2013
Melvin Burgess as he often does here offers a serious of
challenges. In this story we have drug-taking, sex, death, risk-taking, social
unrest and extreme violence. Burgess
pushes boundaries again: much of the violence
is premeditated and calculated.
This suits the YA reader well: my own research establishes that this genre,
if you can call it a genre, is often multi-themed.
The novel is also what publishers might call "high concept".
The story centres around Death, a drug that gives users a week-long high. At the
end of the week the user dies. The young
adults who take the drug also create a bucket-list of many risk-taking activities
they want to enjoy.
Again as we might expect from a YA text, this novel is in
effect a bildungsroman. Protagonist Adam learns to value life. The ending is
upbeat but uncertain. There is hope for
Adam and his friends.
Burgess has also created believable characters with whom we
can easily empathize.
This is a book with a thick spin and some 304 pages. It has
the narrative balance we would expect in
a novel written for an adult.
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