I read a couple of
great young adult/middle grade books during my holidays. The Glass Republic, the
second book in Tom Pollock’s Skyscraper Throne urban fantasy trilogy, and the
first two books in Gail Carrigher’s Finishing School steam punk series, Etiquette and Espionage, and Curtsies and Conspiracies. On the surface, they’re very
different series. Pollock’s is a dark and gritty story that doesn’t shy away
from difficult topics, and Carriger’s is light, witty and full of humour.
But they have much in
common, a female protagonist and a very imaginative and unique world-building
among the most obvious. Pollock’s series is set in modern day London and Carrigher’s
in Victorian time, but a young girl's steps towards adulthood and growing pains are universal themes regardless of the time and place.
Both series handle the
themes of prejudice and acceptance. In The Glass Republic the protagonist, Pen,
is trying to recover from torture she suffered in the first book. Her face
marred with ugly scars, she finds it difficult enough to look herself in the
mirror, let alone face her peers who are not compassionate. Matters only get worse when she is thrown into a mirror world where she is constantly
stared at and admired for her uniqueness, as symmetry and unblemished
countenance are found shameful.
In the Finishing
School series, Sophronia has it easier. She is looked down on because of her
background, but in general she fits in fine. The spurned other is the
supernatural creatures, vampires and werewolves. That one of the main
characters is black – fairly rare in Victorian London – seems almost
superfluous and like an afterthought in this context.
Common themes for many
young adult books are finding love and exploring sexuality, but neither of
these series put a great emphasis on those. Sophronia, being a fourteen-year-old
Victorian girl, is oblivious to latter and only vaguely aware of the first.
When she has romantic feelings, her greatest concern is whether the person is
socially acceptable or not. While romance isn’t the driving force of the series,
Sophronia’s interest in a black working class boy will make things difficult
for her in the books to come.
Pen is faced with
similar difficulties. There are so many things she has to take into
consideration; her Muslim faith and her parents’ wishes for a suitable spouse,
and the dictates of the mirror world that is as class conscious as Sophronia’s
Victorian society. In the end, she goes against everything and her self-image
when she falls for a girl – more acceptable in the mirror society than the fact
that she comes from a lower class.
Both series are
immensely enjoyable in their different ways. Their rich worlds and imaginative
plots, the drama in Pollock’s series and comedy in Carrigher’s kept my interest
throughout, and ensure I’ll be reading the upcoming books too.
And I’m not ashamed to
admit it.
In June, Ruth Graham
wrote in Slate how adults “should feel embarrassed” when what they’re reading is
written for children. Not because the books are bad – she discards the
obviously bad books and concentrates on those with literary merit. She objects
to them because their (adult) readers “are asked to abandon the mature insights
… that they (supposedly) have acquired as adults.”
Graham shows curious
lack of empathy. I think our different perspective is precisely what makes
young adult books enjoyable. Like with any books we read, we can put ourselves
in someone else’s shoes and experience life from a different angle, for however
briefly.
In that, a teenager’s
perspective isn’t any worse or less valuable than an adult’s. We can learn
something of ourselves just like we do when read about ‘mature’ characters. It
can be even more valuable for someone who has adapted to the dictates of the
mature society to see things like a child would.
Graham rejects YA
fiction because she sees it merely as “escapism, instant gratification, and
nostalgia”. It’s all that, but I don’t see them as bad things. Nostalgia is
necessary for humans from time to time. It puts our present and future into
perspective. With YA fiction we can relive the bitter pain of the first crush
without the emotional upheavals and insecurities of the actual teenage, and
feel good knowing that whatever happens, we don’t have to return to that again.
Moreover, YA fiction is not alone in pandering to easy emotions. Adult genre
fiction does the same, its popularity a proof that readers actually want escapism
from their books.
However, the biggest
crime of the YA fiction is, in Graham’s opinion, that it lacks the “emotional
and moral ambiguity of adult fiction – of the real world”. Neither of the series
that I read can be said to be realistic. That doesn’t mean they don’t represent
reality. The themes are real and they are treated as multi-dimensional.
Pollock assumes that even younger readers are capable of seeing the world in
other shades than black and white, and Carrigher has created a school where
young children are taught the morally ambiguous skills of espionage and
assassination.
I have no idea how to
defend YA fiction – or any fiction for that matter – against the accusation of not
being ‘of the real world’. In real world, and apparently in fiction based on
it, there are no happy endings, and so “adult readers ought to reject [YA
fiction] as far too simple”. In Graham’s
opinion, adults should be adults in everything they do. But the definition of
adulthood has changed.
There is a trend in
modern society of postponing the adulthood. People well in their thirties do
not see themselves as mature. They don’t want to grow up, if it means giving up
things that they’ve enjoyed doing since childhood. Reading young adult fiction
with its “uniformly satisfying” endings could merely be a symptom of that
trend. Whether this is good or bad can, of course, be argued over. But I doubt that reading realistic fiction will make anyone mature faster.
The oddest of Graham’s
notions is, however, that adults who read YA fiction rob teenagers a chance of
moving to the ‘grown-up’ fiction. I don’t even know how that could be possible.
There is no natural path that guides readers from one type of books to another,
and from one age group to another. Books from different times, genres and
literary ambitions coexist for anyone to find and read. Adults who read YA
fiction do not make teenagers blind to other books. Moreover, just like adults
want to return to their youth, teenagers have a need to experience the world of
adults. They will discard YA books far faster than the adults who read them –
perhaps to return to them later.
I don’t read YA
fiction exclusively, nor do I read all of it. But I won’t discard good books
merely because of my physical age or my assumed stage of maturity. I won’t
limit myself to books suitable for my age either. I don’t need fiction to
constantly remind me that life is hard. And I won’t be ashamed of sometimes
wanting to forget it, be it with the help of young adult or some other escapist fiction.
That in mind, let me
remind you that Our Lady of the Streets, the last book in Pollock’s trilogy will
come out in August, and Waistcoats and Weaponry, the third book in the
Finishing School series, is published in November. And Graham’s article can be read here.
