From Joyce to 2021

I chose Joyce’s ‘Portrait...’ and Amber Medlands ‘Wild Pets’ (published in 2021) as my two novels about youth for the first chapter of my dissertation. I didn’t know much about them. I remembered reading Joyce a while ago and thought it suitable and the other novel was strongly recommended by my supervisor.

I just started ‘Wild Pets’ and I already love it on many different levels. For my dissertation, it complements ‘A Portrait...’: it picks up where Joyce left off - graduate life - and it uses pop-culture references that I’m familiar with, the same way Joyce’s were for his readers. One of the characters is also a writer, which fits in perfectly with my theme of youth & publishing.

It’s also an inspiration for me on a professional level, let’s say. I’m writing a novel this year and one of my thoughts was to play with the form. It’s a youth dystopian novel so it couldn’t have had a traditional format. But I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Well, ‘Wild Pets’ isn’t traditional either. Emails, text messages, stream of consciousness, multiple perspectives - this is what a young person’s life looks and reads like. Fear: dismissed.