Brisbane bookseller Christopher Currie, whose first novel The Ottoman Motel was award-nominated several times over, notes in the acknowledgements to his new novel, Clancy of the Undertow, that his publisher acted “not at all surprised when I brought her a YA [young adult] book instead of the two other serious adult books I had promised her”.
Implicit in his comment are all the issues the YA debate has raised over the past few years, particularly: what defines a book as “young adult” and what defines the readers of such titles?
Clancy, 16, lives in the dead-end Queensland town of Barwen with her two brothers and parents. To Clancy’s mind, she and her family are the town’s misfits, weirdos and freaks. Clancy loves Nature Club where the local nerds congregate on the weekends. She’s desperate to learn to drive and struggles to define her yearnings for Sasha, the girlfriend of Barwen’s chief bogan.
When Clancy’s father is involved in a traffic incident in which two local teenagers die, the family is further ostracised. The summer holiday before her final year of high school becomes the proving ground for understanding the nature of true friendship, the importance of family and the value in being different.
It’s tempting to praise Currie for his “bravery” in writing a novel from a teenage girl’s perspective, especially one who is struggling to come to terms with her sexuality. He could easily have chosen a male protagonist. But Currie engages with Clancy with such warmth and empathy, it’s clear he has not forgotten what it is to be a teenager.
The dialogue is natural and quick-paced, peppered with Clancy’s inner thoughts, from her painful interactions with her parents (is there any other kind?) to her excitement when Sasha finally notices she exists. There is also a lot of humour in Clancy’s dry assessment of her mother’s parenting skills, which involve hitting her up with “greeting-card racks worth of motivational quotes”.
Then there’s Clancy’s awkward conversation with her heart-throb over caramel milkshakes at the roadhouse. When Sasha asks if it’s true she is part-Aboriginal, Clancy responds: “Uh, like, an eighth or a sixteenth or something. I guess. Mum’s dad’s dad was or something.” Her skin is all wrong compared to the luminous Sasha, she laments. “Yellowy-brown ... Me and Angus and Titch have all got it, and it just looks like we’re dirty or sick.” It’s the only reference to race in the novel.
The arrival of a new girl in town, Nancy, allows Currie to touch sensitively on the issue of bullying. It’s with Nancy that Clancy is able to build her first proper “adult” friendship and confide in her feelings for Sasha.
Teenage protagonists represent a stage in life when our personality is in greatest flux. Our sense of self and of belonging are never so shakeable as they are in these formative years. If JD Salinger had written The Catcher in the Rye today, it would have been classified as young adult. So too Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Guardian Australia recently reviewed Tony Birch’s Ghost River and Peggy Frew’s Hope Farm. The protagonists in both stories are 13.
The brouhaha around what constitutes a YA novel versus a novel for adults is surely semantic. Publishers label books YA when marketing to a teenage audience but various surveys, notably the Bowker survey of 2012, suggest that 55% of purchasers of YA novels are over 18, with the biggest group aged 30 to 44.
Set against these statistics are the opinions of critics such as Helen Razer in Attention Young Adult Fiction Fans: Grow Up for Daily Review and Ruth Graham’s Slate article Against YA, both claiming adult readers should not be reading teen fiction.
But why not read YA? The Australian scene is a vibrant mix with many new voices reflecting back a different kind of Australia. Consider Alice Pung’s Laurinda (2014), Sarah Ayoub’s Hate Is Such A Strong Word (2013), or Alyssa Brugman’s novel Alex as Well (2013), which explores issues of gender misidentity.
It’s a mistake to assume these novels are dumbed down for children. The award-winning Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, which came to mind while reading Clancy of the Undertow, could easily have been categorised as YA. It is set to become both a film and stage play in 2016. Margo Lanagan’s novel Sea Hearts made the 2013 Stella shortlist. YA writer Sonya Hartnett joined Sofie Laguna on the 2015 Miles Franklin shortlist, which Laguna went on to win with The Eye of the Sheep, a book that crosses the boundaries of adult and YA fiction.
Whatever the case, Currie has a talent for keeping his writing real. From the dialogue to narration, Clancy of the Undertow blends the excruciation, confusion and hope of being a teenager into a novel that will pull in readers of any age. It is a book to pass on, or as Currie says in the acknowledgements: “By reading this final sentence you are now legally obliged to buy the book for five of your friends.” Lucky for him it’s Christmas, the perfect time to share a book you love.
- Clancy of the Undertow is published by Text Publishing
