Heavens Promise

London, 1988, and the winds of change are blowing through the city, kicking up a storm. A gal pregnant and a DJ running for cover. The birth of the e generation and a race riot erupting.The Sheriff is trying to talk to Prince and Sammy the Foot is dancing up a treat. Everything was Tuesday until she quit without an explanation whilst a young Italian is looking to score and a mother is fighting off the fascists. Someone just dropped one and said ‘it’s as if we were in heaven’ whilst outside the club a seven-month-old baby is crying hard.Heaven’s Promise stands, still underrated, in the intersection of great modern London novels, between Absolute Beginners and Trainspotting – a tradition of youthful struggle and creative ambition embodied in a City of Dreams, a vision as potent in the rave culture of the late eighties as it was in the fifties – and as it is today.