It’s 1977, and punk rock has just hit Liverpool. The legendary Eric’s club is home to the city’s rebels, posers and misfits. It’s a place of attitude, adventure and new possibilities, and it changes lives. Some become pop stars; Penny Kiley becomes a music journalist.
The story traces Penny’s relationship with the music scene from the turbulent political 1980s into the changing culture of the 21st century. Throughout these years, she never stops being a misfit, and the question remains: how do you navigate normal life when punk is dead and you don’t know you’re autistic?
Atypical Girl begins as a coming-of-age story and ends as a midlife reinvention. What unites them is a search for identity and the role that music plays in all our lives.
Featuring encounters with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, Paul McCartney, The Cramps, Jonathan Richman, Tracey Thorn and more.
About the author:
Penny Kiley was Liverpool correspondent for Melody Maker during the post-punk years of the late 1970s and 1980s. She also wrote for Smash Hits and was pop columnist for the Liverpool Echo. She was diagnosed as autistic at the age of sixty.
