‘Flick’ by Abigail Tarttelin

So, I have technically finished writing my first novel and I now find myself on the verge of what I expect to be the lengthy process of submitting my typescript to literary agents, and I find that I am curious to read other recent debut novels. Partly because some of my all-time favourite novels marked their authors’ first foray into full-length fiction, Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City among them, and also because, quite simply, I am eager to read the calibre of writing that I am up against. And after reading Abigail Tarttelin’s first novel Flick I am honestly a tad scared. Heartened, and enormously entertained, but scared nonetheless.

Discovering Miss Tarttelin’s young age is what first prompted me to take Flick over to the till, for at twenty-three she is just a few years older than myself. It also intrigued me to learn that the novelist-cum-actress grew up in the North East, as I have also - albeit slightly further north. I am not usually able to find quite so many similarities between myself and the authors stocked in the local Waterstone’s, so for me Abigail Tarttelin has been an encouraging and eye-opening find.

Now let’s discuss Flick itself. It is the tale of Will Flicker (known unanimously as Flick), a precocious fifteen-year-old trapped in his home town of Marske, a decaying seaside spot located not all that far from Redcar in Cleveland, and a place from which nobody seems able to escape. Bored and usually stoned, but with a quick wit and a philosophical streak reminiscent of Socrates, Flick finds himself hopelessly enamoured with the colourfully named new girl in town, Rainbow. Rainbow - a unique spirit who dreams of fleeing monotonous middle England in favour of making a living as an artist in Montauk, New York - represents the freedom that Flick so craves. But his hopes for a bright future are extinguished when he is embroiled in a coke deal for Fez, the dangerous and lascivious druggie-about-town. The novel concludes with Flick having a bad experience with the horse tranquilizer ketamine and though he recovers it marks a point of no return for him and Rainbow.

Part Trainspotting and part This Is England in book form, Flick is a confident debut with an irresistibly self-assured narrative voice which keeps the pages flicking (sorry I had to) away as though they are doing it themselves. In addition to being an engaging and well constructed love story, Flick touches upon several pertinent issues, particularly in the realm of politics. The notion of the North being overlooked resonated particularly deeply with me. The novel succeeds in being many things at once: comedy, fable, occasional tragedy, and I found myself highly amused by the creative chapter headings. ‘Confessions of a Teenage Dickhead’ has to be my favourite, assuming that it is a play on the title of that seminal Lindsay Lohan-starring Disney classic, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Yes, sarcasm intended.

Flick is a unique novel, written by an evidently unique new talent, which manages to be both colloquial and eloquently written in the space of a paragraph. I cannot wait to see what Tarttelin writes next.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in August 2011.