“There was no YA when I was growing up!” is a fairly common refrain, and one we might want to retire. Yes, let’s be honest: we are living in something of a golden age of Young Adult fiction, where people pay attention to at least some of the titles (as author Juno Dawson noted on a recent ILF Dublin panel, the funnier books are often undervalued) and where large sections of bookshops are given over to this publishing category. YA is bigger and better than ever – but it is not brand-new.
There are three titles frequently cited as potential candidates for the “first” YA title – Maureen Daly’s Seventeenth Summer (1942), JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951), and SE Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967). All American, you’ll note, and emerging along with the idea of the “teenager” as a separate category of person – a category that could be marketed to. But the UK did catch up – writers like Aidan Chambers were producing daring, even “edgy” books in the early 1980s, and Jacqueline Wilson’s pre-Tracy Beaker titles wouldn’t be out of place in the YA section today.
But what about Ireland? So many of us do feel as though the Irish YA novel is a brand-new invention, and remember the scarcity of titles for teenagers that were actually set in Ireland (a real Ireland, not a twee mythology-heavy version of it) as opposed to the United States or the United Kingdom. When author Anna Carey attempted her first novel in her youth, it was set in America – because where else could teen books be set?
In the 1990s, when I was young(er), Irish YA did exist, though I’m reluctant to suggest it was all that visible as a category. The sadly short-lived Bright Sparks imprint from Attic Press came closest to a grouping of teen fiction in this decade. Writers like Siobhan Parkinson, Mark O’Sullivan, June Considine, Jane Mitchell and Larry O’Loughlin were shelved with children’s books, with titles that the 9-12s might like. Some of them also wrote for younger age groups, which perhaps muddied the waters slightly too. But there were real teenagers, going through sometimes very difficult situations, and for a young aspiring writer reading these books, it legitimised Ireland as a setting. Stories didn’t have to take place in posh English boarding schools or in glamorous Californian towns. They could be set here.
For someone growing up before the Celtic Tiger had made its presence felt, when there was an innate sense of inferiority owing to one’s Irishness, this was revolutionary. Of course Ireland is known for its literature – but those were adult books, and often written long ago by dead white men. Knowing about WB Yeats and James Joyce didn’t help one bit in making “writer” seem like something attainable.
The one book in particular that opened up possibilities to me was Margrit Cruickshank’s The Door, published by Poolbeg Press in 1996. Cruickshank is best remembered for her “S.K.U.N.K.” series about environmental terrorists, and the much-lauded Circling the Triangle, focusing on drug abuse, but The Door is the one I yearn to be reprinted and made available to today’s teenagers.
The Door takes its title from Miroslav Holub’s poem of the same name, and the door that’s opened in this novel comes through the school newspaper, set up by a group of Transition Year students. Student journalism has always been a pet topic of mine (my latest novel includes a school paper) but who knew that such things could exist outside of Sweet Valley? In Dublin, no less?
Hugh, our narrator, is not a terribly earnest guy, but his interest in the outspoken Rachel prompts him opening his eyes to the things they discover as they work on the paper. As we see behind the scenes of poll figures, for example, we start to unravel our certainty in what seem like straightforward numbers, and learn about how the media shapes the narrative. And given that the students are still in school, and need to appease their teachers, how can they use the forum to speak up about a particularly creepy teacher?
The answer is Swiss Valley High, a four-box comic strip that clearly parodies Sweet Valley High and the Chalet School series. It seems cute and fluffy – and then as time goes on, offers up a scathing critique of sexual politics. But Hugh’s narration – and his worries about Rachel’s family situation – steer the book away from being didactic.
It’s been 20 years since The Door was published and I can think of very few realistic Irish-authored YA novels that I rate as highly. It manages to avoid being an “issue novel” while still addressing serious issues – maybe because sexism and misogyny and power dynamics are so mundane and close to home. It’s funny, too, particularly in the dialogue between Hugh and his mother. It feels real. And I suppose timing is important too: for me this will always be the book that cracked open my view of what you could do when you were writing about and for teenagers. Stories could happen in Dublin schools. We were not inferior after all.
Claire Hennessy is a writer, editor, and creative writing facilitator from Dublin whose first book was published in 2000. Her latest YA title is Nothing Tastes As Good, published by Hot Key Books
