Absolute Beginners (novel)
First edition cover
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| Author | Colin MacInnes |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | MacGibbon & Kee |
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Publication date
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1959 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 223 pages (1st edition), & 208 pages (paperback) |
| ISBN | (paperback) |
| OCLC | 45648228 |
| Preceded by | City of Spades |
| Followed by | Mr. Love and Justice |
Absolute Beginners is a novel by Colin MacInnes, written and set in 1958 London, England. It was published in 1959. The novel is the second of MacInnes' London Trilogy, coming after City of Spades (1958) and before Mr. Love and Justice (1960). These novels are each self-contained, with no shared characters.
The novel is written from the first person perspective of a teenage freelance photographer, who lives in a rundown yet vibrant part of West London he calls Napoli. The area is home to a large number of Caribbean immigrants, as well as English people on the margins of society, such as homosexuals and drug addicts.
The themes of the novel are the narrator's opinions on the newly formed youth culture and its fixation on clothes and jazz music, his love for his ex-girlfriend Crêpe Suzette, the illness of his father and simmering racial tensions in the summer of the Notting Hill race riots.
The novel is divided into four sections. Each detail a particular day in the four months that spanned the summer of 1958.
In June takes up half of the book and shows the narrator meeting up with various teenaged friends and some adults in various parts of London and discussing his outlook on life and the new concept of being a teenager. He also learns that his ex-girlfriend, Suzette, is to enter a marriage of convenience with her boss, a middle-aged gay fashion designer called Henley.
In July has the narrator taking photographs by the Thames, seeing the musical operetta H.M.S. Pinafore with his father, has a violent encounter with Ed the Ted and watches Hoplite's appearance on Call-Me-Cobber's TV show.
In August has the narrator and his father take a cruise along the Thames towards Windsor Castle. His father is taken ill on the trip and has to be taken to a doctor. The narrator also finds Suzette at her husband's cottage in Cookham.
In September is set on the narrator's nineteenth birthday. He sees this, symbolically, as the beginning of his last year as a teenager. He witnesses several incidents of racial violence, which disgust him. His father also dies, leaving him four envelopes stuffed with money. Suzette has separated from Henley, but still seems uncertain as to whether she should resume her relationship with the narrator. The narrator decides to leave the country and find a place where racism doesn't exist. At the airport, he sees Africans arriving and gives them a warm welcome.
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