Rhona Cameron: nineteen seventy-nine

I don’t mind saying, I had some concerns before embarking on this one; I’d dipped in a couple of times since buying it before Christmas, and the prospect of a memoir of teenage lesbianism coupled with Cameron’s liberal use of vigorous language was starting to make me wonder whether this was such a good idea. My worries were groundless; in nineteen seventy-nine Cameron has produced a marvellous slice of autobiography which is by turns acerbic, affectionate, ironic and heartwarming, and yet shot through with an essential sadness and a sense of the absurd.

The central conceit of the book is disarmingly simple; Cameron has gone back to her diaries for the year 1979 and followed the events of each month in a year which consolidated her identity and shaped the course of her life. Needless to say, the diary extracts are typical of teenage diaries the world over; artless, urgent and full of perceived slights and injustices which are long forgotten by the time the adult comes back to them. It’s the anecdotes and reflections which Cameron weaves around them which give the book both its humour and its heart; set in a small town, nineteen seventy-nine relishes the absurdities and misplaced sense of one’s own significance of any settlement of this size, where everybody either knows everybody else or knows somebody who does. When the Camerons sell their car, young Rhona continues to see it being driven through Musselburgh by a succession of subsequent owners. Teenage coupling rituals are also a theme of the book; increasingly aware of her sexuality, Cameron is nothing if not frank about the situations in which she finds herself with both boys and girls. And yet one of the most beautiful things about this book is the way in which the Rhona Cameron of 2003 is at ease with her teenage feelings. She writes of her experiences with boys and of trying not to be gay with no self-recrimination and I can only admire her courage in offering these chapters from her life without comment.

The other major strand of the memoir is the deterioration and eventual death of Cameron’s adoptive father from cancer. Some of the most heartwarming and lovingly-described episodes are those which recall family holidays and activities shared with one parent or the other; some of the most heartbreaking are those where she recounts the stages of her father’s decline in an age when, we should remember, cancer was spoken of in hushed tones, as if conferring a kind of shame on the sufferer. In the modern world, it’s difficult to imagine a family taking their one holiday of the year in a caravan on the east coast of Scotland and enjoying it, and yet there’s such a sense of love and family unity in Cameron’s descriptions that I can’t help asking myself whether today’s package tourists heading for the Mediterranean have as rewarding a time. Young Rhona’s clothes come from the Kays catalogue, and Arctic Roll is considered a treat, and yet nobody bemoans what today would be a mediocre standard of living at best.

For a book which sets out to foreground the subjects of teenage homosexuality and bereavement, nineteen seventy-nine is, then, surprisingly enjoyable and life-affirming. It could so easily have become an exercise in self-pity and a settling of scores with Cameron’s less tolerant contemporaries, but with style and a sense of humour, it’s thoroughly satisfying and treats is subject matter with such ease and honesty that every one of my reservations was put to bed before the end of the first chapter.

16th January 2004