Junk

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At the same time Tar is sent to youth custody, where he becomes clean again. Gemma visits him there. When he gets out, she already has their baby named Oo na. Althoug h she is very happy to have her Tar again, she can't sleep with him and feels very guilty about that and all what happened because he did everything only for her. He loves her so much b ut it doesn't work and they split up. 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. It's quite a long book but I think it was really interesting. I don't know much about drugs or anything but I do think it opened my eyes to what goes on in the world. Funnily enough when I took a break from reading, I turned the T.V on and saw a documentary from Louis Theroux about heroin addicts and I had to watch. I felt really helped me understand things in this book and get what's going on.

Tar moves in too, although Vonny and Richard rather want to prevent that because they are afraid of Lily's bad influence on Gemma and Tar. Lily and Rob were already addicted to heroin when they lived in Manchester but could escape and start a new life in Bristol. But now they begin to use it again. First they steal their food from supermarkets, take all kinds of staff from skips and Rob works as a mechanic. The girls are taking heroin everyday now. All of them maintain that they could give up whenever they want. Sometimes they try to stay clean only to be sure that they can do without it, but it gets more difficult each time and later they don't even try anymore with the excuse that they don't have to show it all the time. They simply don't want to see what has really happened: They have turned into junkies! It gets worse and worse. 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.

Presentation / Essay (Pre-University), 2000

Tar and Gemma paint the rooms of the squat in return for eating and living off Richard`s money. Gemma has some problems with Vonny because she behaves like her mother at home did. Vonny always worries about Gemma because she thinks that she shouldn´t have given up her parents a nd education only to live with Tar and makes her phone her parents to tell them that she is all right. It showed such a huge commitment to friends who despite will do anything for their next hit of heroin are always there for each other and despite not being successful whenever one of them decided to stop they all gave up together to help the other. When their friend is pregnant they all move away and have a cleanse and as a team try and quit heroin even though they don’t last it is the commitment of the group of friends that amazed me throughout.

Maybe you think your mum and dad love you but if you do the wrong things they'll try and turn you into dirt. It's your punishment for being you. Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful. He is a reluctant, if consistent, controversialist. In 1997, he encountered similar hysteria when he won the prestigious Carnegie Medal for Children's Literature with Junk, the story of two 14-year-old heroin addicts. "They're very vocal and they're bullies," says Burgess of his critics. "Nine out of 10 times they have a rightwing, religious agenda. I'm not terribly happy about it. I think if you're going to have a discussion about it, you can probably have a better one than this." What happened with Junk was the book became cool - it was much stolen, which was a great compliment. But taking heroin didn't become cool. When people use the term 'suggestible', they mean that if you say the wrong thing to young people they will immediately go out and become junkie whores, or homosexuals, or lorry drivers. But I really don't think it works like that." And I doubt that was the message, to be honest. The book’s not advocating drug use. It’s supposed to be some sort of warning. It’s supposed to turn kids off wanting to do drugs. Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners". The Guardian 12 March 2001. Retrieved 1 August 2012.He grew up in Ilfield, near Crawley in Sussex, and moved to Reading, Berkshire at the age of twelve. After leaving school with two A-Levels in Biology and English, he enrolled on a six-month journalism course. He moved to Bristol at the age of 21, and began writing, between periods of work and unemployment. He continued writing after he moved to London in 1983, experimenting with short stories, radio plays and children's fiction. His first published book, The Cry of the Wolf (1990), was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.It was for his controversial teenage novel, Junk (1996) that he gained wider recognition. Winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, it is an honest and disturbing account of teenage homelessness and heroin addiction on the streets of Bristol, and has been adapted for television. In 2007, it was shortlisted for the Carnegie of Carnegies. Bloodtide (1999) was joint winner of the Lancashire County Library Children's Book of the Year Award. His comedy Lady: My Life as a Bitch (2001), also received a great deal of publicity for its frank exploration of the sexual behaviour of a teenage girl. Also in 2001, his novelisation of the film Billy Elliot was published, based on Lee Hall's screenplay. Burgess again courted predictable controversy in 2003, with the publication of Doing It, which dealt with underage sex. America created a show based on the book, Life As We Know It. In his other books, such as Bloodtide and The Ghost Behind the Wall, Burgess has dealt with less realist and sometimes fantastic themes. In 2001 Burgess wrote the novelisation of the film Billy Elliot, based on Lee Hall's screenplay. Polyphony is typical for his most famous novels. 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. 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. Lily was a horrifying character, because of how extreme she was. She was the biggest addict of all the friends, and her insistence that she was a good mother even when she shot up between her breasts while breastfeeding highlighted this perfectly. Her boyfriend, and the father of her child, was also a sad, sad character, especially with what we found out he had done in the end to get more junk.

Our attitudes are mired in contradiction, he believes. "There's this great fetish about youth, particularly a sexual fetish. I suppose we must fancy them. Young people - not very young, but when they first develop - are very attractive. People get scared about it."

The point about novels - good novels, anyway - is that help you understand other people, with all their faults and shortcomings. The people who are scared of understanding are the dangerous ones.

At the start of the book I really Often described as the ‘godfather’ of Young Adult fiction in Britain, Burgess has won various prestigious awards, including the Carnegie medal for Junk (1996), but many of his books have been met with as much outrage as success. He has written about a diverse range of subjects, including heroin addiction, teenage sex, Alzheimer’s and cosmetic surgery, and occasionally his work veers into fantasy. He also wrote the novelisation of the film Billy Elliot (2001). Everyone insists marijuana is a gateway drug, but really alcohol is. It's more socially acceptable at least. Once in Bristol, the pair live in a squat for a while and get involved in the punk scene. Gemma is determined to sample all the delights a thriving city has to offer. This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. ( June 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Lily and Rob were the bad apples in this, they were really bad influences and reading about them was just like reading about two people who were literally 'gone' and who are past helping completely. Especially Lily. I mean, in real life, she'd scare me because she's just completely bonkers. She loves drugs so much that she even does drugs while holding her baby and then breastfeeds, and injects whilst pregnant. It's just awful. What would today's Burgess would tell his 10-year-old self? He immediately exclaims, "'Calm down! Don't worry so much, it's going to be alright!'" Richard invites Tar to go to Asia with him to get him out of that drugscene but Tar doesn't want to run away because he is quite satisfied with his life and the success he has as a dealer. Gemma thinks so too in the beginning, because she earns a lot of money in the parlour and she would like to tell her parents how well she does but she doesn't dare to. Although she phones them sometimes she can not go home until she is clean. They don`t even trust her going to school and observe her all the time. Everything is forbidden for her and that is reason enough for her to join Tar.