Books by and for independent women

My Three Favourite…Teen Angst Novels

You can’t swing a cat in a bookshop these days without hitting someone desperately clutching some Twi-like nonsense about teen rebellion or teen struggles or teen vampires. No doubt it will  feature a floppy haired miserablist lacking the decency to go all out emo and treat us to some eyeliner or nail varnish… But would I have thought it nonsense ten or fifteen years ago? Here’s three of the books that made me feel better about my lot, or at least less alone in my teen angst moping…

The Madolescents, Chrissie Glazebrook

I have to thank our Ed., Jane Bradley for this one, as she made the recommendation way back when. We meet 16-year-old Rowena, the brash and lovably vulgar heart of the story, living an increasingly chaotic life in a Newcastle suburb.

The titular ‘Madolescents’ are made up of Rowena and the fellow misfits she meets at group therapy. This novel is a perfect combination of laugh out loud humour (Ro’s turn of phrase was enough to have me doubled over with tears rolling down my cheeks) and heartbreaking sensitivity (tears a-rolling down cheeks again).

Years before Skins became a teen phenomenon, Glazebrook perfectly captured the neuroses of teenagers, and placed them within an anarchic world full of family struggles, obsessions, shoplifting, tentative friendships, transvestism and brown sauce sandwiches.

The Madolescents is a book you hold onto whilst flecking your nail varnish, chomping on bubblegum and putting the world to rights. And as for Rowena, never did a more welcome teenage (anti-)heroine grace my bookshelf.

Disconnected, Sherry Ashworth

I read this in the final year of my teens, and it made me feel at once nostalgic for school and glad to be out of there. Catherine is an A-grade student with a promising future and it is against this that her ‘deviations’ are measured.

Through letters addressed to different people in her life including her English teacher, her Mother and a boy she becomes close friends with, we are introduced to the different faces of Catherine / Cat / Cathy and her coping mechanisms as she tries to figure out who she is and navigate the minefield of hormones and exams.

Sherry Ashworth worked in secondary schools in Manchester for a number of years, and the streets and shadows of the northern city – as well the pressures of exams and peer groups – are hidden behind every line of text.

Whilst some might find the complaints of a girl from a comfortable home and good school trite and patronising, Ashworth effectively shows that the feeling of being lost and uncertain does not discriminate – any teenager can, and probably does, go through it. I revisited this book very recently, and still read it in one sitting, no longer feeling nostalgic, but still recognising my younger self (and friends) within its pages.

Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis

I first read Less Than Zero when I was 14. By the time I turned 16, my copy had fallen apart from repeated readings and being stuffed in my school bag. I’m not sure what it is about this novel, since the main characters are spoilt, rich brats who fritter away their allowances on drugs, parties and trying to get thinner and more tanned that the next person.

My attachment to the book certainly wasn’t harmed by discovering the film adaptation – Andrew McCarthy, James Spader and Robert Downey Jr., oh my! – but it was the first book I read that I felt was written just for me.

I’ve said previously on this site that Bret Easton Ellis’ “minimalist style and biting humour communicate a feeling of moneyed ennui, of detachment, of youthful nihilism.” Whilst I couldn’t identify with the money, the decadent poolside parties or cocaine-dusted convertables, there’s something about the way Clay looks in on the world around him, in turns bemused and desperate.

As the narrator, he seems just as bewildered as I was the first time my eyes drifted over the opening line, “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” There’s something comforting in that. Add a bitching soundtrack of music references and some very black humour, and there we have the reasons i’m still returning to Less Than Zero more than a decade on.

Which character was your Holden Caulfield as a teenager? Was it Holden Caulfield himself in The Catcher in the Rye, or did you have other ‘comfort’ books for those angst-ridden days? Tell us in the comments below!

Alex Herod