Jeff Pearce

The New Bohemians Jeff Pearce

It's the 1980s, an era of smart suits and saxophones, squatters in abandoned blocks and protests over the final threats of the Cold War. Typewriters are plentiful, David Bowie and Prince are at the heights of their stardom, and people plug into Walkmans instead of iPods. The decade's hottest place for music, fashion and politics was London, and it's here that a group of expats from North America try to build their dreams into reality. Calvin Trent wants to found a magazine that can rival Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, and he just might pull it off. Their British friend, Jeremy, tries to duck the racism of cops patrolling the Brixton neighbourhood and be the voice of sensible business values behind the others' grand design. Beth, a quirky, talented musician and photographer is trying to get over her past creative failures, but she just may escape her depression in the arms of Ram Talbott. Ram the narrator, who loves too much, who feels too much and who needs to make sense of it all after the dream falls apart. And when a young woman is violently attacked in a London park, the horrific crime will haunt them all and even inspire a few in unexpected ways. THE NEW BOHEMIANS is a story about an era that was more vibrant, more complicated and more exciting than today's nostalgic references. By turns lyrical and comic, it's a love letter to the writers and artists who are the also-rans, the ones who don't get movies made out of their lives or who have courses taught on their forgotten works. But for a short while, they had their brilliant moments...