Ten Years in the Tub (77 page)

BOOKS READ
:

     
  
Weetzie Bat
—Francesca Lia Block

     
  
Tom's Midnight Garden
—Philippa Pearce

     
  
The World Made Straight
—Ron Rash

     
  
Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences
—Lawrence Weschler

T
he story so far: I have written a young-adult novel, and on a trip to Washington, D.C., to promote it, I met a load of librarians and other assorted enthusiasts who introduced me to a magical new world that I knew nothing about. I really do feel as though I've walked through the back of a wardrobe into some parallel universe, peopled by amazing writers whom you never seem to read about on books pages, or who never come up in conversations with literary friends. (The truth, I suspect, is that these writers are frequently written about on books pages, and I have never bothered to read the reviews; come to think of it, they probably come up frequently in conversations with literary friends, and I have never bothered to listen to anything these friends say.)

It was in D.C. that I met David Almond, whose brilliant book
Skellig
started
me off on this YA jag; and it was in D.C. that Francesca Lia Block's
Weetzie Bat
, first published in 1989, was frequently cited as something that started something, although to begin with, I wasn't sure what
Weetzie Bat
was, or even if the people talking about it were speaking in a language I understood, so I can't, unfortunately, tell you what
Weetzie Bat
is responsible for. When I got home, I bought it from Amazon (it doesn't seem to be available in the U.K.), and a few days later I received a very tiny paperback, 113 large-print pages long and about three inches high, and suspiciously, intimidatingly pink. Pink! And gold! The book is so short that you really don't need to be seen with it on public transport, but I wouldn't have cared anyway, because it's beautiful, and I would have defended its honor against any football hooligan who wanted to snigger at me.

Weetzie Bat
is, I suppose, about single mothers and AIDS and homosexuality and loneliness, but that's like saying that “Desolation Row” is about Cinderella and Einstein and Bette Davis. And actually, when I was trying to recall the last time I was exposed to a mind this singular, it was Dylan's book
Chronicles
that I thought of—not because Block thinks or writes in a similar way, and she certainly doesn't write or think about similar things, but because this kind of originality in prose is very rare indeed. Most of the time we comprehend the imagination and intellect behind the novels we read, even when that intellect is more powerful than our own—you can admire and enjoy Philip Roth, for example, but I don't believe that anyone has ever finished
American Pastoral
and thought, Where the hell did that come from?
Weetzie Bat
is not
American Pastoral
(and it's not “Desolation Row”—or
Great Expectations
, while we're at it), but it's genuinely eccentric, and picking it up for the first time is like coming across a chocolate fountain in the middle of the desert. You might not feel like diving in, but you would certainly be curious about the decision-making process of the person who put it there.

Weetzie Bat is a young woman, and she lives in a Day-Glo, John Waters–camp version of Los Angeles. Eventually she meets the love of her life, whose name is My Secret Agent Lover Man, and they have a baby called Cherokee, and they adopt another one called Witch Baby, and… You know what? A synopsis isn't really going to do this book justice. If you've never heard of it (and of the
six people questioned in the Spree offices, only one knew what I was talking about), and you want to spend about eighty-three minutes on an entirely different planet, then this is the book for you.

I read
Tom's Midnight Garden
because it finished one place above
Skellig
in a list of the greatest Carnegie Medalists of all time. (Phillipa Pearce's classic came runner-up to Philip Pullman. I'm sure the Pullman is great, but it will be a while before I am persuaded that sprites and hobbits and third universes are for me, although I'm all for the death of God.) Like everything else in this genre, apparently, it is a work of genius, although unlike
Weetzie Bat
or
Skellig
, it is unquestionably a story for children, and at the halfway mark, I was beginning to feel as though I might finish it without feeling that my life had been profoundly enriched. I mean, I could see that it was great and so on, but I was wondering whether my half century on the planet might be cushioning me from the full impact. But at the end of the book—and you've been able to see the twist coming from miles away, yet there's not a damned thing you can do to stop it from slaying you—I'm not ashamed to say that I cr… Actually, I am ashamed to say that. It's a book about a kid who finds a magic garden at the back of his aunt's house, and there's no way a grown man should be doing that.

They've been very disorienting, these last few weeks. I see now that dismissing YA books because you're not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you're not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I've discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that's filled with masterpieces I've never heard of, the YA equivalents of
The Maltese Falcon
and
Strangers on a Train
. Weirdly, then, reading YA stuff now is a little like being a young adult way back then: Is this Vonnegut guy any good? What about Albert Camus? Anyone ever heard of him? The world suddenly seems a larger place.

And there's more to this life-changing D.C. trip. While I was there, I learned about something called the Alex Awards, a list of ten adult books that the Young Adult Library Services Association believes will appeal to younger readers, and I became peculiarly—perhaps inappropriately—excited by the idea. Obviously this award is laudable and valuable and all that, but my first thought was this: You mean, every year someone publishes a list of ten adult books
that are compelling enough for teenagers? In other words, a list of ten books
that aren't boring
? Let me at it. I bought two of this year's nominees, Michael D'Orso's
Eagle Blue
and Ron Rash's
The World Made Straight
, having noticed that another of the ten was Michael Lewis's brilliant book about your football,
The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
, and a fourth was David Mitchell's
Black Swan Green
, which I haven't read but which friends love. Whoever compiled this list knew what they were talking about. Who else might have won an Alex Award? Dickens, surely, for
Great Expectations
and
David Copperfield
, Donna Tartt, for
The Secret History
, Dodie Smith's
I Capture the Castle
, probably
Pride and Prejudice
and
Le Grand Meaulnes. This Boy's Life
, certainly, and
The Liar's Club
, Roddy Doyle for
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha…
In other words, if a book couldn't have made that list, then it's probably not worth reading.