Junk

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At the start of the book I really

I failed my 11-plus and there weren’t all that many books being passed around at my school, stuff like In Praise of Older Women [by Stephen Vizinczey], just dirty novels really! George Orwell interested me because of the clarity of his vision and the simplicity of his writing but at that point I really liked fantasy and I was very keen on Mervyn Peake and Gormenghast. It wasn’t until I left school and started coming across a richer world of ideas, when books like The Dice Man, Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-F ive came shining through, that I began to think there might be a way of telling stories connected with life itself. Chasing the dragon ... yeah. It’s like Chinese magic. That smoke, that’s your Chinese dragon, and when you breathe that dragon in and he coils about in your veins, like Lily said, you feel better than anyone else ever did - GemmaJunk is certainly very different from the portrayal of adolescents by earlier writers like Ransome. The novel focuses on two 14-year-old heroin addicts; David, who has for years, been protecting his alcoholic mother from his abusive father, and Gemma, who yearns for adventure and escape from her oppressive parents "They had no doubt at all that unless my life was made as miserable as possible, I'd be a junkie whore by midnight." (Burgess, Junk 65). Gemma's attitude is in stark contrast to for example, Wendy's confident belief that her mother would always leave the window open for her (Barrie 4.1). Both Gemma and David crave freedom, but not the freedom of an innocent childhood, rather the perceived freedom of early adulthood; "It was...being on my own, having an adventure. Yeah. It was life. A big, fat slice of life." (Burgess, Junk 69) That Gemma is only able to experience this adventure by leaving her parents is sadly ironic, and, implies that perhaps such adventure cannot be found within childhood, only by leaving it behind. Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It’s a spell. It’s magic. Listen to the words. You can be anything, you can do anything, you can be anything, you can do anything. Listen to the magic - Lily

His real name is David, but everyone calls him Tar because he hated fags and refused to smoke any cigarettes.That question always comes up when the American Library Association announces the latest banned or challenged books in school libraries. Most of the time, it concerns sexuality, bad language, violence or politically motivated messages. But this is teenage health and wellbeing potentially at risk.

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. I cannot believe I have never read ‘Junk’ before now. It has to be the one of the first books that paved the way for what ‘YA’ is today; a genre that can depict harsh realities in an honest and thought provoking way and Burgess really achieves that here. He is unwilling to put a lower age restriction on his work. Maturity is not a straight line, he argues, and childhood doesn't end on a given date. His own children - Pearl, 10, Oliver, 13, and his 15-year-old stepson, Sam - are bored by, rather than corrupted by, that which they can't contextualise. "The thing that worries me about them reading the books too early is that they don't get enough out of it." He's far more concerned about how Oliver relishes the Alien movies. Books, more than visual material, are self-censoring, he points out, given that you have to make the substantial effort of sitting down and reading the things.Sadly he was a completely different person at the end of the book and that's the harsh reality of his lifestyle. Another was a guy called Mervyn Peake. Do you know Gormenghast?" I say no. "Oh, you should read Gormenghast. I've been praising truthful, simple things and Gormenghast is a fantasy written in a very Gothic style, with these long, gorgeous sentences, which just land on a sixpence. It was a character-driven fantasy and there's just nothing like it." I won't even start on the parents because none of them will get 'Parent of the Year' awards. Especially Tar's, JFC. By the way, if you’re reading this? Don’t cut yourself. I am being completely honest when I say there are better ways of dealing with things. You don’t have to harm yourself to feel better. You don’t have to starve yourself or get drunk or shoot up. Talk to someone you trust and they will help you through whatever shit it is that you’re going through. Now, I’m not an impressionable teenage mind. I’ve never done drugs, never smoked, and I only drink alcohol once in a blue moon. I’m 24 years old.

Burgess won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British author. [4] For the 70th anniversary of the Medal, in 2007, Junk was named one of the Top 10 winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. [5] Junk also won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a similar award that authors may not win twice; [6] it is the latest of six books to win both awards. [a] The smell of meat pie permeates the converted barn in Lancashire's Lune Valley, where the parents of his wife Jude are playing host. Burgess's own parents are outside, enjoying the gentle afternoon sunshine in the brightly bedded garden. His mother asks fretfully about the number of rude words in her son's interview. One of the things that I think is still a big taboo in YA stuff is politics, and there's a reason for that: politics is about taking sides," he says. "It can be about revealing things and telling the truth but, in the end, it's about taking sides; being partisan, in a way. And yet novels are good about being partisan because they ask questions rather than give answers. But it can be done: Orwell did it, people have written really good political novels – and we shy away from it."

I only know that I wouldn’t want my children to read this. I’d only want other adults, adults who know who they are and what they want out of life to read it. Adults who have decided whether or not they’re into drugs, alcohol, self-harm. Adults who won’t be swayed by such a sweet message. I had to put it down about half way through. I was fully expecting the appearance of the heroin, but I wasn’t expecting the teenage prostitution and pregnancy. Now, don’t call me a hypocrite. I do some pretty awful things to my own characters. But those awful things happen in a high fantasy setting: it’s always a bit distant from a story set in the real world, based on real damn events. Once Tar visits his old friend Richard and his girlfriend Sandra. She doesn't trust him and as soon as she recognizes that he is an addict she wants him to leave. But before he nearly leaves them she changes her mind and decides to help him to get rid of it. Although she gives him painkillers against the withdrawal symptoms he isn't strong enough to go through it and runs away. When they find him again they realize that they can help him best when they give him the money for the bus home. This book was recommended to me by a heroin addict, a beloved person who has since tragically died from an overdose. I'm still immersed in grief and read this to look for more answers. As difficult an account as it was, it definitely unsparingly showed the reality of what it's like to be under the influence of such a devastating drug. I can't even imagine what it's like to live with such an addiction but this was the closest I came to glimpsing what so many people have fallen victim to. The horror of it is eye opening and harrowing. Heroin takes away one's dignity, identity, values and personality and replaces all of that with a person unrecognisable to themselves and those who love them. It creates a need so intense for the next fix that everything else is obliterated.