How to bluff your way through... CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

If children’s books were just for children, Harry Potter would never have become so astoundingly successful, selling over 400 million copies worldwide and spawning the highest grossing film series of all time. Our parents are to blame for that. Adults read the books to their kids, got hooked themselves, told their friends, pushed up sales and created the greatest literary phenomenon of recent times. Love or hate the boy wizard, he shows that kid’s books aren’t just for kids. Here is your quick guide to some great literature that little’uns shouldn’t be allowed to keep to themselves.

For Bookworms

Eoin Colfer calls his Artemis Fowl series ‘Die Hard with fairies’ – there’s no better way to describe this wickedly funny collision of a teenage criminal genius and subterranean, supernatural soldiers. As much as I hate to call a book ‘laugh-out-loud funny’, Colfer is hugely entertaining, even for so-called grown-ups.

I’ll be honest – the head-spinning teenager-speak of The Confessions of Georgia Nicolson makes me feel dizzy. And that makes me feel old. But Louise Rennison creates adolescence’s answer to Bridget Jones, who remains as likable and as funny as ‘Dave the Laugh’.

For Budding Historians

Some of the most powerful literature about war is from the perspective of the youngest victims. Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword is the true account of a family escaping occupied Warsaw, but the most memorable story is that of the Balicki children, surviving in a bombed-out cellar and open woodlands with no parents to protect them from Nazi forces.

Deborah Ellis spent months interviewing women and girls in refugee camps in Pakistan for The Breadwinner, about an 11 year-old girl forced to dress as a boy to provide for her family in Taliban-era Afghanistan. A window into the real impact of the Gulf Wars.

For Everybody

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time isn’t a children’s book, but the autism of the 15 year-old protagonist makes it an essential read for all ages, showing that we all need to learn that the world is a difficult place for many, whether we’re supposedly grown-up or not.

This article was originally published in Epigram (2011).

How to bluff your way through... AUTOBIOGRAPHY

In 1809, Isaac D’Israeli wrote, ‘if the populous of writers become thus querulous after fame (to which they have no pretensions) we shall expect to see an epidemical rage for auto-biography break out.’ 200 years later, and Jordan/Katie Price has already published four different autobiographies. Was D’Israeli right? I have never read Price’s work, so it would be unfair to call her books soulless, worthless artefacts of a fame-hungry, talentless attention-vacuum. But these autobiographies turn some truly amazing people into quality literature.

Boys and their Tales of Childhood

The critic Clive James brings all the wit of his newspaper columns to his own life in his Unreliable Memoirs. His childhood in post-war, suburban Sydney is startlingly honest and surprisingly captivating. Not only that, but his autobiography is undeniably, irresistibly hilarious. If you can’t stop laughing, he has written four more volumes.

Roald Dahl understood children like no other author. Boy: Tales of Childhood is technically written for his younger audience, but, for his grown-up fans, it not only describes his early life, but transports you back into the mind that created gigantic flying peaches and Big Friendly Giants.

Also recommended: My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell

Fictionalized Tales

In the introduction to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson writes, ‘Is Oranges an autobiographical novel? No not at all and yes of course.’ There is nothing straightforward about her story of a girl, also Jeanette, coming-out to her evangelical church community. She stretches the truth into art, inserting rewritten fairy tales and structuring her life like the Bible, yet there is a sincere, honest heart to the fictionalized novel.

Semi-autobiographical works are the ultimate incarnation of ‘writing what you know’ and there are countless such novels. Some noteworthy examples include: Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence, David Copperfield, Charles Dickens; The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath.

Untold Tales

We know almost nothing about Shakespeare. He did not write an autobiography. The next best thing, however, is Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as a Stage, which entertainingly skips through what we can puzzle out about the legendary writer.

Claire Tomalin is the queen of literary biographies. Jane Austen may have had a dull life on the surface, but Tomalin brings out the sharp intelligence that makes Austen one of the best-loved authors in the English language.

This article orginally appeared in Epigram (Issue 237, 21/03/2011, p. 20).

How to bluff your way through... CHICK LIT

‘Chick lit’ is simply slang for ‘women’s literature’: books written by women, about women, for women. But it is often derogatory, implying ‘bad female writers’ and ‘stupid female readers’ (according to Urban Dictionary). Chick lit is the book world’s equivalent of Sex in the City or Ugly Betty at best, and Footballer’s Wives or a lobotomy at worst. It is debatable whether chick lit is ‘lit’ at all, but if you lock away your inner snob, these books can be entertaining, enjoyable escapism.

Vintage chicks

Originally a column in the Independent, Bridget Jones’s Diary is now a cultural artefact of cosmopolitan 90s life and the rise of ‘Champagne Socialism’. Helen Fielding’s books are much wittier and more intelligent than the films, but just as vibrant. I cringe every time I read it, but there is a little of her in every girl who wishes for a Mark Darcy to save her from a certain fate involving Alsatians...

Unashamed chicks

I don’t wish to exclude the male reader, but the following recommendations are deliciously, indulgently girly. In Lucia Lucia, Adriana Trigiani brings 1950s New York’s Uptown glamour and Greenwich Village charm into full Technicolor life. Eva Rice does the same for Britain’s glitzy post-war aristocracy in The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets. You will want to put on a pretty dress and live in the past.

Just great lit

The term ‘chick lit’ does put off many readers, but these modern female writers do not deserve to be consigned to the trashier shelves of Waterstone's. Audrey Niffennegger underplays The Time Traveller’s Wife’s central science-fiction concept with human warmth and sympathy. Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love is as ambitious as its title: it is also simply beautiful and heartbreakingly bleak. Forget the chick lit clichés – this is unflinching and uncompromising literature.

This article was originally published in Epigram (Issue 236, 07/03/2011, p. 20).