Literature Review: Junk

Title & Year of Publication: Junk, published in 1997

Author: Melvin Burgess. Some other books: Bloodtide, Burning Issy, The Cry of the Wolf, Kite,
Lady: My life as a Bitch, Loving April, Tiger Tiger.

Genre(s) & Theme: Realism. This book strikes us hard to think some issues around us — young people are looking for freedom. Their leaving home and stealing things in the shops, reflecting their thirst of freedom, have indeed added colours to their life, but their pursuit of freedom also leads them to the extreme: got addicted to junk. The adolescents’ relationships with their friends and family have generated some other conflicts, adding more fun yet bringing up a lot more social issues for us to think about.

Main characters: Gemma, leaving her home at 14, is looking for freedom and love. Later, she has got addicted to junk after Lily’s magic words. Tar, same age as Gemma, lives in a messy family with mum drinking booze and sucking tar into her lungs, whereas Tar’s dad always beats her up. Lily, wild and passionate, is fond of swinging in the music and taking drugs to make her fly. She has her own philosophy to life and she has made up her own ‘religion’ that Gems has believed in it so much. Rob, a close friend of Lily, is living with Tar, Gems and Lily and other people in a house in Bristol and has passion on junk, too. Vonny, a caring girl who’s concerned about Tar and Gems, always persuades them to ring their parents up. She’s a bit annoying to Gems sometimes.

Plot summary: Gemma and Tar, leaving their home for freedom and trying everything new and exciting to them at 14, are living in a worn house in Bristol with Lily, Rob, Vonny and other people. Believing in being brainwashed by the grownups and bound by all kinds of rules from their routine lifestyle, these young people live their own way by shoplifting, selling their virginity and other crimes for the only sake of junk, enabling them to fly high and to chase their ‘dragons’.

Narrative style: Classical style. It is in ‘beginning-middle-end’ structure.

Opening few pages / first chapter: The first chapter flows slowly, but it tells us something about Gemma and Tar — Gems has got bored in her family and so has Tar. It seems that boredom has brought them together, but severe arguments between Gems and her dad about her violation of rules, e.g. staying out late at night with a boy and start dating have irritated Gems so much that she is planning ahead to leave home for freedom. The author has set the scene so successfully and stimulated us to question: What will happen to Gems and Tar? Why is this book called Junk? How does it relate to their story?

Setting: The story is set in a car, with Gems and Tar talking in the dark about their family. Misunderstanding, generation gap and different values towards love affairs and being staying out late at night have separated Gems from her parents; her list of things for leaving home in the 3rd chapter has stated how firmly she has made up her mind to leave home. Four years with junk has driven her crazy. Her despair to life makes her miss her family. Love and hatred, temptations and resistance from junk, morality to stay virgin and sell sex have contrasted with each other so strongly throughout the book. Maybe this is what Melvin Burgess suggests in Junk – life is full of extremes and struggling, and the threshold between right and wrong is just vague. It’s all up to our choice.

Style: Every word in Junk is real, colloquial, down to earth and alive. Melvin Burgess hasn’t used fancy words to tell the story but the language we use every day. Long descriptions of how the story goes without conversations among the characters are rare; but the words that the characters use vary in style, and this makes us interpret how they behave and think differently, and how these differences generate conflicts that have separated them, such as Gems and her parents, apart.

Symbols: Junk is bringing the story to the climax. Cigarettes, booze, alcohol, methadone and heroin seem to be different in terms of the hazard to the body, but they all symbolize temptations in our life. Being tempted, people can’t usually stand for it; they are tested whether they can resist from evil things. Claiming to be strong, can people really stay away from them? Lily and Rob used to think they are strong, but finally they have got more addicted to heroin than ever. Sadly, Lily has no courage to come down from heroin. Having knocked on the door of hell, she still can’t wake up and live her own way. When facing temptations, human beings are weak. However strong they claim they can be, they finally fail, like what Tar suffered at the end of the story. As what he said in the last few chapters of the book, “I’m a junkie. I’m just a junkie!” What if he’s believed in Jesus Christ and he lets God to lead him to the brighter path? Maybe it works better to help him get rid of junk again and finally he can turn a new leaf. But he’s not lucky, though. Maybe he’s fond of being a friend of junk, or he’s weak in resisting the temptations and so he’s relaxed to let it ruin his body.

The lyrics printed on some pages throughout the book play a significant role in projecting what Gems, Tar and other young people need — their parents’ love, appreciation, respect and understanding. Gems and Tar do want to let their parents know if they are going fine in their trip, but whenever they have rung their parents up and talking to them on the phone, their hope of being cared and understood has lost because their parents don’t seem to bother to listen (especially Tar’s mum). Lies and cheats are their parents’ responses to the kids’ requests and these have actually made things worse – to Gems and Tar, their parents seem to have given them up and let them do their own way. Their words seem to travel a long way to reach their parents’ ears, or the grownups will never understand what their kids are thinking about, like the fact that Gems’ dad didn’t understand his daughter after their argument at home when she was still at 14. What the parents and kids lack, I suppose, is sensible communication. They seem to have no time to talk and share their ups and downs, or such scenes haven’t been shown in the book to tell us more about the relationship between the kids and parents.

Dandelion is another symbol in the book symbolizing Tar’s love to Gems. More than that, this kind of flowers mean Tar’s source of power to change his life and to come down from heroin because it symbolizes his love to Gems. He has to take full responsibility to take care of Gems as well as his baby girl. Dandelions used to be magical in helping him come out from hell, but the magic fades when there’s a strong association between the bad memories and experience he has and dandelions. Tar lives well finally, but dandelions may have symbolized a scar on his life, making him itchy and think of some bad memories in the past.

There are many symbols in the book that I would like to share, but because of page limit, I can only touch upon the points. Lily, a wild and passionate girl, symbolizes devils while Vonny symbolizes angels in our life. Without going religious, we always have a devil standing on the right and an angel on the left to help us make sensible decisions. Lily and Vonny are playing these roles in the book to govern the way Gems thinks. But sadly, devils are stronger to ruin Gems’ life. Maybe Gems just wants to have a try on new things to spice up her boring life, but her willingness is always triggered by Lily’s magic words. The fact that angels want to help but find no way to help is tragic, and these stories just happen from time to time in our real life. Maybe this is what Melvin Burgess has implied in the story — life is full of tragedies.

Babies have played a magical role in the book, symbolizing an opportunity or gift given by Jesus Christ to live well again, or it symbolizes a turning point of life that devils can live up like angels. With babies in their arms, the young people have to think deeply what they’re pursuing. They have to take full responsibility not for the sake of themselves but a new life. To Tar, his baby girl has really changed his life (more than dandelions have done!) – at least he knows well that he has to be clean to his baby. Babies, to these young people, seem to be soothing their psychological pain over the past few years sticking to drugs.

Point of view: Junk is different from many other English fictions in terms of its point of view. Melvin Burgess has used first-person point of view in all chapters except Chapter 1 to tell just part of the story. This gives readers a lot of fun and thorough understanding of the main characters’ personality, point of view and their thoughts. I feel like the characters are alive and just sitting beside me telling me part of the story as I’m reading it. Instead of describing how the characters look like and how they behave by using lots of words, it’s always a good idea to get them tell their own story right from their mouth. Melvin Burgess has done that and it’s successful.

Most impressive character: Gemma. I feel like looking at my younger sister (I don’t have any younger sister) to go rotten as I read through the chapters. This hurts me a bit, especially when I know Gemma is becoming a heavy user of heroin. Her addiction has upset nearly everyone in the story, but her baby Oona has changed her life and turned her to the bright side of life again. The scene when Gems and her mum met again after 4 years in the hospital really moves me a lot. My tears are wandering around in my eyes when I read, “I want to come home, Mum, can I come home, Mum, please…?” I haven’t thought that Gems is requesting her mum to let her come home again. Gem looks so fragile and now she needs home! What a touching ending!

Most impressive feature: The plot. The story is basically very impressive in the sense that it touches our heart by talking about love between our parents and us. Lack of communication and understanding has separated our parents and us apart in some way, but forgiveness and love bring us together again. Nobody can live without love, no matter how cool we can be. The story also strikes us to think about an issue — kids’ leaving home seems to be a minor problem to many parents, but if really matters when more and more kids are leaving home, and this may have reflected the stupidity and inability of the society.

Least impressive aspect: I try hard to find the flaws in the book but I haven’t got any in my mind. Flaws may pop up in my mind later when I read it the second time.

The message the book conveys: I started reading Junk and I was hooked by the ideas Melvin Burgess has brought up in the story. Family problem or the relationship between the kids and parents is something we must have come across with our parents. I, for example, have had severe arguments with my parents, especially my mum, and after the arguments, I did regret quite a lot. I was so sorry for my losing temper and I might have hurt my mum so much. I think that is what young people usually come across when they can’t agree with their parents’ all kinds of strict rules. This is something what Gemma and Tar have come across, too! Lack of communication, generation gap between parents and children are usually the main problems they have. They hold different values towards different things, e.g. staying out late at night. While children think that it isn’t a big deal to stay out late at night, parents usually say ‘No’ and say it’s dangerous and it’s no good for girls to stay out with boys because they think that they’re going to have sex in a room. In Junk, it seems that Gems didn’t have much time talking to her father although they did have time to talk. Melvin Burgess hasn’t mentioned much about the relationship and the kind of friendship between Gems and her father, or this might be a tactic to develop the story! But in reality, in Hong Kong, there is usually little time for children to talk with their parents because they have to work till late at night, and once they’ve got back home, they may be still stressed by the work (maybe they have to grab the work from the company and continue doing it at home!). I’ve got a private tuition student that his mum has to work for 12 hours a day till midnight. When she comes home, my student has already gone to sleep. That’s usually the case in many other Hong Kong families. So lack of communication is one problem; another problem is thorough understanding between parents and kids. What makes them difficult to communicate well is their different values leading to different attitudes towards the same thing. Gems and her father obviously share little ground on some issues, e.g. staying out late, studying and dating with boys. Gems lack care and understanding from her dad, and this can be an excuse for her to leave home because she finds her family too boring to stay. It’s understandable indeed, because Gems is just a 14-year-old girl. She’s in the puberty. She’s actually finding a role model to learn from, and she’s imitating the way the adults think because she’s being critical. She has her judgment on things. Maybe if Gems’ father had put some more effort in talking to her daughter while her mother is playing the role of softening the atmosphere when argument is just going to blow, Gems would not have gone to the addiction of drugs, not to mention leaving home. She has ruined her life for 4 years indeed, and that’s enough to be a tragedy. The story of Gems and other young people may be just one of the serious cases in the UK. There should be indeed much more serious cases in the world, and that’s what makes social workers have a headache. It’s interesting that there’re no social workers coming up to give them a helping hand, or maybe this is part of the tactic of developing the story again! If there had been some social workers giving them help, they would not have been shoplifting to get money for drugs, or leaving home. It seems to me that Gems, Tar, Rob and Lily are lonely although they have other people around in the worn house like Vonny, Alan and Helen. They’re lonely kids, indeed. They are not concerned by the grownups. But what makes the story much more upsetting is that the stretch of tragedy to the babies. They are heavy users of junk, and the poison is transmitted to the babies and once they’re born, they’ll live the same way as their parents’ — need to get through the hysteric life by taking more and more drugs! Babies are innocent; they shouldn’t be the victims. Putting the message in another way, I’d say Lily and Gems are so irresponsible or too naive that they haven’t thought of the consequences to their babies. They are too young to think of any consequences. Like what they thought, they were thinking about themselves only when they hadn’t got the babies. But luckily, they haven’t dumped their babies on the street and let them die, and that’s made them look a bit more human.

There are too many things I’d like to cover in this part. But generally speaking, Junk is really a good book that young people as well as parents should have a look. Some might have argued that Junk isn’t a good book which is put on the children’s literature shelves. But I have another perspective — Junk has stirred a lot of key issues about family and society for us to think about. At least people can talk about it, and parents can at least get some clues of how much they care about their kids right now, and what they can do if their children have got the same problem, or what they can do if they and the children have some miscommunication and misunderstanding with each other.

Your rating of the book: 5 points. There are really too much for me to share in this book review. I’d like to express as much as I can but because of the page limit, I should keep my ideas rich. Junk is the best novel I have ever read over the past 3 months. Many concerning issues have been stirred up. Family relationship, psychological need of the adolescents in their puberty, young people’s love affairs, their looking for freedom, resistance from temptations and junk and many more. I thought I would just finish a quarter of the book but now I’ve finished it right away. I can’t really put it down even when I’m walking back home or on the MTR train. If I have time, I’d like to read it again and see if I have some different ideas coming up. After all, it’s an excellent book indeed.