Plus ca change...

Authors can only write the kind of books they do, says Adele Geras and she couldn't do Junk or It's My Life. The winner is the teenage reader, who's never had a wider choice.

Teenagers have changed a great deal in the last 25 years. Teenagers are exactly the same now as they always have been. I'm starting with these two statements because I believe both of them and sometimes I think they're both true at the same time.

Here are two phrases I swore I'd never use: 'Young people today...' and 'In my day...' But it's hard to avoid them when considering books for teenagers - my own and those of other writers. In my day, then, our knowledge of sexual matters was more theoretical than practical. Lady Chatterley's Lover, Doctor Zhivago and, more than either of these, Peyton Place by Grace Metalious showed eager readers what was possible, though it would be some time before we (and I'm aware that I'm speaking for a small minority of boarding-school girls) encountered the real thing.

Drugs hardly impinged on our lives at all until the 60s. Cigarettes and alcohol were our temptations and hiding a packet of 10 Kensitas under the floorboards of our bedroom was the sort of thing that could get you into serious trouble and maybe lead to expulsion. And yet, I'm quite sure that, even though the numbers are much greater now, very many young adults got up to just the same sorts of things then as they do today. There were Teddy Boys, Mods and Rockers, and street crime. Cinema seats were torn up as Elvis set us all on fire with his music. I'm prepared to bet that the same dreams and desires, the same worries and anxieties affect all young people everywhere and at all times. This was one of the things I was trying to demonstrate in my novel Troy.

A closed book
One thing, however, has certainly changed and that's the level of education of most people reaching the age of 14. Or maybe it's not the level that's different but the content, and what is actually taught. The decline of classical studies in schools has meant that many children have no access to the Iliad or the Odyssey except in watered-down primary versions. The King James Bible is not used nearly so much in schools, so that great treasure house of beauty remains literally a closed book. Shakespeare is read in bits and pieces very often. Dickens, Austen, the Bront‘s, Hardy, Eliot, Gaskell: these writers may not be encountered at all.

This is not to say that modern works should not be studied, but there is an entire background that's missing from the cultural life of many modern children. Even nursery rhymes and fairy tales are by no means common knowledge.

Here's a confession. When I write a novel for older readers, I never for one moment think of the present-day teenager who might be at the other end of the book. I am telling a story which I want to read myself. After the book is written, I can look at it and say, for example: 'Voyage might be interesting to young people who have to undergo great changes when their families are forced to move, and they feel disoriented in the world', but that wasn't my reason for writing it. What I wanted to do in that book was to put a collection of people in a confined space and see what happened. I wanted to situate them neither in their homeland, being persecuted, nor in the New World, struggling for their living, but somewhere in the middle, and on a ship, which as well as being a wonderful setting physically is also pleasingly metaphorical.

In Silent Snow Secret Snow, I used the 'everyone trapped together in a beautiful setting' theme again, but this time I was interested in exploring the horrors and joys of the family, closeted together at that most fraught and most decorative of times, Christmas. It's true that I also touched on all sorts of problems such as sexuality (one of my heroes is uncertain about coming out as gay to his family), ageing and illness and different kinds of love. But the main impetus for the narrative was the house itself because that is what often starts the process going for me - a place.

The sense of place comes out most strongly, I think, in a book of mine that's out of print, but which is probably still around in libraries. This is a collection of ghost stories called A Lane to the Land of the Dead and every tale takes place in the real Manchester, so that any native would recognise the streets and even the individual house and shops I mention. Ghost stories are not meant to tackle burning questions of a social nature, and yet it's in this book that I get nearest to addressing issues - such as racism ('The Dracula Mask') or homelessness and child abuse ('A Lane to the Land of the Dead') and the Manchester clubbing scene ('Whispers from the Hotel California'.) Anyone who reads these stories will see that I tackle these subjects at a tangent, not head on, and quite often in a rather poetic and even whimsical way. In other words, I don't set out to answer questions, provide a life plan to follow or be an agony aunt in any way. I'm just trying to make readers glance uneasily over their shoulders and have a sense of the mystery of all sorts of things.

Sisters in love with the same man
When I came to write Troy what I was interested in telling was a story of relationships between young people. It's a love story, and the fact that it happens with the city of Troy as a background is, in one sense, irrelevant. By this I mean, I could have told exactly the same story (sisters in love with the same young man, and so on) and located it anywhere, but the fact that I chose that place at that time brought with it all sorts of other considerations. The main one was: I could not take for granted that my audience was aware of the whole story of Helen, Paris, and the 10-year war. Therefore, I had to find ways of telling them all they needed to know and I found various ways of doing this. The resulting novel has had a very good reception and I'm delighted by the fact that young people who read it are not a bit fazed by the baggage that comes with the story, and in fact are thrilled, as every generation since 6000 BC has been, with the tales of the Trojan War. It's true that most reviews called the novel 'a retelling' but I don't really mind. I am now about to start writing a story about marriage, fidelity, homesickness and longing called Ithaka, which will touch on some of the stories found in the Odyssey, but which will not have Odysseus as the main character.

Writers can only write the kind of books they do write. Most people write out of some kind of obsession and many of the things that are fashionable as subjects nowadays are of no interest to me at all. The whole world of drugs is a closed book, for reasons of boredom. My lack of interest in drugs and all that attaches to them extends from Thomas de Quincey and William Burroughs to Irving Welch. However, Melvin Burgess's Junk tackles the subject head on and teenage readers have loved the book. I can imagine myself writing more readily about a pregnant teenager, but so far I have not done. Mary Hooper, however, has written very well on the whole topic in her Megan books, and Rosie Rushton deals humorously and sensibly with a whole host of 'problems' that afflict teenagers. Linda Newbery, who has for years brought out well-written and interesting novels on a whole variety of subjects without too much fanfare is about to publish a book called The Shell House, which combines the concerns and worries of modern youth with its counterpart during the First World War. The story unfolds around a ruined stately home. It's a novel that is at one and the same time romantic and also clear-eyed in its depiction of youthful sexuality. Jean Ure wrote an excellent book called Play Nimrod for Him about two young gay men and more recently her It's My Life manages to be both funny and true about the very difficult subjects of homosexuality and suicide. Anne Fine throws a spotlight on all sorts of matters relating to the family; there's Celia Rees's Truth or Dare about autism, and on and on.

There's a whole wealth of reading out there for any teenager who wants to find it, and I haven't even touched on the Americans, who have a knack of getting the first-person, youthful voice exactly right, as in Holes by Louis Sachar and You Don't Know Me by David Klass. And Robert Cormier's work is an education and a delight from beginning to end.

You can only write the kind of books that you can write. I do not read fantasy and science fiction (with the notable exception of Philip Pullman) and so I don't write that kind of book either. I love, though, off-the-wall things that are completely unlike anything else and into this category falls Jan Mark's astonishing novel They Do Things Differently There, which ought to be a cult classic.

Fingerprints
I can trace the fingerprints, as it were, of the kind of books I liked to read as a teenager on almost everything I write. Little Women was a great influence and I love writing about families, especially ones with a lot of sisters in them. Jane Eyre, mixed in with M. R. James and others, gave me a taste for the supernatural and the Gothic and the strange which has influenced my ghost stories. I loved Ballet Shoes and almost every other novel about theatrical performance, and I still relish writing about acting, dancing, putting-on- the-show-right-here, and so forth. Cats appear in almost every book I write, and there I am following a long line of cat-mad writers, such as Colette. I like old women, because I had terrific grandmothers, and because I am greedy I like writing about food... so it goes.

I suppose if I were to sum up what I liked writing about it would be relationships: between old and young, between parents and children, between friends, and especially between lovers. Love is perhaps the best subject of all because it's universal. Everyone has known it in some form and, as well as making us blissfully happy, it wreaks all kinds of havoc. Strong emotions such as jealousy are stirred up. People do dreadful things, and also wonderful things, for its sake. The whole world is more vivid when we're in love, and we are unhappy when love dies or is withdrawn for some reason. What could be better? The fact that young people are predisposed because of their biology to be going through this particular mill at this particular time is a bonus for anyone who enjoys writing for this age-group.

Which brings me to the final point I want to make. Who exactly is a teenage reader? Generally speaking, anyone over 14 or so who's a reader (and I emphasise that) is already trying adult books. Good readers of nine or 10 are devouring books the publishers have designated as suitable for young adults. The question to ask when recommending a novel for a child is not: How old are they? but What kind of reader are they? A good reader is all the writer requires and they can be extremely young in chronological years. There's no danger, I think, of children having things that are too grown-up foisted upon them. They can always close the book, and pick another one. That's the beauty of reading: there's always another novel, or writer, for you to try if you don't like the one you've chosen.

For my part, I'm delighted when I discover anyone of any age who has actually read and enjoyed a book of mine. And there's always a moment of surprise, too. There's a tiny part of me which thinks I wrote the whole thing entirely for myself.

Adele Geras is the author of more than 70 books including Troy (Scholastic Books, ISBN 0439014093 hardback, ISBN 0439992206 paperback), which received a Highly Commended citation in the 2001 Carnegie Medals.

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Last updated: 26 February 2002