Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares

Teenage dreams, ambitions and rebellion. Coming-of-age irony at its finest. Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares is a searingly honest and brutally funny account of LG Thomson's experience of being part of the first generation to grow up in Scotland's most ambitious New Town. She was four when her family moved from their single-room tenement flat in Glasgow to a council house in Cumbernauld, a social experiment billed as The Town for Tomorrow. Told mainly in the 1970s, the book reflects upon a time when trousers were flared, sexism was the norm, and the beating of school children wasn't only condoned, it was industrialised. But with mass strike action, the three-day week, and the shift from the old imperial monetary system to decimalisation, it was also a time of great unrest and change. Set against the social landscape of the time is Thomson's personal story - the trauma of sexual abuse and coming to terms with being an outsider. Though the time and place are specific, the themes of Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares are universal.