgeous boys, and shiny white plastic boots. --Vicky LebeauRead More