This book formed part of the contemporary teen fiction module of my Children's Literature course. It is a brutally realistic portrayal of teenage runaways that fall into the world of drugs, sex and crime. It is not an easy read but it is fascintating and certainly a clever deterrant since Burgess uses the unreliable characters of the book to narrate their own stories, in the process inadvertantly revealing their ignorance, delusion and naivety. It is a book I would recommend for teens and adults alike - it may deal with some challenging subject matters but I think this is the kind of literature that can actally get through to teenagers and perhaps make them think.