My Life That Books Built: Guest Post by Melvin Burgess (The Hit Blog Tour)

Although I am cutting back on taking part in blog tours, if an author is happy to write a post that fits with the My Life That Books Built feature that I occasionally run then I am more than happy to host them. Especially if it is a writer as amazing as Melvin Burgess. Melvin's new book The Hit was published last week and although I have not yet had the chance to read it due to other reading commitments, it is very near the top of my TBR pile and I'm really looking forward to it. Over to Melvin:

The book I first fell in love with was The Wind in the Willows. It’s a comfort read, all about home. In some ways it’s in two parts – the parts about Toad, an adventure away from home in which he has to get back and regain his home; and adventure about the Mole finding a new home; and finally those mysterious parts, with Pan, and where the Mole goes back to his old home. But it’s all about home in one form or another. I adored it. My parents got someone to paint me a picture of the Great God Pan which I hung above my bed, so you can guess which parts I liked best.

Perhaps it was Pan who first brought me to myths and legends. My dad worked at OUP for a while, and brought home volumes of books on Czech legends, or Legends of Heath and Moor – if I remember correctly. But the one that really blew me away was Tales of the Norse Gods and Heroes, by Barbara Leonne Picard. I loved those Norse gods, with their tricky ways, their oddly comic tales and warped sense of destiny. I still do. They are the true deities of Northern Europe – not like the soppy Greeks with their curly haircuts and haughty distain for all things human.

I love wild life and I love a laugh. When I was a child you could get both from Gerald Durrell, founder of Jersey Zoo, pioneering conservationist, rescuer of the Hawaiian Goose from extinction and, more importantly at the time for me, Man Who Went Round the World collecting animals for zoos. I envied him almost as much as I envy David Attenborough now.  You could do worse than start with the The Bafut Beagles, although his most famous work is his account of his childhood in Corfu, My Family and Other Animals.

I was always a big fan of fantasy, but my favourite well away was Mervyn Peake’s Gormanghast. Back in the day, fantasy wasn’t the dragons and wizards stuff you get now. We had people like Angela Carter writing it. Try Gormanghast. You’ll never read anything like it in terms of content, character, or language. You’ll see fantasy in a whole new light after this.

Kurt Vonnegut Jnr, Slaughter House Five. Although Goodbye Mr Rosewater is almost as good. No one ever did to sci fi what this man did. Funny, wise and inventive, and utterly in love with the human race, in a sad but amused kind of way. He’s much missed.

George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant. Someone told me recently that this event, which is portrayed as an essay, never happened. Good. It’s a wonderful example of how to talk about politics with such clarity that a child can understand. After Orwell, I knew that if I read something difficult to understand it’s not my fault – it’s the writer’s.

Finally – what am I reading now. Japanese fiction – I love it! Try Natsuo Kirino, Out, or Real World. Have a look at Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara. It’s so refreshing …

Review: Kill All Enemies by Melvin Burgess

Everyone says fourteen-year-old BILLIE is nothing but trouble. A fighter. A danger to her family and friends.
But her care worker sees someone different.

Her classmate ROB is big, strong; he can take care of himself and his brother. But his violent stepdad sees someone to humiliate.

And CHRIS is struggling at school; he just doesn't want to be there. But his dad sees a useless no-hoper.

Billie, Rob and Chris each have a story to tell. But there are two sides to every story, and the question is . . . who do you believe?

Melvin Burgess, an author of some of the most controversial books that have been published for young adults in recent years, is back with another brilliant story, Kill All Enemies. At any other time the content of this book would probably not seem as controversial as other subjects he has covered in the past, but with the huge public outcry following the despicable scenes of rioting and looting that we experienced in the UK during the summer I am sure there will be a number of people (Daily Mail readers most likely) who will condemn this as making excuses for the yobs they blame for causing the problems. As I watched the media coverage of those horrible few days I was almost as disturbed by the comments I was reading on Twitter as I was by the footage that was on the TV - normally intelligent and seemingly laid back people demanding a return for capital punishment and other extreme methods of punishment. I was also deeply saddened by the widespread criticism of our nation's young people, as if every single one of them was to blame. Kill All Enemies is a wake-up call for those people that every teenager is the same, every teen who wears a hoodie is a criminal, and every young person who does not do as well as expected at school is lazy and good-for-nothing.

Kill All Enemies is set in Leeds and tells the stories of Billie, Chris and Rob, three very different young people from different family backgrounds and schools. Through their various actions their paths begin to cross and the three of them end up being 'sent' to the local Pupil Referral Unit (or PRU). There are many PRUs around the country, some good and some not so, but they are the places that kids are sent to when their schools can no longer manage their behaviour any more, whether it be refusal to work, constant defiance of teachers' authority, intimidation of other students and so on. What Melvin Burgess does in this book is show that there are often deep-rooted reasons behind the behaviour of these young people be it family background, undiagnosed learning difficulties, or simply that they just do not fit in with their peers.

I believe that Melvin Burgess had originally set out to create a documentary about the young people who are 'sent' to the UK's PRUs for Channel 4. That programme was never made but from his hours and hours of research and the extensive conversations he had with the young people and the staff who work with them he created Kill All Enemies, a book that although as a whole is a work of fiction, its individual characters are very much based on the kids he talked with and their real life stories, and this makes the already hard-hitting story all the more poignant. I do not generally get overly emotional when reading books, but this one hit me hard. Perhaps this is because I am a teacher, and for seven years I was a Head of Year, occasionally working with young people with similar personalities to Bille, Chris and Rob?

Whether you are a 14 year old schoolboy, a forty year old investment banker or an eighty year old experiencing a well-earned retirement go out and buy this book now. For you younger readers it might make you think about being a little more tolerant of the boy or girl who disrupts your lessons or falls asleep at the back of the classroom. For you adult readers it might help you not to pre-judge a young person based upon what they wear, the language they use, or their refusal to meet your ideal of a normal teenager. Whoever you are, I challenge you not to be affected by the story and its characters, and I know many a tear will be shed by readers of Kill All Enemies. I have already waxed lyrical about it to my school's Head of Learning support, and not only is she going to read it but she also intends to use it as a text with her low ability English group.

Guest Post by Melvin Burgess (author of Kill All Enemies)

Melvin Burgess writes the kind of books that grab you by the throat, shake you around and don't let you go until  they have finished with you. His latest book, Kill All Enemies is no exception to the rule, and is one of the best books I have read this year. My review will appear on The Book Zone soon, but in the meantime here is a brilliant guest piece that Melvin has written for us as part of his blog tour. Billie is one of the characters Kill All Enemies, which tells the stories of three young people who just do not fit in at school for various reasons and eventually find themselves sent to the local PRU (Pupil Referral Unit). Melvin Burgess spent a large amount of time interviewing young people at centres like this, and so some of his story is based upon the real life experiences of the teenagers he met.


~~~

Billie

Billie was a pretty girl, with a quick smile. There something slightly blurred about her skin, which I wondered later might have been made by many small scars. Because Billie was hard – hard as nails. She’d spent years kicking the hell out of everything that moved. Violent, dangerous – and a leader too. There’s a story of how she had a fight with girl, and got half the school out early to go and have a proper war with another school down the road – running into the crowd with her tie round her head as a bandana, like Rambo. There was another story about the time she stamped on some boy’s balls at the Tranmere, for pulling her trousers down.

There was a kind of glory in it. She was the cock of the school. A warrior.

Her story was a harsh one. The eldest of six, her mother had been on the bottle and so she’d spent a good part of her childhood as the main career for her brothers’ and sisters. She was trying, in other words, to hold the family together. Being effectively the mother of six at that age is hard enough – imagine doing it when you have to go to school as well. One of the things she found hardest was the way she was treated like a naughty kid at school, when in the main part of her life, she was having to behave like a particularly responsible adult. School, of course, rather went down the pan. Billie had other priorities – like trying to keep the family together and caring for the people she loved.

She might have asked for help – but of course she couldn’t, because as soon as anyone found out, the whole pack of cards would come falling down. The Social Services would come in, the kids would go into care, Mum would be taken away – she would have failed them. So she did her best to keep it all going, all on her own.

But of course the Social did find out in the end. Her step dad started knocking her mum and the kids around when he got drunk. In they came and it all happened just as she knew it would – kids into care, mum into detox; that was it.

I guess in her own eyes, Billie had failed.

Time heals a great deal, of course. Her mum dried out and the kids were taken out of care and the family was reunited- only, not all of it. There was one kid Mum didn’t want to take back. Billie.

How hard is that?

She spent the next few years kicking the world to pieces. It’s really pretty difficult to blame her.

Billie’s story isn’t unique, by any means. A lot of people would go down under that sort of pressure but somehow, Billie managed to pull herself out of it.

Billie attended the Tranmere center that I was talking about yesterday at Wondrous Reads. She formed a close relationship with Lisa, who ran the Personal development sessions, and I really think it was through those sessions that Billie got a grip on herself. The truth is, this was a girl who put her whole life on hold to keep her family together. How responsible is that? How loyal is that? That’s the kind of girl she was. Behind the scowl and the fights was someone who would do everything she could for those she loved and those who were important to her. It was just a question of getting through. And through those PD sessions, they did.

Quite a thing – and Billie was quite a person. She was charismatic, strong willed, clever and loving. That person could so easily have got lost along the line, but Billie had the strength with a bit of help, to pull herself out of the hat. I’m quite certain that with the right start in life, Billie could have risen to the top of any tree she cared to climb – but after a childhood like her’s, you’re along way behind a lot of your contemporaries in terms of education and financial stability. But emotionally – what an achievement – to come from such a start and turn yourself into what I saw that day; a genuine and loving person.

Way to go, Billie! I find more to admire in her than in almost anyone I know.
~~~

Huge thanks to Melvin for taking the time to write this for The Book Zone. Tomorrow his tour will continue at the Hay Fever Blog, so please do head on over there to fins out more about his story. My review will be appearing on The Book Zone fairly soon, but in the meantime you can read what Tony Bradman at the Guardian thought about Kill All Enemies here.

Review: Nicholas Dane by Melvin Burgess

When Nick's mother dies suddenly and unexpectedly, the 14 year old is sent straight into a boys' home, where he finds institutional intimidation and violence keep order. After countless fights and punishments, Nick thinks life can't get any worse - but the professionally respected deputy head, Mr. Creal, who has been grooming him with sweets and solace, has something much more sinister in mind. Nick has no choice but to escape. Living on the run, he falls in with a modern Fagin, a cheerful Rasta who fences stolen credit cards and car stereos. The scarring, shaming experience he suffered at the hands of Mr. Creal can never quite be suppressed, and when the old hatred surfaces, bloody murder and revenge lead to an unforgettable climax.

In Junk he tackled teenage drug abuse.

In Doing It he took us into the mind and sex life of a teenage boy.

Now, in Nicholas Dane, Melvin Burgess delivers a book that looks at child abuse and the way in which children were treated in some of the UK's worst care homes during the 1980s. Yes, you would be right in thinking that this is a very difficult subject to tackle in a book aimed at a Young Adult audience, and as with Junk and Doing It there will be many adults out there who feel that young people should be shielded from issues such as this. However, I personally would disagree, and even go as far as to say that due to the masterful way in which Mr Burgess tackles this issue, this book should be on the shelf in every secondary school library in the country. I think we often underestimate the desire many young people in this country have to understand issues such as sexual abuse, racism, domestic violence, and so on.

Nicholas Dane is not the kind of book I normally feature on The Book Zone, but when Puffin offered me a copy I read a few reviews and decided that I should give it a try (it has been out in hardback for some time and has just been released in paperback last week). Believe me, for someone who spends a lot of time reading escapist action and adventure stories this book did not make a particularly comfortable read - it is extremely violent in places and the issues of grooming and paedophilia are pretty harrowing. Maybe as someone who works with young people on a daily basis I felt this more deeply than others might, I don't know.

Melvin Burgess claims that the idea for this book came to him when he was thinking about Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, and how Bill Sykes is a particularly violent and abusive character. He started to think about how Sykes may have developed that kind of personality, and came to the conclusion that if a psychologist were analysing Sykes' behaviour today then there would definitely be a suggestion that Sykes has been seriously abused as a child. Dickens was not afraid to tackle the issues of the day, but the idea of Oliver Twist being sexually abused? Let's face it, if it was happening in these institutions in the 1980s, it was almost certainly happening in the Victorian era. So what we have here is kind of a modern take on the Oliver Twist story, but pulling no punches. I am no English teacher but I would imagine that this would make a great text for an A level group to read alongside Dickens' classic.

I loved Junk, and found it near faultless. Unfortunately I cannot make the same claim about this book. Whilst some of the characters, and that of Nicholas in particular, are developed incredibly well and with real sensitivity and empathy for the situation they find themselves in (the result, I think, of much discussion with adults who have gone through the care system), however other characters are very much relegated to the side-lines. It is the motivations, and especially the actions (or lack of them) by some of these secondary characters that left me with a number of unanswered questions.

This book is aimed at the 14+ age group, but teachers, parents and librarians should think carefully about this generalised age bracketing; there will be many 14 year olds who will not be emotionally mature enough to deal with the issues tackled in this book, and especially the pretty graphic scenes involving violence and sexual abuse. I am reminded of a student I was Head of Year to many years ago whose parent rang to complain about an English lesson where he and his peers had been shown the film The Others starring Nicole Kidman. This pupil was 12 and therefore according to the film's certification he was old enough to watch the film. However, he then spent the whole of his school summer holiday having severe nightmares - he simply hadn't been emotionally mature enough to cope with that film, which is fairly scary in places.

Nicholas Dane is published by Puffin and is available to buy right now.