Random Things Tours - The Twenty Seven Club

 

TITLE: The Twenty Seven Club

AUTHOR: Lucy Nichol

PUBLISHER: Lark

PUBLISHING DATE: January 20, 2021

PAGES: 231

SOURCE: ARC

FROM GOODREADS: 

It’s 1994. The music industry is mourning Kurt Cobain, Right Said Fred have re-emerged as an ‘ironic’ pop act and John Major is the country’s prime minister. Nothing is as it should be. 

Emma, a working-class rock music fan from Hull, with a penchant for a flaming Drambuie and a line of coke with her best mate Dave down The Angel, is troubled. 

Trev, her beloved whippet, has doggy IBS, and her job ordering bathroom supplies at the local caravan company is far from challenging. So when her dad, Tel, informs her that Kurt Cobain has killed himself aged 27, Emma is consumed with anxiety. 

Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix…why have so many rock musicians died aged 27? And will Emma be next to join The Twenty Seven Club? 

The Twenty Seven Club is a nostalgic, often humorous, drug and booze-infused tale of friendship, discovery and anxiety as Emma tries, for once, to focus on life, rather than death.

MY THOUGHTS: I adore music and listen to all types of genres so when I saw the title of this book, and then read the synopsis, I knew it was one I would have to read.  I listened to a lot of grunge rock in the 90's and while I don't really remember where I was when Kurt Cobain died, I do recall the impact it had on a lot of people and the mourning of talent lost too soon.  

Emma learns of Cobain's death from her father during breakfast one morning.  This sets her off on a quest of self discovery in hopes of coming to terms with her own mortality and where her life is headed.  Emma is somewhat wild and crazy and time but it always contemplative about the direction her life is taking.  She has a close friend Dave, who I also enjoyed, and an adorable rescued whippet named Trev.

While the plot of this book doesn't necessarily slap you in the face, it's definitely there and will hit anyone who came of age in the 90's hard.  It takes a hard look at the price of fame from an outsider's POV and Nichol does a wonderful job of showcasing a young woman who is struggling just to get through each day.    There's some humor thrown in which I always enjoy and Nichol is definitely an author I'll be watching.

RATING: 4 Paws

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lucy is a mental health campaigner and PR consultant, and a former columnist with Sarah Millican's Standard Issue magazine.  She has written for The Independent, The I Paper, NME, Red Magazine, Den of Geek, Men’s Fitness, Metro and Huff Post.  Her first book, A Series of Unfortunate Stereotypes, a non-fiction mental health memoir, was published by Trigger in 2018. Lucy has worked with the media in PR and marketing for almost 20 years and has experienced Generalised Anxiety Disorder for even longer.