Apples

Of course I hate Richard Milward. I mean, let's get that out of the way right now. He's young, cool, good-looking and a twice-published novelist with rave reviews. What's not to hate? But give him his due: dude can write.

Apples, Milward's debut novel (first published in 2007) tells the story of two Middlesbrough teenagers, Adam and Eve, and their non-love story. Adam is an OCD geek who has to close the door ten times before leaving the house, gets caught masturbating to his Dad's porno mags and obsesses over Beatles albums (a very teenage thing to do). Eve is a mouthy pretty-girl with a body for sin and a head for getting mortalled whose mum has just been diagnosed with cancer. She has no idea what she wants out of life, but like so show more many girls her age she thinks she could well end up a super-model.

As is the law for every coming of age novel written since the 50s, Apples has been compared to Catcher In The Rye ("...meets the Arctic Monkeys", said The Times) though personally I found it closer to a British Less Than Zero. There's far more Bret Easton Ellis to Milward's writing than there is Salinger, along with lashings of his hero Irving Welsh (he names Trainspotting as the book that inspired him to write).

Read the full review at my blog show less

What a brilliant idea - call a book Apples and name the two main characters Adam and Eve. What this promises is sure to be a theme on temptations and that's exactly what we get. Apples is essentially a hard hitting take on Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis - the story of children growing up and going out into the big wide world with all of its wicked ways to lure them into temptation. And do the kids in this book stray or what! Adam has OCD and spends his spare time reading porn magazines and pleasuring himself in his attic. Eve is a drug taking, alcopop-guzzling teenager, who thinks nothing of having one night stands. This is probably all in an attempt to block out the fact that she's just discovered that her mother has cancer. The show more book is peopled with characters that are delinquents of varying types, amongst them being drug dealers, addicts and rapists, who are all growing up together on a sink estate trying to get through each day the best way that they know how.

Narrated in turns by Adam and Eve this book pulls no punches. The gritty realism shines through this shocking tale, which is filled with graphic imagery and the vilest of language. Reading this will make you gasp with horror at their grim lifestyles, but the author writes in such a captivating manner that he pulls you right into the story and the reader will get swept away with his writing style. This is an amazing first novel by Richard Milward, a talented young author show less

Everyone loves precocity, and part of the reason this book has been successful is surely because the author was still mis-spending his youth at the time, albeit by writing a novel. Some passages, like the miserable attempts to navigate a nightclub, reminded me of Young Skins in their brilliantly bleak accuracy The levels of sex 'n' drugs seemed a little excessive, but then I never grew up in Middlesbrough. The characters seemed a little one-note - the oddball, the tart with a heart etc - and the writing didn't dazzle me, but it's definitely an inventive and well-executed exploration of a world you rarely read about, in the news or the fiction aisles.

I loved this book from start to finish. It's shocking, dramatic and lots of other things as well but one thing is certain it is realistic. I've worked in the area the book is set and knew the school mentioned quite well, and it is accurate narrative from my experiences. In fact, if you were to go to any area of high deprivation and poverty in the UK and you'd be greeted with similar scenarios.

Okay, enough about the setting. Move on to the characters. Adam and Eve are truly brilliant and how good to link it to the bibical references from the Garden of Eden. However in this case Eden is not all its cracked up to be. At no point did I feel that Richard Milward was trying to be smug with the characters - I really felt he was trying to show more portray what he would have known about children like that from his own area. It's a sad representation of life for some school children.

The cover work is fabulous, well done those designers. Equally as big a well done to Richard Milward for writing this book at 19 years old. I can't praise this book enough for it's style, honesty, brutality and scope. show less

I stumbled across this novel by accident and was drawn to the great cover. I was pleasantly surprised! This is probably my favourite YA novel, I found its raw style very intriguing. The love story between the main protagonists Adam and Eve is realistic, if somewhat depressing. I think most teenagers can relate to this more easily than to Romeo and Juliet, but I can also imagine lots of people would be repelled by the dreary setting and its unadorned description.

A novel I was excited to get as soon as I read a blurb about it, one of the few books I really wish I had read a little bit before I just bought it. It was difficult to follow, seemed pointless and none of the characters were even remotely worth your time sympathizing with, I often felt just like screaming at them over how stupid they were being. Also, so heavy on the UK slang that I had to sit and look up so many phrases even to keep a steady flow, and I though I had a pretty decent grasp on things like that. Overall not worth my time, and a very difficult read.

The characters are all quite unlikable, and its really quite a depressing book. Some of it feels like it captures the way teenagers talk and think quite well, but in other bits I just found it a bit tedious to read.