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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
One word, three syllables: Underground ...
Taking their anti-social edge one step further, seventeen-year-old Gem and her friends Mira and Lo have decided to go underground. Their activities will be "extreme", "anti-establishment", "avant-garde" and "debauched".
While Gem makes an underground film and Mira sets about pursuing "boys-without-barcodes" no one knows what it is that Lo - the most subversive of the three - has planned. But in the back of her mind, Gem's worried. She feels the balance of the trio's friendship is always weighted against her. And as the weeks draw closer to Christmas, appearances start to deceive and relationships flounder. For all the promise of the group, Underground seems a dark place to be.
Gem is an Australian teenager named after Germaine Greer who lives with her feminist/New Age sculptor mum and whose sole contact with her father is the occassional haiku postcard from Tasmania. She and friends Lola and Mira have formed an Underground (think Goth fashion meets self-conscious intellectualism) that tries to counter the "bar code" herd mentality of others at their school, notably beautiful and bitchy Bliss Dartford. Each summer they adopt a project and this year, inspired by Andy Warhol and at Gem's suggestion they decide to hold Happenings - events inspired by Warhol's Factory, with each girl adopting a project of her own. In Gem's case this is the making of an Underground movie inspired by Warhol's film Kiss and she enlists the help of her workmates (and film students) at the local video store, Dodgy and Marco, to help make it. In making the film, however, Gem is forced to reassess the nature of her friendship with Lola and Mira and her crush on the zit-faced Dodgy and in doing so, discovers a great deal about herself.
Basically this is a standard coming-of-age story. Despite the self-conscious intellectualism and desperation to be cool displayed by Gem's first person narration, the plot boils down to fancying boys, being desperate to have sex and dealing with mates who aren't necessarily mates. I didn't believe Gem's crush on Dodgy, mainly because he isn't established well enough on the page to create a genuine connection between them but also, Howell's description of his acne-riddled skin made me wonder what Gem saw in him in the first place. I would have also liked to see more of Lola on the page - deliberately mysterious and clearly emotionally damaged (witnessed through her self-harm), Gem's idolisation of her and Lola's success at ingratiating herself with Gem's mother could have been further developed within the story and it's a shame that this doesn't happen.
For all this though the writing is polished and although her enthusiasm for Warhol and film theory is somewhat simplistic, Gem comes across as a three-dimensional character with a believable relationship with her mum and two best friends and she does undergo a genuine emotional transformation during the course of the novel. The scene where the Underground crash a party at Bliss Dartford's is nicely handled and Howell slowly unveils what Mira and Lo have been doing while Gem is engrossed in her film. The depiction of Gem's attempts being constantly undermined by her friends wasn't subtle but it was credibly handled and well observed and the prose flows well across the page, making it readable and engaging, even if it's not completely original. The ending is perhaps a little too neatly wrapped up in a bow, but that's forgivable in a debut novel and it certainly wouldn't put me off from reading more from this author.
The Verdict:
A polished coming-of-age story, I found the attempts by the main characters to be anti-establishment and intellectual a little too forced to be credible, but the first person voice of Gem is well handled and credible and I'd be interested in reading more of the author's work.
Taking their anti-social edge one step further, seventeen-year-old Gem and her friends Mira and Lo have decided to go underground. Their activities will be "extreme", "anti-establishment", "avant-garde" and "debauched".
While Gem makes an underground film and Mira sets about pursuing "boys-without-barcodes" no one knows what it is that Lo - the most subversive of the three - has planned. But in the back of her mind, Gem's worried. She feels the balance of the trio's friendship is always weighted against her. And as the weeks draw closer to Christmas, appearances start to deceive and relationships flounder. For all the promise of the group, Underground seems a dark place to be.
Gem is an Australian teenager named after Germaine Greer who lives with her feminist/New Age sculptor mum and whose sole contact with her father is the occassional haiku postcard from Tasmania. She and friends Lola and Mira have formed an Underground (think Goth fashion meets self-conscious intellectualism) that tries to counter the "bar code" herd mentality of others at their school, notably beautiful and bitchy Bliss Dartford. Each summer they adopt a project and this year, inspired by Andy Warhol and at Gem's suggestion they decide to hold Happenings - events inspired by Warhol's Factory, with each girl adopting a project of her own. In Gem's case this is the making of an Underground movie inspired by Warhol's film Kiss and she enlists the help of her workmates (and film students) at the local video store, Dodgy and Marco, to help make it. In making the film, however, Gem is forced to reassess the nature of her friendship with Lola and Mira and her crush on the zit-faced Dodgy and in doing so, discovers a great deal about herself.
Basically this is a standard coming-of-age story. Despite the self-conscious intellectualism and desperation to be cool displayed by Gem's first person narration, the plot boils down to fancying boys, being desperate to have sex and dealing with mates who aren't necessarily mates. I didn't believe Gem's crush on Dodgy, mainly because he isn't established well enough on the page to create a genuine connection between them but also, Howell's description of his acne-riddled skin made me wonder what Gem saw in him in the first place. I would have also liked to see more of Lola on the page - deliberately mysterious and clearly emotionally damaged (witnessed through her self-harm), Gem's idolisation of her and Lola's success at ingratiating herself with Gem's mother could have been further developed within the story and it's a shame that this doesn't happen.
For all this though the writing is polished and although her enthusiasm for Warhol and film theory is somewhat simplistic, Gem comes across as a three-dimensional character with a believable relationship with her mum and two best friends and she does undergo a genuine emotional transformation during the course of the novel. The scene where the Underground crash a party at Bliss Dartford's is nicely handled and Howell slowly unveils what Mira and Lo have been doing while Gem is engrossed in her film. The depiction of Gem's attempts being constantly undermined by her friends wasn't subtle but it was credibly handled and well observed and the prose flows well across the page, making it readable and engaging, even if it's not completely original. The ending is perhaps a little too neatly wrapped up in a bow, but that's forgivable in a debut novel and it certainly wouldn't put me off from reading more from this author.
The Verdict:
A polished coming-of-age story, I found the attempts by the main characters to be anti-establishment and intellectual a little too forced to be credible, but the first person voice of Gem is well handled and credible and I'd be interested in reading more of the author's work.
