After the costume-crowded overexcitement of the first ever Young Adult Literature Convention, brainchild of current children's laureate Malorie Blackman, many authors, readers and bloggers have been mulling over what exactly it is that makes a book YA. Is "YA" the same as "teen", and who is it read by? What are its requirements and restrictions? And what about "New Adult"?
In the past, I've used the labels "teen" and "YA" interchangeably, but a quick straw poll of aficionados reveals two differing standpoints. Some feel they basically cover the same ground, and others think that while both refer to age categories "teen" covers 12-14, and "YA" is aimed at about 14+. For the latter, the later Harry Potter books, in which torture and murder come to the fore after the gentler series beginnings, would count as "teen". YA, meanwhile, is more likely to deal frankly with sex, tackle challenging issues and adult relationships, and feature swearing. Andrew Smith's Grasshopper Jungle, for instance, a genre-melting account of perpetual adolescent horniness against a backdrop of mutated, man-eating human locusts, pulls no punches in its frank examination of teen lust, expressed throughout in pungent and profane language. However, the acceptability of the F-word varies widely from publisher to publisher, and its inclusion may mean a book falls foul of gatekeepers or won't be stocked by school libraries, limiting its potential readership. (This can be frustrating for YA authors, who feel that, as teenagers habitually swear, trying to create convincing voices for them without using anything stronger than "flip" can strain credibility – and seem, in a world full of sweary films, telly and video games, futile.
"New Adult", meanwhile, features college- rather than school-aged characters and plotlines; ostensibly the next age-category up from YA. As Non Pratt put it pithily at YALC, however, it can frequently be categorised as "YA with sexytimes", especially in the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey and its student protagonist, Anastasia Steele. Many NA books focus unashamedly on sex, blurring the boundary between romance and erotica – but some do explore the challenges and uncertainties of leaving home and living independently for the first time. Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, for instance, is a comparatively "clean read", but delves deeply into the anxieties of Cath, its introverted main character, trying to map out her boundaries in the frightening new context of college.
YA definitely doesn't mean a solely young adult readership, unless we elide (or are charitable about) the "young". At YALC, Meg Rosoff revealed that 55% of YA titles are bought by adults. Presumably, some of these are gifts for teenagers, but casting an eye down the average Tube carriage reveals YA titles aplenty, read with absorption by those who won't see 15 again. The "crossover" phenomenon incenses clickbaiters with nothing better to worry about, and induces much taking up the cudgels on YA's behalf in return. Of course there's plenty of bad young adult fiction out there – formulaic, unchallenging – but there's plenty of bad grown-up fiction too, and no one is lumping together the whole body of books marketed to adults to dismiss it as pointless, probably female-authored, escapist tripe. (Nick Lake, defending Twilight at YALC, remarked that successful YA books written by women tend to draw opprobrium in a way that men's work doesn't.)
Writers across the board at YALC agreed that the sine qua non of YA is an adolescent protagonist, who will probably face significant difficulties and crises, and grow and develop to some degree – Patrick Ness described it as "finding boundaries and crossing them and figuring out when you end, who you are and what shape you are." According to Matt Haig, YA is also remarkable for "blurring the boundaries" of genre and refusing to adhere to the rules of more rigidly defined literary fiction. There are YA "books that end on a hopeful note, books that end on a happy note and books that don't", Malorie Blackman has said, arguing for the necessity of both. And in a time when slut-shaming and body dysmorphia are endemic, and it's especially difficult to navigate adolescence for girls, YA, according to Sarra Manning, is particularly rich in heroines, resonating with readers who feel isolated, freakish and "not good enough".
To me, YA means challenge – encountering diverse protagonists and situations I'll never experience myself (including being a teenager again) but which stretch me to empathise with and contemplate. I've written in the past about being a disgusting wimp who can't finish distressing stories and is reduced to jelly by ambiguous endings – but, curiously, this doesn't apply when I'm reading YA. I frequently pick up books I know I will find upsetting, because I believe, from past experience, that I will also find these titles intensely memorable, risk-taking and rich. Having read gloom-filled Russian classics and canonical, "grown-up" literature aplenty in my teens, now, for me, is the time to read, and revel in, YA.
