Earlier this month, I was lucky enough to speak to the wonderful Lucy Nichol about her 2021 novel, The Twenty Seven Club. This post contains affiliate links to Amazon, where you can buy the book or download it on your Kindle. If you choose to make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Lucy’s novel, set in 90s Hull, is entirely fictional. But Lucy says she has drawn on her own experience of anxiety and panic attacks while writing.
“I thought I had deep vein thrombosis” Lucy says of her first ever panic attack “that was in the 90s when we didn’t talk about it all that much.”
The novel’s main character, Emma, has concluded that her own panic attacks are probably a blood pressure problem. Her 27th birthday is coming up and, mourning Kurt Cobain and her other idols who died at age 27, she finds herself worrying about whether or not she will be joining them.
But Lucy tells me that Emma isn’t at all suicidal. She’s anxious. She just doesn’t know it yet.
When I ask her about the inspiration behind the book, she tells me about her special interest in mental health stigma and has experienced it personally. But, after working in PR and media for so many years, she’s especially interested in how it plays out publicly, particularly related to the lives of celebrities and artists. The title of the book is a nod to this stigma.
“The 27 Club feels like such a shallow and insulting way to talk about someone’s life – so I wanted to take the headline and smash it to pieces.” Lucy told me “The book aims to go behind the 27 club headline and explore humanity and mental health – with a ton of nostalgia and humour to help the reader along. Plus, given the music and era is something I loved, it felt like the perfect topic.”
Speaking of music, the book is packed full of it. Lucy describes the music in the book, which she loves, as the vehicle to tell Emma’s story.
“I became OBSESSED!” she says when I ask her if she listened while writing “I started listening to more 90s stuff than I had in years – funnily enough, come the end of 2020 – Spotify said I was in the top 0.01% of Senseless Things listeners – which is quite obsessive!!”
And, I won’t spoil it for you, but there are fictional cameos from Senseless Things in the book. Sadly, Senseless Things singer, Mark Keds, passed away on January 10th 2021, a couple of weeks before The Twenty Seven Club was published. “I was gutted.” Said Lucy, “I have become a bigger fan girl than I was when I saw them live in the 90s”
Despite the humour and 90s nostalgia, the book does handle some difficult themes and readers should note that there is talk of suicide, addiction and grief. But overall the book is about friendship, hope and fandom and Emma learns about anxiety and what she’s going through with the help of a counsellor.
I know that many budding writers out there like to know about authors’ writing process, so I asked Lucy about hers. She starts describing her writing by saying it just “bleughs out”.
“When I feel the drive to write I tend to stop everything else and just do it. Because I need to be in the right headspace and when that comes along I like to take advantage of it.” Lucy’s openness about how writing fits in with her mental health is refreshing. “I find it wonderful, fun, cathartic, frustrating, and a learning experience all at once.”
Thank you so much, Lucy, for agreeing to talk to me about your book. It’s so wonderful to get to hear all about it.
You can (and should) order the Twenty Seven Club by Lucy Nichol on Amazon.
If you’re in the mood for book shopping you should check out my articles on the Chiltern Classics and beautiful editions of classic literature.
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This is the first time I’ve heard of the Twenty Seven Club, both the book and the “club” itself. What a brilliant idea for a book, to raise awareness but in such an accessible way. I’ll definitely have to check this book out, thank you for such a great review – so interesting to hear how Lucy writes too! x
I think this book is going to be huge tbh, it seems to be such a good balance of accessible and relatable. Really excited about it!