Junk

Melvin Burgess

Shock! Horror! Runaways! Sex! Drugs! Booze! Teenage prostitution! Loud music! This book (which won two awards, by the way) gave the puritanical lobby the willies when it first appeared in 1996, you know, the sort of people who think that society's just hunky-dory, that adults are super types who don't beat or abuse their children, that alky parents are a fiction of soap operas and that those nasty drug thingies exist only in movies.

WRONG!

This is a hard-hitting novel which pulls no punches in taking the reader down the slippery slope that Tar and Gemma, the young protagonists, find themselves on after they leave home, and there are a lot of scenes where a strong stomach wouldn't go amiss. It's well and realistically written, and each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different character. The characters themselves are well-drawn, and you really do wonder what's going to happen to them next. The sad thing is, though, that the realism derives in no small way from the fact that there are countless numbers of young people all over the world who find themselves in the predicament of those in JUNK. As Burgess says in the introduction: "The book isn't fact; it isn't even faction. But it's all true, every word."

This is an excellent addition to the realm of Young Adult literature, and deserves a wide readership, in fact, never mind the 'young' - it's just as much a book for adults as well. As with all thought-provoking books, it provides no easy answers, but asks lots of pertinent questions.

Final memo to the puritanical lobby: [a] JUNK does *not* encourage or promote the taking of drugs, casual sex, crime etc. etc. If that's what you think, then the chaps in the white coats'll be round in a little while. [b] If you jumped on the bandwagon and wanted the book banned because you'd 'heard' that the content was nasty, or that it was 'filth', go and read the d*mn thing.