The YA dilemma

Pop quiz: what's this book about?

‘I require of all my students,’ the saxophone teacher continues, ‘that they are downy and pubescent, pimpled with sullen mistrust, and boiling away with private fury and ardour and uncertainty and gloom. I require that they wait in the corridor for ten minutes at least before each lesson, tenderly nursing their injustices, picking miserably at their own unworthiness as one might finger a scab or caress a scar. If I am to teach your daughter, you darling hopeless and inadequate mother, she must be moody and bewildered and awkward and dissatisfied and wrong. When she realises that her body is a secret, a dark and yawning secret of which she becomes more and more ashamed, come back to me. You must understand me on this point. I cannot teach children.’

Kiss-kiss-kiss goes the snare drum over the silence.

Question two: what is this book about?

Caitlin had kept a brave face throughout dinner, telling her parents that everything was fine — just peachy — but, God, it had been a terrifying day, filled with other students jostling her in the busy corridors, teachers referring to things on blackboards, and doubtless everyone looking at her. She'd never felt self-conscious at the TSB back in Austin, but she was on display now. Did the other girls wear earrings, too? Had these corduroy pants been the right choice? Yes, she loved the feel of the fabric and the sound they made, but here everything was about appearances.

Trick question (I bet you saw that coming.) They’re both about teenaged girls. Yes, one is a staggering literary feast and the other is from some of the most interesting sci fi I’ve read lately, but what they have in common is their teenaged protagonists.

I juxtapose them to make a point (which I will arrive at soon, I promise. Here it is.) Teenaged protagonists do not mean a book is YA.

It’s a tough one. I’ve seen my writer friends struggle with it, and I’ve battled it myself, trying to reveal a story from a younger perspective without making it sound juvenile. Of course it’s possible. Look at my first example, from Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal, one of my favourite books from last year. You’d never call it YA.

Of course the split between YA and adult fiction is incredibly muddy. Few believe you have to be a certain age to read a certain type of book. Harry Potter and Twilight fixed that, as did any number of adult novels (adult, not XXX) that are enjoyed by younger readers. But from the writer's perspective it's trouble. Trying to market your fiction, trying to convince agent or publisher that although your protagonist is young it isn't YA, or it doesn't have to be YA, and if it is could it at least not have a pink cover? That's the trouble.

It can be trouble for readers, too. I started reading Robert J. Sawyer's Wake (my second example) not realizing that it was YA because it wasn't marketed that way. Since I hadn't been warned, the young protagonist's perspective annoyed me. She was always "made of awesome" and I didn't really care if the cute guy was mean to her at the dance.

Yet I still would have read it if I'd known beforehand, and maybe some people wouldn't have, and maybe that's the point. And it is great science fiction, so of course it's marketed that way. Lump it into YA and suddenly there is not much differentiating it from Knocked Out by my Nunga Nungas--until you read it.

Have you come across the YA dilemma, in writing or reading? Don't think there's a dilemma at all? Let me know.