The Prize for Young Adult Fiction: Winner 2005

So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld (Penguin)

It is twenty-first century New York, and seventeen-year-old Hunter is a ‘cool taster’ for a multinational sports clothing firm, an athletic shoe company named after a certain Greek god.

Hunter narrates in an acerbic, first person voice, the puzzling and threatening events that follow the apparently sinister disappearance of his employer, Mandy, and the discovery of the athletic ‘shoe-of-shoes’. With Logo Exile friend, Jen, Hunter is drawn into the world of the anti-client, the Jammers, when together they search for Mandy. To help them on their mission, the two use the know how of various innovators, trendsetters, early adopters, geeks, consumers or laggards/classicists (who wear their mullets proudly) and a member of the future fantastic tribe.

Little is as it appears, and Hunter’s and Jen’s sleuthing tactics, inspired by television cop shows, provide hilarious moments in this fast-paced action mystery in which expertise in cutting edge technology is essential. A clever, witty narrative wryly examines adolescent obsessions with being cool, or choosing not to be, without talking down. To be cool or not: the book asks whether it is a conscious choice, or manipulation by organisations such as ‘a certain computer company whose name is a fruit often used in making pies’, or ‘a certain megacorporation known for its relentless grip on all media, including scores of newspapers and a certain faux-news channel’. 

If you don’t use ‘The Nod’, or recognise ‘coolsters’, you may be too ‘so yesterday’ to appreciate Westerfeld’s inspired young adult vision that recalls Naomi Klein and William Gibson. This original novel confirms adolescents as the savvy people they are.