Junk

Product Information

Children are just made for growing. They're made to grow as people - mentally, emotionally and physically - and to start hindering that is ridiculous. It's a question of context and what they understand. Very young people can know about sex, but you present it to them in a way in which they can contextualise it. But there is still an attitude that sex is dangerous and knowledge of sex is going to corrupt them. Burgess again courted predictable controversy in 2003, with the publication of Doing It, which dealt with underage sex. America created a show based on the book, Life As We Know It. In his other books, such as Bloodtide and The Ghost Behind the Wall, Burgess has dealt with less realist and sometimes fantastic themes. In 2001 Burgess wrote the novelisation of the film Billy Elliot, based on Lee Hall's screenplay. Polyphony is typical for his most famous novels. Lily was a horrifying character, because of how extreme she was. She was the biggest addict of all the friends, and her insistence that she was a good mother even when she shot up between her breasts while breastfeeding highlighted this perfectly. Her boyfriend, and the father of her child, was also a sad, sad character, especially with what we found out he had done in the end to get more junk.

Anyway, in conclusion, let me round this off by saying; this isn't a book for children, lots of bad things happen and nobody really catches a break, drugs are bad, this book is not. It was funny at times but kinda depressing to see some young hopefuls throw their life away because of something so horrible. Give this to a teen and it'll be a wake up call, a good example of what they could end up like if they do drugs.Even peripheral characters like old codger Skolly or do-gooder Richard are nuanced, displaying both sympathetic quirks and hard-to-like weaknesses. Burgess skilfully uses first-person narrative to catch his characters in their lies and contradictions. It adds an important layer to what, at other times, feels like a straightforward teen novel. His real name is David, but everyone calls him Tar because he hated fags and refused to smoke any cigarettes. What worries me is that there’s not really enough of an impact. Not enough goes wrong. There’s not enough to dissuade young impressionable minds from using drugs, from dipping in, from experimenting with needles and tablets and powder. I bring up Junk, arguably Burgess's most famous novel. Why does he think its legacy has lasted? "It has a historical position because it was a very early, proper YA book," he says. "When it came out it had a real significance. The teenage fiction genre at the time was really for younger kids and not for teenagers."

The book was nevertheless a success, and many critics and readers defended it and felt that Fine took certain sections out of context. However, even those who generally hold Burgess in high regard have sometimes expressed the view that Doing It went too far, such as Amanda Craig: ‘Capable of wild originality in novels such as Lady: My Life As A Bitch, [Burgess] also makes gross errors of taste, such as Doing It …’ ( The Times, 9 June 2006). At the start of the book I really loved the character Tar but less so Gemma. I felt she was very dependent and her life that she thought was so bad was just her parents caring about her unlike Tar. At the end of the book however that had completely changed. I could really empathise with the people who in real life I would avoid at all costs.Burgess’ sympathetic approach reveals the vulnerability of each character: both Heat and Sara, because of their insecure need to be adored and applauded, open themselves up to extreme manipulation, while simultaneously manipulating others. Sara is in danger of losing her face, but this can also be seen as a metaphor for the way in which individuals without a strong sense of inner self risk having their minds and identities colonised, both by other individuals and society itself. ‘Moulding’ is thus happening on many levels. The adults decide after a few weeks that Gemma must return home. Richard holds a 'farewell' party in the abandoned house and, to Vonny's chagrin, he invites Lily and Rob, a couple whom she suspects to be on hard drugs. Gemma is enamoured with Lily from the moment she sees her. The two girls connect instantly, and Lily invites the pair to stay the night with them. Whilst they are there, Lily and Rob encourage Gemma and Tar to smoke heroin with them, and they do, believing that only smoking it will not get them addicted. The pair are subsequently invited to live with Lily and Rob, and they do. At 30, Burgess decided to start writing seriously, attempting short stories, radio drama and children's fiction. An Angel for May, his first book for kids, was shortlisted for the Carnegie. He admits that the literary establishment tends to look down on "kiddie fiction", and confesses to a yen to write an adult book "at some point". In the meantime, he values simplicity: "I do have this belief that if you write well, you should be able to write any idea no matter how complex, and it should be completely lucid to any 12-year-old." Richard - an anarchist and left-wing activist who helps Gemma and Tar find somewhere to live. He is in his twenties.

In time, Lily has the baby and continues to inject heroin whilst the baby is breastfeeding. Meanwhile, Rob starts cottaging himself in public toilets, to fund their habit. Tar has totally changed; the naive, joyful person he once was, has been replaced by someone who lies to and steals from his friends and even from Gemma. Both boys become drug dealers. They have a traumatic experience when they discover a friend and his girlfriend dead after overdosing. However, they do nothing to alert the authorities, instead just stealing their drug stash.

Authors Note

What would today's Burgess would tell his 10-year-old self? He immediately exclaims, "'Calm down! Don't worry so much, it's going to be alright!'" The story is set in the 1980's and focuses on the problems of young runaways and the temptation of drugs, especially heroin. Tar and Gemma are only fourteen when they decide to run away from home; Tar has been physically abused whereas Gemma cannot put up with her parent’s strict rules anymore. The two end up in Bristol and befriend some people who believe in opening up squats in empty homes and peaceful protesting but ultimately the two get pulled away from these friends in want of more excitement and fall in with the destructive couple, Lily and Rob. My Thoughts: As with Nicholas Dane this story was very sad, but well-written and captivating. Though, I did like Nicholas Dane better, I still got very much involved in the lives of Gemma and Tar, especially Tar. He was by far my favourite character, even though he had many faults. He was the type of person that you wanted to wrap up in cotton wool and keep away from the bad crowd, because he was so easily led into things. He was also the only one in the story that captured my heart, his sweet personality taking a real hammering with what he went through. They move into a small house in the countryside ( Rob's mother owns it) far away from all the drugs. There is only an little bit hash in their luggage to come down slowly. But they don't know that Rob has something with him which he shares neither with Gemma nor the others and when the withdrawal symptoms torment Tar too much he leaves his friends and hitchhikes home to Bristol. The ne xt day the others give up too which causes another row between Lily and Gemma who blames the pregnant girl not to care about her baby. At home Gemma has a talk to Tar where she tells him how he has changed and that she loves him the first time. What happened with Junk was the book became cool - it was much stolen, which was a great compliment. But taking heroin didn't become cool. When people use the term 'suggestible', they mean that if you say the wrong thing to young people they will immediately go out and become junkie whores, or homosexuals, or lorry drivers. But I really don't think it works like that."

At the same time Tar is sent to youth custody, where he becomes clean again. Gemma visits him there. When he gets out, she already has their baby named Oo na. Althoug h she is very happy to have her Tar again, she can't sleep with him and feels very guilty about that and all what happened because he did everything only for her. He loves her so much b ut it doesn't work and they split up. His controversial teenage novel, Doing It, was published in 2003 and won the LA Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature in 2004, and Sara's Face in 2006. His latest books are Kill All Enemies (2011), The Hit (2013), e-book Krispy Whispers (2013) and Hunger (2014). When you write something and you're early on in the writing process, you make up your own rules, you set out the territory. It might be quite obvious territory but you're still setting it out. That's why Junk's legacy has survived because I didn't know the territory, I was inventing it. It really was an adventure for me."It came as a surprise to me when it did so well. There was a huge amount of fuss when it won first the Guardian children’s fiction award, and then the Carnegie medal – both originally awards for younger children’s fiction. People on the inside knew that change was going in teenage fiction, but the press was taken completely by surprise. This is fiction for children? Help! What’s going on? Where had Ratty, Toad and Moley gone? It used to be Alice in Wonderland and Fluffy Bunny – now suddenly it’s junkie whores rolling round in the gutter. What happened to innocence? Above all, why are we subjecting our children to this sort of thing? Why not? Fiction for young people had been moving that way for years… getting older, getting more serious, testing the waters. I was already known for hard hitting, honest books. Klaus, bless him, was up for it… It used to be Alice in Wonderland and Fluffy Bunny – now suddenly it’s junkie whores rolling round in the gutter Burgess believes that we have a tendency to mistake ignorance for innocence. "Innocence is the ability to come out of corruption unblemished. Children certainly don't have that - they can be corrupted. When people talk about innocence, they almost always mean they want to keep their kids in the dark. It's unhelpful and stupid because you can't do it, and I don't think ignorance is a healthy thing. But he meets Rob again and they go on a skip to find something useful, where they get caught by a policeman, but they manage it to get out of the situation. After that they look around the shops and Tar falls in love with a huge and expensive book full of halfnaked women in it which touches his creative artistheart.) Other than Gemma or Tar, I found the characters to be somewhat poorly developed. I especially wanted to hear more from Rob. I felt like he was just kind of there. I wanted to know how he felt, particularly as his relationship with Lily evolves. **I won't spoil it**