Can she kick it?

>> Montealer Jill Murray explores Toronto’s gritty Parkdale neighbourhood through the eyes of a teen b-girl in her debut novel Break on Through

NO TRAINING WHEELS NECESSARY: Murray

by ERIN MACLEOD

Montreal’s own Jill Murray started writing a so-called “adult” novel, but came out the other end with Break on Through, a young adult book that shows age ain’t nothin’ but a number.

“I never set out specifically to write YA,” explains Murray. “I wouldn’t say ‘this is training wheels for adult books.’ I don’t see it that way. For me, the distinction between the YA and the adult is just that you’re writing about a young character from their own perspective and putting values on their lives and experiences. That doesn’t preclude adults reading it and it doesn’t preclude it being a serious book.”

The perspective in Murray’s debut novel is that of 15-year-old Nadine “Lady Six Sky” Durant, a girl who is much more interested in breakdancing battles than moving to the ’burbs. Is the book autobiographical? “People ask what it was like growing up in the inner-city being a teenage breakdancer and I have to tell them that I have no idea, that I come from the antagonistic suburbs that she moves to!”

Drawing from her own recollection of what it was like to be 15, however, was helpful for Murray: “I didn’t really think too hard about the actual age range that it was supposed to appeal to and just thought about the character. I used my memories—fortunately those are pretty close to the surface,” she laughs.

The book’s depiction of suburban Toronto sheds some light on an environment that has historically received short shrift in CanLit. “If you look over past book award winners, there’s not a lot of urban and there’s really not a lot of suburban. I don’t know what we’re trying to pull here, but most Canadians live in or near a major urban centre. This is what is happening now.”

Murray presents an engaging and dynamic portrait of “now”—and it’s a portrait that isn’t only for kids. “I’m hearing from a lot of adults who are shocked and surprised that they enjoy young adult literature,” explains Murray. “And the hip hop community has embraced it pretty warmly. They don’t care what age range it’s targeted for. They’re just happy to see a story that rings true.”

Murray reads from Break on
Through Saturday, May 10 at 3 p.m. at
Babar Books (46 Ste-Anne) in Pointe Claire.
See www.jillmurray.com for details.

Required reading

>> Murray’s law: the author’s top YA picks

“When I was 15 or 16, there were fewer YA novels,” recalls Murray. Sweet Valley High and Hardy Boys have been outnumbered by incredible variety. “It’s really branched out and multiplied in the last maybe 15 years,” she says. Here’s a list of a couple of classics and a few contemporary faves.

Shakespeare, Hamlet
Technically YA. They’re young characters. They’re not adults, really. The intertwining themes of madness and revenge, of never really knowing what’s going on or who to trust—I mean, that’s pretty high school. Who isn’t Rosencrantz or Guildenstern in the average cafeteria?

Gordon Korman
I read a lot of Korman’s books, as much as the librarians tried to tell me that they were for boys. Don’t Care High and Son of Interflux and A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag all made me laugh out loud and I read each of them maybe 40 or 50 times. I found them inspiring—the height of breadth of antics that kids could get up to all on their own and the creativity that went into zany schemes.

E. Lockhart, Fly on the Wall
A girl named Gretchen Yi goes to an arts high school and doesn’t really fit in. She doesn’t understand the male psyche and she wishes that she could be a fly on the wall in the boys’ locker room. So, like Metamorphosis, she wakes up and she is a fly and spends a week trapped in there.

M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation Vol. 1 The Pox Party
Anderson lives in the Boston area and he got this idea by being surrounded by all this history and wondered what it would have been like to be living on the eve of the revolution, not knowing how it would turn out. So he wrote from this position, and I don’t want to say anything else about it, because it really depends on discovery. It’s a really dense, challenging book and really interesting. There’s no reason why it couldn’t just be put on an adult shelf.

Coe Booth, Tyrell
The main character is 15 and his family has been kicked out of the projects and they are living out of garbage bags, in temporary shelters, which are basically just run-down hotels, while they wait for more suitable lodging. It’s so realistic. You read it and you want to do something, you’re completely frustrated with the world. It’s amazing.

—EM