I’m meeting 19 year old author Ben Brooks to talk about his most recent novel Grow Up.

He’s pretty camera- and interview-shy it seems, preferring to promote himself through interviews with publications like web-based lit-journal HTMLGIANT. All I know of Brooks in the flesh is that he’s ‘a heartthrob’ (Dazed and Confused) and ‘has a killer fringe’ (Don’t Panic). I’m also told he’s “fucking righteous” (HTMLG)

When he arrives he’s quiet. He has an intricate tattoo of a rose on his right bicep, half obscured by a the sleeve of a denim jacket. His fringe is confirmed as totally killer.

For the last week I’ve been reading and re-reading Grow Up in prep. I can’t help but compliment him on various lines that have gotten stuck in my head. The new best description of a hangover ever: “I have built a train-wreck in my head from cheap wine and horrible sex”.

The book that Brooks says started him writing came out of the American scene; The Human War, by Noah Cicero. He found a copy in a £1 bookshop, where he would later by multiple copies to pass out to friends (“A lot of them ended up in the charity shop next door” he sighs). He was 16. He liked the style, and wrote a novella that he submitted to the book's publisher, Fugue State. It was rejected, but with the qualification “send us something else and we’ll read that”. He did, which led to the release of Fences in 2009.

Grow Up is his first mainstream novel (as in, “with a proper plot and characters and everything”, he says). It documents 12 months of a contemporary adolescence; a Skins-like combination of comedowns and drunk sex, of “I’m OK You’re OK” therapy and A-Level psychology.

Jane Housham commented in a review for The Guardian:

"How is it possible for Brooks already to have reached these far shores of experience, tossing out his shocking little grenades of nasty sex, porn, drug abuse and torpor? I suppose he wouldn't have got his novel published if it was about doing well in his A-levels and enjoying cycling and photography."

Brooks’ response:

"'Enjoying cycling and photography.'?

'Enjoying cycling and photography.'?

'Enjoying cycling and photography.'?

Feels like 'when was the last time Jane met any 17 year old kids outside of Enid Blyton books'?"

Over lunch I ask how he’s felt about the reviews. “People have criticized Jasper [Grow Up's protagonist] for being too much like me” he says.

"You mean people who know you personally?"

“No no, reviewers have said ‘Oh [Jasper] is young, he’s British, he’s a writer, does that sound familiar, why it’s Ben Brooks’ which is just...” he fades out, sounding frustrated.

It’s difficult not to see this character detail as, well, lazy autobiography. Especially coming from an already thrice-published novelist. So why include it?

“My editor did suggest taking it out because it was too much like me. I kind of insisted that it stayed because a lot of the shape of the book comes from the fact that he’s writing a novel. Stuff like - So, something that I didn’t know would be misunderstood, although in retrospect obviously it would be, was the dream scene, which people have also commented on. It was supposed to be ‘fake’, it was supposed to be Jasper going back and writing it into the book to show how he felt about certain things when he didn’t feel he could say them in the actual novel. But a lot of people just thought it was a ridiculous dream sequence.”

They also, unfortunately, thought that Jasper was just Ben Brooks. Lesson learned; don’t underestimate the guy who writes underground-sensational experimental fiction.

His inspirations

We talk about about Brooklyn author Tao Lin, who Brooks cites along with Murakami as his main influences and favourite authors. Grow Up reads like a British translation of Lin’s breakthrough ‘Shoplifting From American Apparel’, right down to the over-thinking, hyper-conscious, eternally-running mental commentary of the lead. Some hints of Murakami comes in through the prose that’s minimalist without being spartan, or worse, mindlessly overwrought posturing.

Brooks finds his niche between these two authors through his characters. Where Murakami has his eccentric surrealism, and Lin has his cold and alien perspective on the word, Brooks has heart. He's a fan Lin’s novel Eeeee Eee Eeeee:

“I liked Eeeee best. There were more humanly bits where people would hug or something - [in Lin’s later books] a lot of that increasingly falls away. Richard Yates [Lin’s 2nd novel] I really really liked, but it was also really ‘cold’”.

Hence Brooks’ characters that love freely, even if it’s sometimes just the mephedrone talking.

Brooks is most comfortable talking about other writers. With Grow Up’s release he’s grown confident about his abilities, even if he’s still insecure about his people skills (which are fine, really). He tells a story about the one reading he could be coerced by his publisher into doing for Grow Up. He had to request that the lights in the bookshop be turned out while he read from his phone, so that he couldn’t see the considerable crowd that had turned out.

His work habits are chilled. “I wake up in the afternoon, maybe sit around, reading or something for a bit. If I’m working, start at 6 / 7 / 8’ o clock ish. I’ll be on Gchat and stuff at the same time and then depending on how actively I’m working I can keep going through the night, then maybe sleep at 6 o clock... I haven’t written really since school, until a couple of days ago. I haven’t started it properly, but I’ve had notes for a long time that I’ve been adding to and I’ve started turning those into something. I’m always taking notes. Normally I take notes on my phone and then I’ll type them into a word doc later.”

Browsing Waterstone's

We go into Waterstone's and browse the fiction. There’s one copy of Grow Up on the shelves. I tell him about having to go to five different highstreet bookshops before finding one that hadn’t sold out. It’s nice to see him honestly happy for a moment without modesty. So far he’s dismissed or not acknowledged praise. He has a habit of disavowing himself of work shortly after its release. Already he says he “can’t stand to read” any of his earlier works, and he keeps expressing worries about some of “the shit metaphors” in GU. I ask if he thinks this book will be a similar experience and he says he’s undecided.

Brooks pulls out All My Friends Are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman. Reading it later, it turns out to be brilliant. Then David Eagleman’s Sum, also fantastic. He recommends C, by Tom McCarthy, and everything Murakami I can get my hands on. He starts me off with Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World, one of his favourite novels. Choosing books for himself, he’s thorough, sampling everything, Fiction, Young Adult, Biography and more. He settles on The Knife of Never Letting Go.

I need one more book for one of those 3for2 deals. We walk past ‘his book’ again, which he takes down and hands to me saying “You could get one of these” and laughs and I laugh while thinking “You lovable, successful bastard”. A girl working there, stacking some shelves, looks up and says, with great enthusiasm, “You should get it! It’s really good!” I look at Ben, who’s blushing, and he says to the girl awkwardly, ‘Oh... is it?”

She’s about to answer and then looks at Ben and recognizes him. “It was amazing, I loved it. I didn’t realize we had any left, I thought we’d sold out.” Then she says “Do you want to sign a copy? Then we can put our ‘Signed Copy’ stickers on it. Oh! Or, you could sign my copy”. She goes off to get a pen. I ask if this has ever happened before. Blushing more, and quiet again, “This has never happened”.

The girl comes back with the pen. He looks around for somewhere to rest it, and asks Bex “Can I rest this on your back?” So she ‘assumes the position’ in front of him and he signs the cover, making conversation. “Are you sure this isn’t too thick?” he says. She calls over her shoulder at him “It’s fine, all our authors use it”. She straightens up and says “You should get used to this” and laughs, “just maybe not on peoples backs”.

Ben hands her the book and smiles (heartthrob) and says “Ok, that’s really bad, can you not look in it?” She laughs again and says “I’m going to have to look at it eventually” and reaches for the cover. Ben puts a hand out and says, laughing, but not moving his hand, “Ok, but not now.”

As we’re purchasing books the staff start talking about his choice, a YA novel. We’re walking out and I wonder out-loud what it means when everyone’s reading ‘Young Adult Fiction’, not just teenagers. “Kind of renders the term completely redundant” he muses. “I think it’s a rare category though, the YA books that overlap. There’s a name for that, when these books overlap and get loads of money… like the Artemis Fowl books, stuff like that...” He jokes about the people that choose to market a book as YA rather than straight fiction, “Maybe it shields you from the kind of critical reception, to publish as a YA book. If your language is too simple or your metaphors are too shitty you can just say ‘Well it’s a YA book’”.

I ask if Ben can imagine a YA version of Grow Up? “That could be... very weird”.

Brooks has been published by Mudliscious and Fugue State. Their full works, including Brooks’ Fences and An Island Of Fifty are available at;

http://www.mudlusciouspress.com

http://www.fuguestatepress.com/

Work from Haruki Murakami is available from all good bookshops. His new novel 1Q84 is available October 25th.

Tao Lin’s work is available from Melville House. He also publishes poetry and prose from others writers under the MuuMuu House brand.

http://muumuuhouse.com

http://mhpbooks.com/