Let us imagine, for a moment, that your life is being novelised as a coming-of-age story for young adults. Let us also suppose that the author plans to centre the novel on the climactic moment where you finally realise your childhood is over and a world of responsibility beckons. How did your childhood end? Can you picture the scene? Was it one specific moment? Two? You saw both of mine live on television.
It is likely that ours will be remembered as the generation that smashed the windows of Foot Locker. But perhaps I can convince you to remember us also as the generation that formed orderly queues outside Waterstones and waited, dripping with excitement and rainwater, for the last Harry Potter book? When you saw us on the news, you were watching our childhoods end. We were in denial, though; cries of “we still have three films left!” were stifled only this summer, when you saw us in Trafalgar Square, waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
So our childhoods really were over, and when things in the real world got too scary, there was nothing left of Harry Potter’s world to hide in. We are a generation that needs fantasy. Unfortunately, it is likely you will remember us fulfilling this need with fantastically violent video games. But perhaps I can convince you to remember us also pulling fantasy novels off shelves and reading them on bookshop floors.
With Potter finished, the great hunt for more fantasy began. We re-read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. We tried Twilight along with everyone else, but slightly snobbishly turned our noses up at it, tweeting and blogging Stephen King’s quote: “Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.” We tried Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, but having grown up with Hermione, Luna and Mrs Weasley as strong female role models, we struggled with female fantasy characters who existed only as a fantasy for teenage boys. Exasperated, we wondered if we were just too old.
But as the withdrawal grew worse, we finally found our fix. All three installations of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy had been published by 2010 and we hadn’t read any of them, it seemed no one had read any of them. Someone prominent amongst the Potterheads tweeted or blogged or vlogged about it and suddenly it went viral. We were all talking about it, breathless and excited in the way we used to be. It was hypnotically fast-paced, set in a world so close yet so far from home, the heroine was full of flaws and so was the love story. There were characters of every age to adore and abhor. And were those some morals hiding between the lines? We had grown so used to feeling guilty about “fast-paced books” and “easy reads” – ‘ but, just as Potter had been, this was different and we handed it to our little brothers in the hope they would learn something from it.
Perhaps you will remember us as the generation that refused to pay for our music, but please remember that we also continued to spend our pocket money on books. They cost about £3 each on the Kindle – I downloaded and read three books in four days, then called a friend of mine and instructed him to do the same. “OK,” he said, “I’m busy. I’ll take a look later.” My voice rose a little. “You don’t understand. This is a book recommendation.” The Potter generation is a tough crowd to please; I thought he might take me a little more seriously. “Yeah OK, I’ll look it up later.” I gripped the phone a little tighter. “I am recommending this book to you because I haven’t been this excited about new fiction since Harry Potter.” He was silent for a moment as he processed this. “OK. I’m buying it right now.”
You see, teenagers don’t use Twitter, Blackberry Messenger and “word of mouth” just to pass messages of fear and violence, but also to pass the message that magic, hope and excitement can still be found between the covers of a hardback novel.
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