Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Taste the Bright Lights by Laura Canning
I recently finished a book by Laura Canning, who some of you Blytonites might recognize as the reviewer of the St Clare's and Malory Towers books on my site, as well as a number of articles. Laura is from Belfast, Ireland, and is a full time journalist and writer with lashings of published work. I don't let just anybody contribute to EnidBlyton.net, you know! Anyway, her pet project of the moment is Taste the Bright Lights, formally known as Story of My Life, about thirteen-year-old Lisa and her friend Nicola running away from home. This is a self-published novel, but I truly believe it's destined for great things, one of those "important" novels that critics sometimes harp on about.
There's a lot to say about this book, but first the basic plot: Lisa and Nicola are best friends at their school in Craigavon, a "grim wee town," and as usual they meet up after school with all their "friends" to drink booze by the lake, where they have to watch out for the "peelers" (police). Okay, so straight away you must realize that this isn't your innocent Secret Seven or Famous Five story. These school kids don't go on picnics; instead they have liquid lunches — bottles of voddy, Bacardi Breezers, alcopops, Buckfast, and of course beer. They also smoke a lot, and insult each other, and get into fights, and generally do the exact same things that Enid Blyton characters don't.
But this is all typical for hard kids in a hard school in a hard area. What's not so typical is that Lisa has a mum that scorns her and a stepfather (or stepda) that beats her. When Lisa gets into trouble at school or is arrested by the police and brought home, Paul puts on a "concerned dad" face but, when the door is closed, throws her across the room and bruises her badly, while Lisa's mum stands by. It's pretty grim material, but it goes a long way to explaining Lisa's defensive, scowling exterior while on the inside is a timid little girl who just wants to fit in and be loved. Part of being a teenager in a hard school, though, is not coming across like a wimp, so she'd sooner get in a fight than own up to being unhappy.
Definitely not the sort of thing Enid Blyton readers are used to! But worse than that, things really take a nosedive when Nicola — pretty, popular Nicola — discovers that she's pregnant.
Without wanting to give too much away, Lisa and Nicola run away from home. For Nicola, this seems like the only thing she can do to avoid getting into trouble over being pregnant. For Lisa, running away is something she's dreamed about for a long time. Anything to get away from her stepda! So Part Two of the story is all about The Squat where Lisa and Nicola join with a few other runaways/homeless people and spend each day stealing and each evening getting drunk... and worse. There's no use trying to hide the fact that this is a hard-hitting book, so young Blytonites beware! But it's a good book, very good indeed, and on the whole a very sad story. Many of these kids are the snotty, scowling, sarcastic teenagers you'd hate to have hanging around your neighborhood... but hey, there's nothing for the kids to do, the parents don't seem to care an awful lot, so who can you blame? This story could be set in any dismal city or town anywhere in the world — this one just happens to be in Craigavon, near Belfast.
The book has a number of positive reviews from literary agents, among others, and I tend to agree with them all. For instance:
"very well written and insightful" — Keirsten Clarke, Pepper Press
It's certainly insightful, and I have to wonder what kind of personal experience Laura had with Lisa's character. But then again, Laura is a journalist and does a lot of research. In any case I totally believed in what I was reading. I wanted to take Lisa out of that environment and put her in a nice place where she could, in time, relax and feel at home. The poor girl is one big spiky defense mechanism, forever wishing people would just leave her alone, and what she sees as "brilliant" (like the nasty squat she ends up in) is just because what's really brilliant (a home with caring parents) has never existed for her.
As for being well written... Well, that's hardly a surprise. But what's really clever about this book is the way it's deliberately poorly written. This story is written in the first person perspective from Lisa's point of view, and the style shows that very clearly, and much more realistically than most books. I've read beautifully written books in the first person, manuscripts supposedly written by a main character who is not a professional author by any stretch of the imagination. Take Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas books. He's a fry cook, and while he may be educated, the way the books are written — supposedly by him later in life — just don't sit right. They're too perfect. Lisa's story, on the other hand, is told in a rough and ready way:
I don't remember too much either about the row me and Paul had, I only have wee flashbacks. It's always the same anyway. I remember him shouting at me I was a drunken wee slut, and I remember laughing at all his empty beer bottles sitting beside the couch. I remember him hitting me. I remember trying to hit him back, and I remember him opening the door and me hitting the wall when he threw me into the hall by my hair and told me to go up to bed now you fat useless slag.
You very quickly get "into" Lisa's no-nonsense prose. She tells it like it is. The dialogue is presented in an unorthodox way too, using long dashes rather than quote marks, and even this works well because you get the feeling that Lisa wouldn't have had the smarts to get the punctuation quite right anyway. If anyone's read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, you'll know what I mean when I say that in very rare cases the dialogue and narrative work better when "roughened up."
"GREAT book, very authentic. All teenagers should read it, definitely all parents. Will become a classic." — Reader review, lulu.com
Yes, all teenagers should read it. Funny thing is, it's the kind of thing most parents wouldn't want their teenagers to read because it contains some adult themes and a sprinkling of mild swearing. There's nothing gratuitous in this book though. Most of the descriptions of "adult scenes" are just mentioned in a matter-of-fact way. It's the idea of what's being said that's disturbing. This book could feasibly be the kind you'd read in class at school. You know how Lord of the Flies has some violence in it? You remember how I Am David involves a boy escaping from a concentration camp in eastern Europe? Heck, I even saw a TV movie of Shakespeare's MacBeth in a school classroom, in which a man had his head chopped off and another man had a sword stuck in his throat. Somehow these "important" stories are okay to show to teenagers, as long as the parents sign a wee permission note. And I think Taste the Bright Lights definitely fits into the same category of "adultness"... only far more relevant today than kids stranded on an island, a boy escaping from a concentration camp, and oddly-spoken medieval men having sword fights.
I asked Laura if she's tried to have the book published "traditionally" and she said:
I do think the book should be 'properly' published, but every publisher/agent who has seen it has really liked it but thinks it's too controversial. Hence the remarketing as an adult book, to be aimed at teenagers...
So there you go. One day I'm sure this book will be handed around the classroom as a lesson in what NOT to do after school. Go on picnics, solve mysteries, play tricks on the local bobby's nephew... anything but this!
Young Blytonites beware — this is not The Secret Island where a group of happy children make a house out of willow trees and sell strawberries down the market. This is grim reality. But with that in mind, I'd recommend it to anyone, teenagers and adults alike. It's also got some very funny laugh-out-loud moments — sadly not enough of them:
Paddy looked well scundered getting scooped with Mark, she always said she wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole attached to another ten foot pole, so that vodka must work well alright.
The mention of "well scundered" above reminds me that this book is littered with Irishisms, and "well scundered" (embarrassed and flustered) is one of them. Anyhoo, you can buy this book from Laura's website at lauracanning.com. If you do buy it, PLEASE remember to review it somewhere, like at Amazon, or just email her and allow her to quote you if she wants to, or leave a review right here in the comment section below. Reviews help sell books, and this one needs selling.
This post has 6 comments
"Grim reality"..... sounds my kinda stuff. ;-) I really hate dialogue, especially with correct punctuation, such as quote marks.
Interesting to see that it's self-published--what an effort! Reminds me of my novel, of which I wrote the last chapter a few weeks ago. Editing time!
Julian
I'm very surprised she's had trouble finding a mainstream publisher though, because most of the contemporary YA novels I come across on the shelves contain swearing, explicit sex scenes, drugs scenes and so forth. Gritty realism has been around for at least a couple of decades, so I'm not sure why any publisher/agent would find this book too controversial.
I think it's the tone as well as the content of the book though, it's pretty harsh. Still, quite a few teenagers have read it now and found it thought provoking as well as a good read, so I'm happy enough with that at the minute -- that was the main aim. The shedloads of dosh should come later...
Thanks to Keith for such a great review btw!
Laura
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