GIBBONS, June-Alison
The Pepsi-Cola Addict

He walked into the turbulent super market. There were people everywhere. His eyes swept over the shelves and stabilised on a large stack of Pepsi-Colas. He could almost experience the cool fizzy liquid descending his parched throat…
“I’ll have them in bulk please.”

So begins this legendary lost novel, in which fourteen-year-old Preston Wildey-King must choose between his all-consuming passion for Pepsi-Cola and his love for schoolmate Peggy.

Written in 1981 by June-Alison Gibbons when she was only sixteen, The Pepsi-Cola Addict is considered one of the great works of 20th-century outsider literature. More than just a literary curiosity, this tale of a teenager whose passion for a world-famous cola drink threatens to ruin his life is the uniquely vivid expression of a young woman trying to make sense of the confusing, often brutal, world in which she found herself.

Originally published by a vanity press who took £500 from its young author and gave her only a single book in return, it’s thought that fewer than ten original copies still exist. Shortly after its publication, June-Alison and her sister Jennifer would become infamous as “The Silent Twins” and find themselves cruelly incarcerated for over a decade in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.

Created in collaboration with June-Alison Gibbons, this new edition makes her remarkable vision widely-available for the first time. [publishers’ note]

Published by Strange Attractor Press, 2023
Facsimile & Reprints / Literature