Junk: 25th Anniversary Edition

It was a love story. Me, Gemma and junk. I thought it was going to last forever.

Tar loves Gemma, but Gemma doesn't want to be tied down. She wants to fly. But no one can fly forever. One day, finally, you have to come down. Melvin Burgess’ most ambitious and complex novel is a vivid depiction of a group of teenagers in the grip of addiction. Told from multiple viewpoints, Junk is a powerful, unflinching novel about heroin. Once you take a hit, you will never be the same again.

'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