Although MacInnes turned 44 in the summer of 1958, the book is written through the eyes of an 18-year-old, who is part of the new vibrant and affluent London youth culture of coffee bars, modern jazz and rock 'n' roll music, and Italian scooters and clothes. As such, it chronicles the first years of what would become the mod subculture in the 1960s. MacInnes has the narrator use a very stylised form of speech. For example, when the narrator and Zesty-Boy talk about why Vendice no longer uses Dido's newspaper for advertising, MacInnes writes it as: