Exploring the emergence of political identity, which grows from class to national consciousness, this novel follows a boy coming of age near Swansea who belongs to the baby-boom generation—but this is a time and place of bust. Eight-strong at the offset, his group of friends includes Will, a council estate intellectual, and Karen, who graduates from lonely cocktails on the dance floor to convivial militant vandalism. But first love ends for two of them in sordid circumstances, and the group is three down at the finish, when the protagonist faces an uncertain future.