Frantic by Francis Lynn
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(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: October 2006
- 268pp
Product Details
- Pub. Date: October 2006
- Publisher: Meadow Books
- Format: Paperback, 268pp
- ISBN-13: 9780955367229
- ISBN: 0955367220
Synopsis
Seventies survivor Frances Lynn ruthlessly chronicles the psychotic highs and lows of Alice, a young English girl who escapes London at the tail end of the Sixties for a sojourn in San Francisco. She quickly discovers that the psychedelic world of tie-dye and joss sticks belongs to the previous decade when she becomes involved with a glitter daubed, sprawling theatre group, leftovers from the insular Haight-Ashbury crowd. Alice gets sucked in beyond her head, but just when the crazy theatre group's popularity overdoses, she goes over the top and is shipped back to London. By now, the early Seventies are in full decay, as is Alice. She continues her downward slide by falling in obsession with a fragmented member of the Art World. Their exhausting fling, fuelled by a cocktail of opiates is interrupted by repetitive bouts of insanity, like a San Francisco acid flashback. No holds are barred in this frantic saga of drug-fractured psyches - and it's hard to guess who will stagger on into the eighties.
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From the Back Cover Alice was born in a London Hospital during the Year of the Tiger and almost expired from a heavy chest cold but pulled through to face
another lifetime thanks to the hospital's Intensive Care unit. After that
start, the road went steadily downwards.
Author Frances Lynn, herself a survivor of the steaming Seventies, bars no holds and pulls no punches when telling the story of a wayward girl
staggering into the drug-infested circles in San Francisco and London on
her way to doom and destruction
About the Author Frances Lynn was born in London and grewup in Notting Hill
Gate. Her first job was at the BBC, but left after a year in order to
travel to San Francisco. When she returned to London, she became Britain's bitchiest columnist on the defunct Ritz magazine, simultaneously doing
freelance work for Fleet Street papers and the London glossies.
Frances Lynn now lives in central London, enjoying life as a professional
writer and author.
Customer Reviews
Franticby Anonymous
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October 31, 2006: In 'Frantic' we follow Alice, a naive English girl, aching to rebel against her posh upbringing, as she descends into a glittery hell peopled with dangerous grotesques and dusted with white powder. After sharpening her claws on the butt end of the sixties, author Frances Lynn tears into the seventies' alternative scene with glee, exposing the hypocrisy, shallowness and sad junkie lifestyles of the 'beautiful people'. However, this is not just a novel about sex, drugs and rock n' roll it's a novel filtered through them. So the reader gets to enjoy vivid acid tinged prose, and riotous cartoon depictions of San Francisco and London. At times, the style is reminiscent of counter-culture icons William S. Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson, but with a fairy-tale sweetness neither of those authors have. Fans of Frances Lynn's 'Crushed', will recognise the same storytelling skills but may be shocked at the unbridled content. Freed from the constraints of writing for a teen audience, the author can display the the sharp wit which made her Britain's bitchiest columnist. Like Alice says: 'Wowee Zowee!'
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