Friday 27 May 2011

Review: JUNK by MELVIN BURGESS

Blurb:

Junk = heroin = bliss = despair = a love story you’ll never forget.

Gemma wants to fly. But no one can fly forever. One day, somehow, finally, you have to come down.


When it first came out in November 1996, Junk attracted a lot of controversy for its drug, sex and prostitution filled plot, but I consider it to be a gritty, well-written novel that adults are just scared of.

The plot centres on two teenagers, David, more commonly known and Tar, and Gemma. They run away to Bristol, and the novel follows them as they take drugs, live in squats, become a prostitute and everything in between. At first, it is really engaging, but towards the end, my attention was starting to waver.

There are many characters, but the four major players – Gemma, Tar, Lily and Rob – are an interesting bunch. They are honest, brutal and real, which makes me think that this is the sort of novel that a lot of teenagers will be able to relate to, one way or another.

The novel is told in first person from the point of view of several characters, except for Chapter One, which is written in third person. This makes the novel slightly jarring, and at the end, where there were two points of view that hadn’t come at all before, I honestly thought it was kind of stupid.

Rating: 7/10

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