Room 100: Sid, Nancy, and the Night Punk Rock Died by Jesse P. Pollack
Pub date - 4/15/25
3.5 stars,
Sid and Nancy were still a big part of the public lexicon when I was a teenager and obviously still are - a pair of star crossed lovers, fraught with poor parenting, mental illness, addiction, abuse, murder, and suicide.
I read And I Don’t Want to Live this Life by Deborah Spungen in the early 90’s and DS’s and her take was so entirely blameless that it didn’t seem at all possible, if you know what I mean. After I became a parent, I revisited the biography and it struck me as two young adults, in over their heads with a colicky baby that when the pediatrician suggested a specific RX and it seemed to work, it probably seemed like a lifeline. As an adult, I view it as lazy - lazy on the doctor’s part, and on the parents’. But considering that doctors prescribed smoking cigarettes from the 1930’s to 1950’s, well, I guess we can’t really expect better. As a parent of an almost 20 year old, the life Nancy lived distresses me.
When I saw this book on NetGalley, I was curious to see how the ultimate fates of Nancy and Sid would be addressed in a new book. While there isn’t anything brand new here, the author does a good job of bringing the story into the 21st century - humanizing both, laying out all the known facts, theories, and presenting suspects.
No matter how one looks at it, the stories of Sid and Nancy, individually and together, are tragedies.
I found Room 100: Sid, Nancy, and the Night Punk Rock Died a worthwhile read and would recommend to fans, and those interested.
Thank you to Backbeat and NetGalley for the DRC
