Burgess, Melvin

Burgess, Melvin (1954- ), writer of fiction for teenagers and younger readers, whose award-winning books are conspicuous for their frank portrayal of controversial themes such as drug abuse, violence, and teenage sexuality. Burgess’s rationale is to acknowledge directly the curiosity that teenagers have for adult experience; he is a realistic writer, who in his daring books wilfully obscures the boundary between right and wrong, and emphasizes the psychological turmoil that is the common currency of growing up.

He was born in Twickenham and grew up in Ilfield, West Sussex, and Reading. Having left school with two A-levels, he trained as a journalist, but did not take up the profession. Over the following 15 years he lived in Bristol and London and worked in various jobs, ranging from manual labour to running his own fabric-dyeing business, while also writing short stories, children’s fiction, and radio dramas. His first novel to be accepted for publication was The Cry of the Wolf (1990), which was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal.

Burgess came to the fore in 1996 with his novel Junk, a candid and harrowing story about two teenage girls, Tar and Gemma, who are homeless and addicted to heroin. The novel won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and was adapted for television by the BBC in 1999. Bloodtide (1999) was a sensational, bloody adventure set in a post-apocalyptic London. Both novels employed multiple first-person narrators to create a complex narrative of conflicting perspectives.

With the release of Burgess’s Lady: My Life as a Bitch (2001), publishers Penguin played on the author’s growing reputation for controversiality with the strapline: “Adults will be scared of it.” The book tells the tale of a sexually voracious teenage girl who is granted the freedom to satisfy her carnal needs when she is magically transformed into a dog, and works as a fable about the conflict between desire and responsibility. Told in one voice, it is more of an exploration of inner psychology than a conventional narrative.

Prior to its release, Burgess’s novel Doing It (2003) attracted negative attention from Children’s Laureate Anne Fine, who attacked it for being demeaning to young adults of both sexes. The book unflinchingly and gleefully celebrates the culture of teenage male sexuality, telling the story of three friends, two of whom are desperate to lose their virginity, while a third is stuck in an affair with his drama teacher.

Burgess’s other books include Burning Issy (1992), set in the world of 17th-century witch-hunts; a thriller about homeless children, The Baby and Fly Pie (1993); the novelization (2001) of the film Billy Elliot; and Bloodsong (2005), a sequel to the earlier Bloodtide.