Brighton Magazine

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Selected Brighton Magazine Article

Tuesday 01 August 2017

A Hard Day's Month: Brighton Beatles Connection Explored Via Gripping Tale Of Two Teens

A Hard Day's Month is a book as much about teendom as it is about The Beatles. It's about growing up, generation gaps, mortality, friendships, experimentation, change, independence, love and loss. It's very much the Absolute Beginners of its generation.

Authors Mark Baxter and Ian Snowball have managed to weave their Mod aesthetics into the tale. The dialogue is spot on, as is the fullness of the characters. No detail is left hanging. No plot line exists unless it is integral to the outcome.

Cynthia and her best friend Sandra are Beatles obsessives. It's George Harrison and Ringo Starr respectively for these girls. They exist in a bubble that lets them pursue their fantasies of meeting their idols and getting an everlasting documentation of their heroes' signatures.

The girls' first big adventure takes them to The Hippodrome in Brighton. Riding a wave of hormones and innocence they scream and shout themselves hoarse. No one, let alone the Beatles, can hear a note of music. That's not the point. It's the air they share and the shared moments created. 

The Beatles In Brighton 2 June 1963

Not wanting to divulge too much of the plot, it's suffice to say that moments like these are brief. Life gets in the way. Friendships crack, splinter and separate. Relatives, as they must, leave the Earth and the girls have to re-evaluate their lives

As one of the author's states: "As they trail the band all over the UK, they slowly leave their innocent world of Fabdom behind and begin to discover a world of boys, drink, drugs, family bereavement and the 'normal' life which seems mapped out for them. '

A Hard Day's Month is an excellent read. Whatever your age there's a lit bit of everyone in this book.

A Hard Day's Month, by Mark Baxter and Ian Snowball, is out now and available by CLICKING HERE


by: Mike Cobley




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Credit: Mark Sellger

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Credit: Sarah Reddin

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Credit Andrew Hasson

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Organising a conference or event in Brighton?
See our Brighton Conference section.
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