Definitely YA
Brian Conaghan has recently written two outstanding MG novels: Cardboard Cowboys and Swimming on the Moon. However, it is perhaps in YA fiction that his greatest work of all is to be found (and he is certainly a great writer) because it is here that he can give full reign to his most hard-hitting, gritty storytelling. His latest book Treacle Town carries a warning, ‘Not suitable for younger readers’, which is certainly apt. It is a down and dirty, punch in the gut of a book, bravely, brutally honest, emotionally harrowing. Yet its ‘Not suitable for younger readers’ statement seriously needs balancing with, ‘Unmissable for others.’
MessagesAt its heart, this book carries many of the liberal messages of diversity, inclusion and anti-violence that are to be found in many quality works of YA fiction. It even includes a strong plug for books and libraries. Of course, these are right and important messages for books to promote. They are the messages our society and our world needs. They are, therefore, the messages young readers should indeed be faced with. And it does not matter if they have been said many times before. They need to be heard over and over again so that they become accepted by all and not just by some. But what makes Treacle Town so very special is the context from which these messages emerge and the voice through which they are expressed.
The place
Eighteen year-old protagonist Con O’Neill has grown up in Coatbridge, just outside Glasgow, an area of social and economic deprivation. His response to a group organiser ‘particularly interested in attracting people from disadvantaged areas’ is:
‘. . . does having a town chocka with charity and We Buy Gold shops constitute disadvantaged to you? . . . does having a town piled to the gunnels with deserted junky pads and crumbling high-rises represent disadvantaged to you? . . . does a town who plies its weans with pish food cos that’s all they can afford signal disadvantaged to you? See, if all these boxes can be ticked then I’m exactly the guy you’re after.’ (p 64)
And in many ways Con is the product of that environment. He largely failed at school. Still unemployed, his principal recreation has been to hang about the streets with his ‘team’ of mates, He has been involved in extensive and excessive drinking and drug-taking, as well as shop lifting. He and his contemporaries are obsessed with wearing the ‘right’ designer gear. In addition to this, he faces other emotional deprivations. His mother committed suicide relatively recently and he is now largely neglected by his body-building obsessed father.
So near to Glasgow, his neighbourhood is viciously rifted along an entrenched religio-cultural, Celtic/Rangers divide. As nominal Roman Catholics, Con and his team have often been involved in violent street conflict with gangs of youths from the opposing faction. In fact, the shocking and immediately devastating opening of the novel finds Con at the funeral of his best mate ‘Biscuit’, the victim of knife crime by their deadly rivals.
Soaked in the language of these dismal streets and the youths who inhabit them, Brian Conaghan’s writing conjures this world with gripping vibrancy. In the canon of YA literature, there are, and have been, only a few other writers with the knowledge, understanding and skill to represent this significant element of our society with such convincing and devastating honesty. His narrative portrays and penetrates these lives with shattering intensity.
Wanting out
Yet, Con’s thinking is very different from many around him. His ‘team’ includes a lesbian girl and an Asian-heritage boy. In both cases he asserts that their value as mates, and indeed as human beings, completely supersedes any ethnicity or sexual orientation. Moreover, he is prepared to defend this position against the prejudice he regularly meets. Even more pertinently perhaps, he is becoming increasingly troubled with the whole lifestyle of confrontation and street violence, an attitude brought to a head by the murder of Biscuit. More than anything he wants out. Coatbridge is the ‘Treacle Town’ in which Con and his mates are mired and from which he now desperately wishes to free himself. But it also stands for any and all such deprivation-moulded communities. Con is the hope of something different, the belief in something better. Escape may be possible, but it is extraordinarily hard.
Shock horror
This will undoubtedly prove a controversial book in some quarters. Very sadly, there will be some parents, and indeed teachers, who will object to its language, who will deplore its depiction of binge drinking, drug-taking, shoplifting and street violence. Yet those who try to sweep such issues under the carpet, or who claim that young readers will be led astray, corrupted by reading about them, will most miss, and even limit, this novel’s enormous potential. Young people living in the same or comparable environments to Con need to be able to find themselves in books, to read about a world they know. Pertinently, it shows them, through a voice they might just listen to, why they need to think and live beyond these circumstances. It even offers valuable hints as to ways they might do this. Its message, especially that against the stupidity of revenge, of meeting violence with violence, is enormously potent and relevant. Those young readers who are lucky enough not to live in such places, will also learn much and perhaps understand more. The final shock of the narrative hammers home Brian Conaghan’s central theme with devastatingly powerful impact.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not an overtly didactic book. It is essentially story and works wonderfully at that level. I think it would be wrong to say it is entertaining, but it is certainly compelling, deeply engrossing.
Tenderness
For such a hard-hitting book, it is also amazingly touching. Con’s grief for his dead friend, Biscuit, and his desperation to escape ‘Treacle Town’ are deeply affecting. There is much beauty to be found here, in both words and content. The chapter where Con revisits the dismantled ‘shrine’ to Biscuit (‘Landfill’) is one of the most wonderfully written passages of fictional prose I have read in a very long time. Also tenderly captured are his continuing love for his deceased mother and his, at least partial. rediscovery of his childhood relationship with his father. Perhaps most touching of all, by the end of the book, Con seems to be on the way towards an escape from his ‘Treacle Town’ shackles that does not betray his connection to his roots or to those people he fundamentally loves, despite recognising their shortcomings.
Greatness
I do not have a personal experience of living in a ‘Treacle Town’ environment. or anything like it. Moreover, I had little prior knowledge and no experience of Slam poetry, which is integral to this narrative. Yet, this novel spoke to me more strongly, than almost anything I have read in recent years. I was emotionally invested in Con and compulsively involved in his story. I think this is because it is such a profoundly and universally human book.
Together with one other totally remarkable YA novel I read earlier this year*, this is not just a fine book, it is a truly great one.
*Play by Luke Palmer, which I reviewed here is September.