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Junk by Melvin Burgess
The Blurb On The Back:
junk = heroin = bliss = despair = a love affair you'll never forget
Tar loves Gemma, but Gemma doesn't want to be tied down - not to anyone or anything. Gemma wants to fly. But no one can fly forever. One day, somehow, finally, you have to come down.
There's a reason why this book won both the Guardian Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal and that's because it's simply brilliant - a Trainspotting for teenagers. Told in the first person mainly by teens Tar and Gemma and set in Bristol in the early 1980s, it's a very believable look at how two teenagers descend into drugs and whilst it doesn't hide from how drugs make the characters feel, it's also very good at showing what comes along with that high.
What particularly impressed me is the way that Burgess plays with the reader's sympathies. At the beginning of the book, you find yourself really sympathising with the hapless Tar who is running away from two alocholic parents - one of whom emotionally abuses him, the other physically abuses him. Gemma by contrast is shown as being quite selfish - her biggest concern is to get away from two parents whose love is suffocating and she's happy to use Tar as a means of getting away, giving him sex even though she knows that she doesn't love him. As the book progresses however, you see how drugs affect both characters and as Tar steals to fund his habit and Gemma sells her body to fund hers, you become aware of how selfish and hard Tar is becoming and how Gemma is starting to realise that she can't lie to herself much longer. It's particularly interesting to see Gemma become the stronger character towards the end of the book - she's given something to get clean for and she's determined to do it, even though it means having to return to everything she gave up. There's a good contrast here between Gemma and the apparently glamorous Lily who is unable and unwilling to make the same choices and who is revealed to be living in a pathetic state of self-delusion.
Burgess gives other characters, including Lily, her boyfriend Rob, anarchists and squatters Vonny and Richard and tobacco shop owner Skolly to give an additional perspective on Tar and Gemma's story and also to flesh out the attitudes to and affects of taking heroin. The effect is to reinforce the drastic nature of Gemma and Tar's decline and Burgess is not afraid to pull his punches - his look at Gemma, Sally's and Lily's descent into prostitution is chilling. Neither does Burgess pull his punches when it comes to showing how difficult it is to come off heroin - Tar in particular is used to reinforce what an ordeal it is and Burgess doesn't shy away from describing the physical as well as the mental affects and also how the temptation to use is always there, even when the characters have come off the junk.
It's difficult to find anything to criticise about the book - Burgess keeps his character's voices distinct, the story is always kept moving and he doesn't preach to the reader - leaving them to come to their own conclusions. The only possible nitpick that I could think to make relates to the chapters recounted by Tar's father, which draw an interesting parallel between addiction to alcohol and its effects and addiction to smack to show that father and son are closer than Tar wants to think. For me, the reference to alochol, whilst perfectly valid, seemed a little too much like laying it on although that said, the characterisation of Tar's father was very well handled.
Anyone who thinks that their children will find drugs attractive as a result of reading this book is a fool. It's genuinely horrifying and chilling and I don't think that any teenager with half a brain would come away thinking that heroin is a great life choice.
The Verdict:
Powerful, unflinching and never patronising this is a really good story that tells you everything you'd ever want a teenager to know about drug-taking and where it can lead.
Tar loves Gemma, but Gemma doesn't want to be tied down - not to anyone or anything. Gemma wants to fly. But no one can fly forever. One day, somehow, finally, you have to come down.
There's a reason why this book won both the Guardian Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal and that's because it's simply brilliant - a Trainspotting for teenagers. Told in the first person mainly by teens Tar and Gemma and set in Bristol in the early 1980s, it's a very believable look at how two teenagers descend into drugs and whilst it doesn't hide from how drugs make the characters feel, it's also very good at showing what comes along with that high.
What particularly impressed me is the way that Burgess plays with the reader's sympathies. At the beginning of the book, you find yourself really sympathising with the hapless Tar who is running away from two alocholic parents - one of whom emotionally abuses him, the other physically abuses him. Gemma by contrast is shown as being quite selfish - her biggest concern is to get away from two parents whose love is suffocating and she's happy to use Tar as a means of getting away, giving him sex even though she knows that she doesn't love him. As the book progresses however, you see how drugs affect both characters and as Tar steals to fund his habit and Gemma sells her body to fund hers, you become aware of how selfish and hard Tar is becoming and how Gemma is starting to realise that she can't lie to herself much longer. It's particularly interesting to see Gemma become the stronger character towards the end of the book - she's given something to get clean for and she's determined to do it, even though it means having to return to everything she gave up. There's a good contrast here between Gemma and the apparently glamorous Lily who is unable and unwilling to make the same choices and who is revealed to be living in a pathetic state of self-delusion.
Burgess gives other characters, including Lily, her boyfriend Rob, anarchists and squatters Vonny and Richard and tobacco shop owner Skolly to give an additional perspective on Tar and Gemma's story and also to flesh out the attitudes to and affects of taking heroin. The effect is to reinforce the drastic nature of Gemma and Tar's decline and Burgess is not afraid to pull his punches - his look at Gemma, Sally's and Lily's descent into prostitution is chilling. Neither does Burgess pull his punches when it comes to showing how difficult it is to come off heroin - Tar in particular is used to reinforce what an ordeal it is and Burgess doesn't shy away from describing the physical as well as the mental affects and also how the temptation to use is always there, even when the characters have come off the junk.
It's difficult to find anything to criticise about the book - Burgess keeps his character's voices distinct, the story is always kept moving and he doesn't preach to the reader - leaving them to come to their own conclusions. The only possible nitpick that I could think to make relates to the chapters recounted by Tar's father, which draw an interesting parallel between addiction to alcohol and its effects and addiction to smack to show that father and son are closer than Tar wants to think. For me, the reference to alochol, whilst perfectly valid, seemed a little too much like laying it on although that said, the characterisation of Tar's father was very well handled.
Anyone who thinks that their children will find drugs attractive as a result of reading this book is a fool. It's genuinely horrifying and chilling and I don't think that any teenager with half a brain would come away thinking that heroin is a great life choice.
The Verdict:
Powerful, unflinching and never patronising this is a really good story that tells you everything you'd ever want a teenager to know about drug-taking and where it can lead.