Untorn Tickets Book

Paul Burke's Untorn Tickets is a warm, humorous and, in places, touching novel about growing up in west London at the fag end of the 1970s. Andy Zymancyk and Dave Kelly are the teenage offspring of, respectively, staunchly Catholic Polish and Irish families. Both are pupils of St Bede's Roman Catholic Grammar School for Boys, an institution whose "manifesto of academic and sporting excellence, religious fervour and iron discipline" is described by its pedagogic headmaster, Father "Johnny Mac" McLafferty, as "work hard, play hard and pray hard". Luckily part-time jobs in Westbourne Grove's Gaumont Cinema provide the boys with rather a different kind of education. Taken under the wing of its flamboyant, tuxedo-wearing manager, Tony Harris, they are introduced to the seamier side of "The Grove". While a scam, devised by Dave, to resell "untorn tickets" and recycle coke cups helps to augment their meagre wages--just the thing when old soul 45s, mod suits, Vespa scooters, Ford Continas and girls appear infinitely more interesting than school work and Catholic piety. At the cinema, Dave also meets and falls in love with Rachel, a glamorous Jewish girl, who, like him, craves freedom from unquestioning religious conformity. Andy too is in love only, unfortunately, he is infatuated with his cousin, Alison. With schemes afoot to transform St Bede's sixth form into a separate college and turn the Gaumont into a bingo hall, things, romantic, educational and vocational look less than rosy. As with a few other 70s retro novels, this book suffers from product placement period detail (Argos catalogues, Brut, Opal Fruits and Revels feature throughout). Burke compounds this further by constantly trotting out dates--"In 1978, very few people had videos" or "in 1979, Sting was cool". (In direct contrast Father McLafferty’s comments about the effects of comprehensive education and Tony Harris’s faith in the resurgence of cinema appear--in 1979--so farsighted as to be practically prophetic.) There is however, a good deal of charm here. Burke is often an extremely witty tender, writer. Although sometimes he’s clumsy with his material, he does succeed in evoking the era and capturing the frisson of adolescence.--Travis ElboroughRead More