Ninety9

In the last decade of the twentieth century, when music was recorded on cassettes and movies on VHS, Vanessa Berry was responding to the loneliness of life in the suburbs of Sydney by constructing imaginary worlds and identities from late-night music video programs, band T-shirts, mix-tapes and and the ‘dark energy’ of goth. Written and illustrated by one of Australia’s foremost zine-makers, Ninety9 is a memoir about adolescence, its cherished objects, its magical places and, above all, its friendships – a personal guide to the end of the millennium for those who were too young to be there, and an intimate history, full of moments of recognition, for those who were.