Junk

“Everyone should read Junk.” * The Times *“Melvin Burgess’s ground-breaking Junk remains the best book about teenagers and drugs to this day” * Julia Eccleshare, Guardian Online *“Junk has a perfect sense of time and place, characters who feel real and it may just be the best YA book ever.” – Robert Muchamore * Big Issue, Top 5 Young Adult Books *“Occasionally a ‘teenage novel’ comes along which makes one reconsider the whole genre and its potential. Such a book is Melvin Burgess’s Junk.” – Robert Dunbar * Children’s Books in Ireland *“Personally I prefer the love triangle in Melvin Burgess’s Junk, in which Tar’s devotion to heroin split he and Gemma apart.” – Juno Dawson * Guardian *“This book is beguiling, layered and filled with a boldness that comes with youth.” * Gemma Cairney *“Brilliantly and sensitively written, it encompasses the raw, savage and ecstatic world of the adolescent mind… a superbly crafted and important book” * TES *“Beautifully written” * The Times *“Believable and rivetingly readable. I couldn’t put it down.” * Evening Standard *“Moving and provocative” * Observer *

Melvin Burgess was born in London and brought up in Surrey and Sussex. He has had a variety of jobs before becoming a full-time writer. Before his first novel, he had short stories published and a play broadcast on Radio 4. He is now regarded as one of the best writers in contemporary children’s literature, having won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for his acclaimed novel Junk.