Teenage Fiction: Although the origins of contemporary lesbian fiction aimed primarily at a young adult readership may be traced to girls' school stories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such suggestions as there are of sexuality in these books are invariably implicit and metaphorical.
It is only within the past 30 years, as part of society's evolving attitudes to teenagers and to what is considered suitable for them to read, that the implicit and metaphorical have become increasingly explicit and literal. Between the publication of what is usually regarded as the first modern lesbian novel for teenagers - Rosa Guy's Ruby (1976) - and the publication of Julie Burchill's much-hyped Sugar Rush in 2004 the shifts in theme, tone and emphasis have been remarkable.
Or, perhaps, not quite as remarkable as might superficially seem to be the case. Burchill's novel may carry on its cover a "Warning: explicit content" label, but readers (of whatever age) hoping to find graphic portrayals of what lesbians actually "do" will be as unenlightened by the time they reach the final page as they were on the first. Indeed, by contrast with many of today's young adult novels dealing with heterosexual physical intimacies, Burchill's is distinctly coy, just as it is relatively restrained in its use of four-letter words and their derivatives. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the novel's labelling, rather than being genuinely meant to alert a sensitive reader, is part of a wily marketing operation.
Best, then, to ignore the hype and concentrate on the book itself. Set in a Brighton very much of our times, the novel is concerned, in summary, with 15-year-old Kim, her meeting and precipitate infatuation with the beautiful but manipulative Maria, their shortlived affair, their eventual separation and Kim's return to friendship with a girl she had previously rejected. What might initially seem merely another story of adolescent love (or lust) and loss acquires some extra interest by virtue of the differences in Kim's and Maria's backgrounds: matters of class, race, education and parental-child relationships provide opportunities for some lively (and occasionally tiresome) Burchill polemics - and for some humour. There are several mordantly funny throwaway lines and a wickedly re-created concert featuring "Wested", a boy band "not knowing whether it had ambitions to be an octopus or a proper grown-up human".
The picture of the (English) teenage world which emerges from this novel will - certainly for many adult readers - be bleak and disturbing, even if it is a picture which would seem increasingly to be confirmed in the findings of every sociological survey. When Kim learns that family circumstances mean that she has to abandon her private girls' school in favour of a mixed comprehensive she sums up the latter as a place where "all the girls were on the pill at eleven; all the boys skilled thieves and fraudsters by the age of twelve". There may be some exaggeration in her description but it nevertheless strikes an appropriate note for the wider ethos of the novel. It is, perhaps, the inevitable consequence of a situation where, as Kim herself expresses it, "kids are born knowing everything".
It is unlikely that Sugar Rush will figure in any listing of the greatest young adult novels, lesbian or otherwise. It is weak in its structure, limited in its perspective and far too self-consciously determined to scream its modernity. It does, however, among much else that is instantly disposable, have something to add to our understanding of the complexities of love. Whatever love is.
Sugar Rush By Julie Burchill Young Picador, 230pp. £9.99
Robert Dunbar is Head of English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Dublin