Thanks for stopping by and reposting this.

I don’t really have much to add apart from agree that every topic from the world should be available for inclusion in a YA novel but I have a feeling that I’m quite liberal in that view.

Saw your comment on my blog, and thought I’d repost my reply here as well for your readers:

It’s completely understandable how someone might think at a glance that The Painted Man was YA. As I’ve said on my blog before, I favor a very clipped and active writing style without a lot of flowery prose. That says YA to some people, as does starting the story with children as protagonists (even though they are adults by book’s end).

You’re right that sex is generally not considered YA appropriate (though violence and gore is, for some inexplicable reason), and I could have left it out to cater to a wider market, but I think sexuality is a large part of what defines who people are, and making their sexuality clear to the reader is crucial to helping the reader understand their point of view.

I tend to include the defining milestones in the lives of all my characters. Some of those milestones are violent, some are sexual, and some are both, but that’s life, you know? So I was always intentionally writing to an adult market.

However, that said, I think it’s debatable whether sexual realities should be hidden/withheld from “young adults”. When my daughter is thirteen, I mean for her to be well aware that there are people in the world she needs to watch out for, and why. I think anyone mentally capable of tacking a 542 page novel probably already knows what goes where, and is ready to understand how it can affect people’s lives.

Thanks for the great review!

I guess as you could define YA as stories with teenage main characters that appeal to teenagers then The Painted Man fits that. A large section of it surrounds characters that grow up through the book.

Other authors that come to mind are Garth Nix, J.K. Rowling, Catherine Fisher and Stephenie Mayer. There is a certain cross-over appeal to adults but the vast majority of readers are going to be YAs. And as such they have buying power and they are now a market of their own. Publishers need to sell books so why not sell directly to them.

I think that’s wonderful because some of them will more that passion for reading in Adulthood and remain lifelong readers.

As for the different perspectives on sex, violence etc. I’ve never felt that there is anything wrong with children reading anything they want but YA focused books will handle that in a certain way because the characters are YA themselves usually. But the sexual overtones in The Painted Man seemed slightly out of place to me and didn’t seem to add a lot.

I’m not a parent so I’ve never had to help children make book choices. So I’m far from an expert.

Anyone else got any thoughts on labelling books as YA? And if violence, sex etc is an issue?

But I still have a problem with disscusion whether a book is a Young Adult book or not.

How is Young Adult defined in case of fiction?

“Young-adult fiction (often abbreviated as YA fiction, or simply YA) is fiction written for, published for, or marketed to adolescents, roughly between the ages of 12 and 18.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_adult_literature

To be honest this is a definition used in US. We don’t use it in Germany where I live.

And that’s the crux of the matter. There are different perceptions about sex, violence and more.

Normally I ignore statements concerning Young Adult because I want to read the book and I’m nor more an Young Adult. But from time to time – like today – I can’t deny myself to add some words concerning this topic.

Gavin, I hope you understand that this is nothing personal. I don’t want to offend you.