Interview with A.S. King - author of 'Please Ignote Vera Dietz'

 

Hello Darling Readers,

So, last year all my reader dreams came true because I got to meet one of my book idols - A.S. King. She is the author of everything I love, and she came to Australia for the Reading Matters Conference last year, to become living PROOF that you should definitely meet your idols.  

I am thrilled that Text Publishing is this month releasing King's Printz-Honor book, Please Ignore Vera Dietz - and gifting her words to a broader Australian audience.  

I was even more thrilled when Text asked me if I'd like to interview Amy (again!) 
So here she is. An author I most admire, letting me pick her brain.  

Link to the Text website feature (which also includes King's writing process and an extract from the book!) is here: https://goo.gl/Hu795U

Enjoy! 

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I work in youth literature. It’s pretty much my whole life. I write, advocate, edit, review, and even sell it as a literary agent.

I have bountiful thankfulness for the books I read growing up that ensured I’d always live for this readership, plus a deep respect and fascination with modern young-adult (YA) literature. 

But if you ask me who the one author is that’s writing YA today, who I wish with every fibre of my being had existed when I was a teen, I have only one answer. 

A. S. King.

Her books are not easy. Her books are not ‘nice’. But I know that she is one of the most important voices writing in YA fiction today for the very reason that she’s constantly testing boundaries and pushing readers out of comfort zones. 

Because A. S. King writes without limit. And I could have done with some of that, when I was growing up. 

Last year I had the thrill of my life getting to meet this author whom I have idolised since first reading her way back in 2011. I got to witness the impact and affect she had on teenagers when she joined the Centre for Youth Literature’s Reading Matters Conference line-up. The way A. S. King spoke to auditoriums full of teens – with steely-eyed honesty and deep-seated respect that only comes from truly knowing what it is to be young and hurting – that’s exactly the way she writes for them too. And they are so floored and shocked by her audacious authenticity – an adult who actually treats them and their pain as real and profound. It was an honour to witness the impact she had on each and every young person who was lucky enough to hear and read her words.

Which is why I am so excited that even more Aussie teens will get that chance, now that Please Ignore Vera Dietz has landed in Australia. It remains my favourite of hers. A novel of sheer magnificence, about heartbreakingly flawed and complex young characters – with no pulled punches, just deep understanding for the absurdity and beauty of life.  It’s about bullying and grief, abandonment and ignoring a problem until it festers and explodes. But above all else, it’s a novel of forgiveness. Forgiving other people and ourselves – the mistakes and bad choices, the pain inflicted and emptiness left behind. 

This book is a gift, and even if I wasn’t lucky enough to have A. S. King growing up, I am so thankful and relieved that today’s teens do. 

And that’s enough. Hell, it might even be everything. 

What were you like as a teen? And what were some of the formative works you encountered that still shape your writing today?

The farther I get from my teen years, the more I see myself as a fairly confident teen, even though I was a walking contradiction. For example: I was a determined athlete and a fantastic cigarette smoker. Also: I was determined to do something that would somehow help the world, and yet the prescribed path to this – school – was something I loathed.

But reading? And thinking? And writing? That was for me.

Funny that I separate these things from school but…now more than ever in American education, administrations are forcing teachers to teach to a test so maybe I was ahead of my time in opting out.

I read a lot as a kid, and once I got into my teens, I was required to read Paul Zindel’s The Pigman. I fell for Zindel. I read everything he’d ever written many, many times. I’d say the most important book for me as a teen and as a writer early on was Confessions of a Teenage Baboon. Zindel crafted well-defined and very strong adult characters and told stories of teens navigating adults. For me, that’s the definition of being a teen. Navigating adults.

When I first entered the YA world here in the US, I had more than one editor reject my work because it contained fully-formed adult characters. I stuck with what felt true to me because that’s what artists have to do.

Why do you write YA?

I believe teenagers are capable, complex human beings, and I love writing for them and about them. I didn’t do this on purpose. I’d been writing novels for a long time and at some point (far later than I should have) I realised that all of my characters’ stories started in their teen years. I wondered why. I came to this conclusion: our early years are called formative for a reason. Everything that happens to us before the age of ‘adulthood’ forms us. What an exciting, expansive time of life to study – the formative years. And what a fantastic way to help the world – to write honest portrayals of these formative years so teenagers could see themselves in books, face hard things and grow into stable adults. So, that’s my hindsight answer. But really, there was no why. I just naturally wrote this way.

What is it about teenagers that makes you want to write for – and about – them?

I’m really, so, utterly tired of seeing teenagers get a bad rap. They are the punchline to so many jokes. For what? Having an age that starts with the number one? When a toddler trips over their own feet, we ask them if they’re okay. Add ten years and if the same kid trips over their own feet, we snap at them or make them the brunt of a joke. I meet a lot of teenagers in a year and when I ask them, ‘Hey – have you guys noticed that adults roll their eyes at you a lot?’ they all say yes.

This upsets me because teen years are some of the hardest to get through and it’s hard enough without the added eye-roll. It also upsets me because all of us were teenagers once and I can’t quite figure out where this superiority comes from. I see it in twenty-somethings and beyond – as if the minute we are no longer teens, we are out to be better than the people still stuck there. I don’t know. I’m passionate about how smart and caring teenagers are. I’m amazed by how open-minded they are. I don’t understand why they are, in most cultures, the butt of our jokes.

And on a serious note…we are living in an age where teenage mental illness is an epidemic. I reckon it’s about time we STOP calling teenage emotions DRAMA. Stop it. Now. It’s time to take things seriously. I’ve had people argue with me on that – they say that teenage emotions are fleeting, they are happy one minute and sad the next. Yeah. Maybe. But will being an asshole about it help them in any way? No. So stop.

And what do you say to any critics who throw out the tired question ‘Will you ever write a “real” book – for adults?’

Oh, please. I’ve heard this a few times – always from someone who hasn’t read my books or who doesn’t read young-adult books or any books at all. Anyone saying that sort of garbage is just out to make another person feel small. Which, to me, makes the asker seem small. Seriously. I’m probably too busy writing an awesome book to answer this question in real life.

Why do you think parent characters often get forgotten in a lot of modern YA? You make a point of writing multifaceted adults in your teen characters’ lives – like the wonderful father Ken Dietz in Please Ignore Vera Dietz.

I will admit to not really liking books where teens or children are the only people populating the landscape. It seems so unrealistic to me. 

I will tell you what happened to Ken Dietz in Please Ignore Vera Dietz when editors were reading it and bidding on it. He nearly got cut from the book. It started with me asking one editor if she had any editorial ideas and she said, ‘We have to cut the father, of course.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, wait, what?’ Then I asked about Ken’s flowcharts. She said ‘Yeah, those go, too.’ I asked why. Her answer was: TEENS ONLY WANT TO READ ABOUT TEENS. 

Still breathing?

Good.

So, I don’t agree with that. Especially considering my earliest inspiration was Confessions of a Teenage Baboon by Zindel. I LOVED reading about adults. 

So, if I was to guess, the answer to the WHY of this question is: for some weird reason, there are editors and other publishing or even library professionals who have a problem with adults in YA or children’s books. Often, you will hear the agency reasoning, which goes like this: make sure there are no adults in the book solving problems because the whole point of a book for children and teens is that they have to solve all the problems themselves!

And we wonder why kids don’t come to adults for help.

I may be weird for thinking that way but I’m still reeling, ten years later, at the original misconception that teens only want to read about teens. As if all teens were just cranked out of the teen factory identical to every other teen.

I should add that my goal since I dreamed of being a writer at age fourteen was to write books that help adults understand teens better and to help teens understand adults better. So for me, there was never a question of including both age groups. My 2019 book is three generations wide. I’ve always been fascinated with generational differences, and how we navigate them as humans.

Your books are weird and wonderful, and like they’re sometimes showing the real-world through a fun-house mirror, slightly off-kilter… What do you say to those who ask if the surreal and bizarre in your books are ‘real’ or figments of your characters’ imaginations? For instance – is the pagoda really sentient in Vera Dietz?

Oh, that pagoda. Hmm. Well, I guess life is surreal, Danielle. I mean, it is, right? And who better to write about in that sense than teenagers? Teen years – talk about surreal. So I think literary elements like sentient pagodas make sense in all books, but especially YA books, I guess, because teens live lives full of surreal expectations. Do this, do that, don’t forget this, make sure you do that, get a job, do your homework, and WHY AREN’T YOU RELAXED/HAPPY/SMILING?

See what I mean?

In the case of the pagoda, that book wrote itself and when the pagoda started talking, I had to listen. It said some smart stuff. And it had the widest view of the town, the characters, and it knew the truth. The real truth – all of it. Which is more than the characters populating the book had.

But what do I say to people who want linear answers? I say: you may have read the book too quickly. See if you can read it next time like it’s a painting or your favorite band’s album.

What do you want to say to those who think that the real world is bad enough, so teens should only read ‘happy’ YA books that offer them a reprieve from fear and pain, instead of tackling it head on as you do?

I don’t even know what to say. I mean, children’s television is there if anyone wants to go back to watching Elmo, I suppose. But seriously. What part of life isn’t contradictory inside of every second? What part of our lives is just picture perfect for every minute? Um, none. If adults want to argue that their kids have everything they need, yeah, so do mine…but they also have pain and all kinds of things that make them sad. If no one talks about it, then they feel like freaks for this. And then they hold it all in. And then what? Look around. What happens when kids hold everything in to make their parents happy and meet social expectations? A lot of bad shit. That’s what happens.

Her are some numbers. One in four American teenagers are suffering from mental illness. 

Seventy per cent go untreated. One in four women are sexually assaulted before they graduate college. One in four girls and one in seven boys have experienced childhood sexual abuse. Forty-five per cent of children have lived through the divorce of their parents. This is the tip of the shitty iceberg that is life. For all of us. Denying teenagers a helpful and real outlet for their pain is cruel. Deciding not to educate teens who don’t fit into any of these categories is cruel, too, because life is on the way and bad shit happens to people they know, their spouses, their children.

On a more serious note (hold on…more serious than that?). In America, a kid could get shot and die while they sit in chemistry class because we have gun violence that is the most surreal and unimaginable thing I have ever witnessed. You want me to make my books HAPPY? How’s that going to help their trauma? All kids by the time they hit high school have trauma. We blow it off as drama. They watch kids all over this country get gunned down in school. Even if they aren’t in that school, that’s trauma. National trauma. Yesterday seventeen people died in a school shooting. Today, we are numb – I feel like I am living inside a zombie’s body. This is trauma. 

So yeah. Come at me. I’ve got a pocketful of stats for anyone who feels teenagers should be sheltered. Also, to anyone who thinks teenagers shouldn’t read curse words, I have a pocketful of those, too.

 

What is the number one piece of advice you’d give your teen self? (And is this the inspiration behind all your novels?)

I have never been asked this question before in this way and I love you for it. Because I sat here thinking about it at first, and I think if I was able to go back in time and tell myself not to worry so much about all the crap people told me was important, I’d have been a lot more relaxed and happy. In more blunt terms: keeping up with the Joneses is complete bullshit.

And yes, I’m pretty sure that’s the message inside all of my novels. Among other things. I never knew that before. Thanks.

When are you coming back to Australia?

I thought I’d be back this year, but it turns out I’m heading to New Zealand for their smashing Auckland Writer’s Festival in May. I’m sad I can’t make it to your shores this time around. You know how much I loved being there last year. Australians are of my sensibility. That weird Ireland/American mix. (And you pronounce yogurt the same way as we do, which is how the world should be.)
 

Did your time here last year bring up any inspiration for you? 

I am now eight months from my time in Australia and there’s one thing that keeps coming back to me when I talk about it.

My time in Melbourne was particularly eye-opening in that it is a globally diverse city. I’ve been to a lot of major cities. Nothing comes close to the feeling of welcome global diversity there for me. I don’t know how else to describe it.

When the conference opened, Adele thanked the indigenous tribe on whose land the conference was being hosted. This was the coolest thing I ever saw. You must understand, I am from America where this may happen in some places, but I’ve never seen it and I’ve been around. So I’ve always been an American who craves diversity and difference, and who has always wanted to talk openly about the crimes that occurred in my country – the crimes that enabled my country to be a country/the crimes that this country was founded on. I want us to finally respect the people who survived our genocide. I’d like a lot more, but the first step is respect and acknowledging the truth of our history. 

Native American history isn’t taught outside of inaccurate and dismissive accounts of what really happened. And slavery is so inaccurately taught, proportionally distorted, still not being openly discussed in order to understand present day reality. Those are both understatements. I can’t really dive into how much work we have to do on those fronts or count how many other fronts we should be working on here. The list is enormous. But to see that simple gesture – thanking for the use of the land. That acknowledgement of true history. It made me cry on the spot. I wish we did that here. I wish we had the sensibility to talk openly about anything without an argument arising. So far, that’s not happening over here. So Australia was pure inspiration. Full marks for being awesome.

How do you think Aussie teens are different from American ones? 

From what I saw when I was there, Australian teens really understood my more Irish side – meaning the side of me that talks about communities and volunteering and being part of making things in your country/area better. They weren’t afraid to talk about mental health and they didn’t balk when I talked about it, nor non-consumerism or my years being self-sufficient. They seemed to totally understand why I talked about race and how important it is to know the privilege of whiteness. I felt less weird in Australia, generally.

Now, that’s not to give American teens a bad rap. American teens are plenty savvy and smart and capable and empathetic. However, they are often shocked when I speak so openly about mental health, race, or the personal responsibility we have to our communities. Some are either so used to being universally dismissed and devalued, or they are just not used to adults talking to them about personal things so openly? I don’t know. I do feel weird here but that’s because I lived so long abroad and I think I can be weird-seeming to people who don’t know many women who speak passionately about certain topics.

I felt a confidence among Aussie teens that came from something deeper in their education, an openness to learning – something that gave them credit for being almost to adulthood. A sense of belonging and maturity. I’m sad to say that I don’t see that as often here. (I DO see it, but not as often, that’s all.) American high school has become a series of standardized tests and rites of passage floating on the surface of a great education offered by great educators…who are often at the mercy of an administration that is distracted by what floats on the surface. Confident maturity – while juggling a natural rebellion against a culture that is constantly belittling them – is all over the place, but that belittling takes its toll on that confidence. 

Here’s a line from Please Ignore Vera Dietz that sums up how I feel about living in America, what it’s like for teenagers to live in America, and that sums up this entire interview! 

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‘I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. If we’re supposed to ignore everything that’s wrong with our lives, then I can’t see how we'll ever make things right.’ 

'Glory O'Brien's History of the Future' by A.S. King

From the BLURB:

In this masterpiece about freedom, feminism, and destiny, Printz Honor author A.S. King tells the epic story of a girl coping with devastating loss at long last--a girl who has no idea that the future needs her, and that the present needs her even more.

Graduating from high school is a time of limitless possibilities--but not for Glory, who has no plan for what's next. Her mother committed suicide when Glory was only four years old, and she's never stopped wondering if she will eventually go the same way ... until a transformative night when she begins to experience an astonishing new power to see a person's infinite past and future. 

From ancient ancestors to many generations forward, Glory is bombarded with visions--and what she sees ahead of her is terrifying: A tyrannical new leader raises an army. Women's rights disappear. A violent second civil war breaks out. And young girls vanish daily, sold off or interned in camps. Glory makes it her mission to record everything she sees, hoping her notes will somehow make a difference. She may not see a future for herself, but she'll do anything to make sure this one doesn't come to pass.

‘Glory O'Brien's History of the Future’ is the new contemporary YA novel from A.S. King.

I’ve been sitting on this review for a while. I was actually gifted an advance copy of this book from my friend Persnickety Snark, who attended Book Expo America earlier in the year – she nabbed me a copy, and had a chat with the King herself, who she said was absolutely lovely!

So I read the book way back before its October release. I’ve since re-read it a couple of times … and tried writing a review a half dozen times … and the most sincere statement I can come up with to summarise is: “fuck, it’s good.”

But I’m going to try to be more eloquent than that, because this book deserves eloquence. And I’m posting this as my last review for the year (favourites list and ‘most anticipated’ list forthcoming!) – because I like the idea of ending the year with this review, of this book – it’s going to be a bit like sending an “Amen!” into the universe.

This is a book about what happens when a young, motherless girl gains the power of hindsight and foresight – and what she does when the future she sees coming for us is one in which Women’s rights disappear.

Our protagonist is Glory, a girl whose mother stuck her head in the oven when Glory was little and she’s been haunted by her death ever since – it’s something she tries to figure out through photography, a hobby she shares with her mother. When we meet her, Glory is about to graduate high school and possibly sever ties with her best-frenemy Ellie Heffner. When the girls drink the blood of a petrified bat – in a show of BFF solidarity – the repercussions are cosmic and terrifying, granting Glory a peek into everyone’s past and future … a future that includes a civil war sparked by a governmental agenda of misogyny and tyranny.

Does this sound like part contemporary YA, part feminist manifesto? It does? Good. Because it kinda is – a feminist manifesto wrapped in the vastness of time and space, dipped in subversive YA fiction. In other words: it’s freakin’ glorious!

I am tortured too. I am tortured by belly fat and magazine covers about how to please everyone but myself. I am tortured by sheep who click on anything that will guarantee a ten-pound loss in one week. Sheep who will get on their knees if it means someone will like them more. I am tortured by my inability to want to hang out with desperate sheep. I am tortured by goddamned yearbooks full of bullshit. I met you when. I’ll miss the times. I’ll keep in touch. Best friends forever. Is this okay? Are you all right? Are you tortured too? 

Last year I would have said that King’s ‘Reality Boy’ was her most ambitious novel to date … then again, the year before that I probably would have said that ‘Ask thePassengers’ was her most shattering literary statement yet … and so on and so forth but the truth is that A.S. King keeps getting better and bolder with each new book. She’s one of the most important voices writing in YA fiction today for the very reason that she’s constantly testing boundaries and pushing readers out of comfort zones. A.S. King writes without limit

And in a year that saw feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian threatened with death and massacre if she dared lecture at a university  … when just this month a woman was beaten to death for trying to save two girls from a group of men who were harassing them … actor Bill Cosby is only now being scrutinised for rape allegations dating as far back as the 1970s … Y’know there are too many more to list. But in a year that saw all that bullshit – not to mention the UN telling us there is a ‘global pandemic’ of violence against women – A.S. King’s book is a revelation for youth literature. Not least because she brings feminism onto the page, and let’s young readers know that it’s okay (heck, it’s best!) if they count themselves as feminists.

5/5

'Reality Boy' by A.S. King

From the BLURB:

Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth—which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school.

Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is. Everyone’s just waiting for him to snap…and he’s starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that.

It’s getting harder and harder to write reviews of A.S. King’s books that are more than three-words long; ‘Just read it.’ ‘You’ll love it.’ ‘I loved it.’ Especially when she consistently writes provocative and disarming literature like ‘Reality Boy’. 

This is a book about Gerald Faust, whose family appeared on the television series ‘Network Nanny’ when he was five-years-old upon letter-request of his mother. Their segment was a ratings-hit; camera crews captured Gerald punching walls and his older sister. They glimpsed his mother’s favouritism of eldest daughter, Tasha, and disregard for her late-in-life children Lisi and Gerald. And the cherry on top of the ratings bonanza came when Gerald started to act out by taking dumps all over the house: on the dining room table and inside his mother’s favourite shoes, on Tasha’s bed and on the top step of the staircase. Gerald became known as ‘The Crapper’. 

What the cameras didn’t capture was the truth about the bony-beautiful actress hired to play ‘The Nanny’, the numerous re-takes of scenes depicting a ‘happy’ and ‘fixed’ family for the episode to conclude with and the real reason Gerald acted out with violence and Lisi hid away in her room; Tasha. Tasha, their oldest sister, who had been tormenting them for years. Tasha, their mother’s first and favourite. Tasha, who their father can merely roll his eyes at. Tasha, who hurts them when nobody is looking. 

Now aged seventeen, Gerald is still known in certain circles (and thanks to YouTube) as ‘The Crapper’. Lisi graduated from high school and got into college … in Scotland, far away from their gated community and psychopath sister. Tasha, meanwhile, dropped out of college and is currently living in the basement of their McMansion where she has deliberately loud, floorboard-shaking sex with her dropkick boyfriend. Gerald has an anger-management coach (assigned to him after an incident involving eating the face of a classmate … it’s a long story). He’s in SPED (special education) class at school and has made a family of his fellow misfits. He works at the PEC centre food stand, serving hockey fans and music-lovers and pining for fellow loner girl on register #1. 

“I’m not famous. I’m infamous,” I say. “There’s a big difference.” 

‘Reality Boy’ drifts between flashbacked filming snapshots of the ‘Network Nanny’ episode that failed to fix the Faust family but had damning repercussions on Gerald. Gerald is remembering those days in the weeks before his 17th birthday – when he starts truly pining for register #1 girl (despite his anger management coach warning him off dating) and as tensions with Tasha start to reach a boiling point. Not helping matters is the fact that his beloved sister, Lisi, left for Scotland three months ago and hasn’t been in touch since. And Gerald keeps casting his mind back to long-buried memories of what Tasha did to him and Lisi when they were too young to fight back…

I don’t think I’m too dangerous to date anymore. I mean, I know Roger thinks girls are infuriating and that I shouldn’t be opening myself up to that shit, but she’s cute. She’s funny. We’re both weird. She’s weird because she writes in that little book. I’m weird because I used to crap on stuff. And because I wear war paint to school. And because I ate part of some kid’s face once when I was thirteen.

I read A.S. King’s ‘Reality Boy’ shortly after stumbling across a BBC article about violent sibling bullying titled; ‘I wished I hadn’t been born.’ At the time I thought that was a harrowing read – but I had no idea the depths of this violence and its repercussions until I delved into Gerald’s world in ‘Reality Boy’. 

Gerlad is himself a violent young man – there are incidents from his past, and he has an anger-management coach. He’s aware of his “triggers” and he sometimes fantasizes about succumbing to his impulses. He’s tightly-wound and wounded, a little bit frightening for his intensity and the heartbreaking history that made him. But he’s one of the best male protagonists I’ve read in a long, long time and I’m not the least bit surprised that he’s the imagining of A.S. King – one of the best young adult writers around today and an absolute humanist when it comes to portraying grey-hued, ‘broken’ characters. 

At a time when news of king-hitting, wild and aggressive young men dominate the newsfeed – A.S. King presents Gerald who, at first glance, is just like any number of other angry young men. And, indeed, I’m sure a slew of viewers who tuned into ‘Network Nanny’ thought they had him all figured out as a no-hoper, juvenile delinquent when they watched the Faust family episode. But that’s not the real Gerald. The truth is far more complex and unconventional than could be translated to primetime television – Gerald is in fact a young man who no one has ever listened to. But when we meet him he’s just starting to realise that he has demands; he wants to be heard, he wants to be treated a certain way and he has every right to demand such things.

This was a central discussion of the book – demand. It got me thinking at what age children start to realise that they can have expectations for themselves and others? They can certainly demand a better life, and to be treated with care and deserve love. What happens to children who aren’t raised knowing that they should expect certain kindnesses and protection? What happens to those kids? 

Maybe most other people are messed up, too. It just wasn’t aired on TV or, you know, aired on Tom What’s-His-Name’s face.

I love A.S. King. In one book she subtly and deftly raises questions around fame-hunger in society, quick-fix psychology, bullying, societal misperceptions and family dysfunction all in a brutal and compelling coming-of-age book that’s unlike anything being tackled in the YA readership today. She’s in a league all of her own and whenever somebody says; “YA isn’t for me” I just wish I could hand them an A.S. King novel and then walk away. Because, damn!, what A.S. King writes can hardly be relegated only to the YA readership – she writes heartbreakingly flawed and complex human characters for everyone.

5/5 

'The Dust of 100 Dogs' by A.S. King

From the BLURB:

In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact.

Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.

Saffron Adams was born in 1972 in Hollow Ford, Pennsylvania. She is a genius daughter with alcoholic, pill-popping parents and a junkie brother called Junior. Saffron’s family are pinning all their hopes on her – to graduate valedictorian, get a full scholarship to a good college, study medicine, open her own practice and dig the family out of debt, depression and deprivation.

Saffron was also re-born and lived 100 lives as dogs of various breeds – Dobermans to Chihuahuas, Labradors and Terriers. Her canine reincarnation was thanks to a curse. A curse inherited by Saffron’s other memory…

Saffron Adams also remembers being Emer Morrisey, growing up in 1650’s Ireland when Cromwell’s army marches through, burning her home to the ground and murdering her entire family. She remembers her uncle coming for her, and not speaking at all during the years she lived with his tyranny, amongst her cowering aunt and cousins. She remembers falling in love with Seanie Carroll and planning to marry him – only to have her uncle ship her off to a rich French husband she quickly escaped from … and Saffron remembers Emer venturing to Tortuga, and falling into a life of piracy and villainy in which she sailed the high sea, killing Spaniards, taking rum and jewels and nearly out-running a mad Frenchman.

She remembers Seanie.
And the emerald.
And the Frenchman.
And the curse of 100 dogs.
But mostly she remembers Seanie.

‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’ was A.S. King’s debut novel, first released in 2009.

I’m doing it all backwards. My first experience reading one of A.S. King’s mad-cap young adult delicacies was with her 2010 novel ‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz.’ Since then she has most definitely cemented her place as one of my all-time favourite authors; particularly for ‘Everybody Sees the Ants’ in 2011 and most recently ‘Ask the Passengers’ this October. I was, of course, aware of ‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’. I bought a copy of the book immediately after reading ‘Vera Dietz’. But I didn’t read it. I put it off. It languished on my to-be-read pile for a whole year – that gorgeous silhouetted skull colour calling to me. I guess I was treating ‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’ like the last potato on my dinner plate – so good, something I knew I’d enjoy but I also wanted to savour it and save till last… And now, here we are. And let me tell you, ‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’ was thoroughly, golden-delicious.

This is a hard book to summarize – and if you want to know why, just look at the Verso (copyright) page and its keywords: Pirates. Reincarnation. Dogs.

Basically, Saffron Adams is growing up in Pennsylvania a seemingly normal American teenager. Except that she has the memories of the previous 100 lives she lived as various dogs. And she has the memories of a female pirate who roamed the high seas during the 1600’s, called Emer Morrisey. Even worse, Saffron remembers all of Emer’s worst memories – her family dying in Ireland, losing the love of her life and little bits of her humanity as she transformed into a cutthroat pirate. But the upside is that Saffron also remembers where Emer buried her biggest haul of treasure. Now all Saffron needs is to graduate high school, save some money and find a way to get to Jamaica.

There are three narratives woven throughout the novel. First there is Emer’s story – set in 1600’s Ireland and then moving to France and eventually Tortuga and surrounding famous pirate strongholds. Then there is Saffron’s modern-day story (leading up to 1990’s) as she struggles with her dependent, destructive family and all the hopes and dreams they’re pinning on her while she plots her escape to Jamaica. Half-way through the novel we start getting chapters based in modern Jamaica – told by a vile man named Fred Livingstone who yells at the voices in his head while spying on unsuspecting women through his telescope and reliving his ‘glory days’ as a date rapist. And interspersed throughout the book are a number of vignette tips on dogs (which could also work for humans) – this is Saffron recounting all that she learnt in her days as a canine – everything from why dogs like pack safety, to why you shouldn’t spoil your dog.

What’s really fantastically tricky about this novel is the distinction between Reincarnation and Rebirth. In the novel, Saffron is not Emer – she has her memories, just as she has the memories of those 100 dogs. But Saffron is her own entity, living her own life and with her own woes and worries. Saffron treats Emer like a sort of dear friend who she comes to rely on for bursts of strength and bravado (Saffron actually takes to fantasizing about pirate torture on those who annoy her, courtesy of Emer’s left-over memories).

First, she had me in college and running a local practice. Now, she had me having babies and obligingly understanding her warped view on life. I was only sixteen years old. Why was she making me imagine slicing her eyes out? Why was she forcing me to take my cutlass to the ligaments at the back of her knees?

I was reading it almost like Emer was a wonderful imaginary friend Saffron has carried around with her. Saffron and Emer actually have a really fascinating relationship – and I thought it was great to see how Saffron gained strength from Emer’s memories. The relationship is actually a very fond one, and considering these two women never meet on the page – in fact, one of them has been dead for some 300 years before the other is even born – the warmth and trust between them came across crystal clear to me. Particularly when Saffron finally gets to Jamaica, but feels somewhat abandoned by Emer whose memorial-courage isn’t as readily on tap:

Every part of me wanted to burst into miserable tears but instead I emptied my duffel bag on the quilted bedspread and looked at my stuff. I unfolded the army shovel and stared at myself in the mirror again, waiting to catch a glimpse of the woman who’d dragged me here – but all I saw was some skinny kid from Hollow Ford who was fooling herself.

And as the novel progresses, a larger question surfaces in which Saffron has to ask herself; is she really searching for physical treasure? Or is it a case of the more she follows Emer’s footsteps, the closer she gets to herself?

Anyone who has ever read any A.S. King novel knows that she likes the kooky. Her particular brand of surreal is often in the form of ghosts made manifest – whether they be Socrates, a dead best friend or a long-lost grandfather invading dreams… A.S. King has this wonderful preoccupation with the dead and buried who are still alive and kicking in her protagonist’s imagination. With that in mind, I could definitely see how ‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’ was a sort of story springboard for King’s subsequent novels. In ‘Dust’, death is made manifest within Saffron’s reincarnated memories. Emer lives on through Saffron, and continues to suffer the memories of losing her family, her love and her life all those hundreds of years ago.

I found one or two other minor connections in ‘Dust’ – little things that I imagine (in my fan-girl, obsessive way) provided the germs for thought that would become A.S. King’s next novels. Things like a ship Emer commands being called the Vera Cruz. Or those little doggy vignettes reminding me of similar side-stories of love’s impact in ‘Ask the Passengers’. So I actually came away from ‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’ thinking how wonderful it was to have read this first book last – to see where it all started, in a way, and to read A.S. King at the most extreme end of her kooky scale.

And this novel is kooky. There’s no denying that. It’s kookier than Vera talking to paper cut outs of her dead best friend, or Astrid sending her love up to planes or Lucky dreaming of saving a grandfather he never met. But, like all of King’s novels, ‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’ also balances the crazy with the beautiful. So even though it’s a novel about being a reincarnated pirate with memories of being reincarnated dogs – that’s just the interesting, helter-skelter plot. Underneath that I think ‘The Dust of 100 Dogs’ is about exploring this idea of whether or not history is doomed to repeat itself, and whether or not human beings can ever learn from past mistakes.

5/5

‘Ask the Passengers’ by A.S. King

From the BLURB:

Astrid Jones copes with her small town's gossip and narrow-mindedness by staring at the sky and imagining that she's sending love to the passengers in the airplanes flying high over her backyard. Maybe they'll know what to do with it. Maybe it'll make them happy. Maybe they'll need it. Her mother doesn't want it, her father's always stoned, her perfect sister's too busy trying to fit in, and the people in her small town would never allow her to love the person she really wants to: another girl named Dee.

There's no one Astrid feels she can talk to about this deep secret or the profound questions that she's trying to answer. But little does she know just how much sending her love--and asking the right questions--will affect the passengers' lives, and her own, for the better.

Here is what they say about Astrid Jones and her family in their small-town of Unity Valley:

•    Their mother hardly ever leaves the house. But she’s stuck-up, and thinks she’s above it all for keeping her fancy New York job.
•    The dad is a stoner – if he’s not making birdhouses, he’s taking a toke in the shed.
•    Youngest daughter, Ellis, is a mean hockey player. She fits right in here, a real small-town girl.
•    That Astrid Jones is a weird one – don’t know how she came to be friends with the nice Homecoming couple, Kristina and Justin. Did you know she really enjoyed her philosophy class (but hates Zeno of Elea)? Did you know she lies down on a picnic table in their backyard? Just lies there, for hours, staring at nothing.

But if people in Unity Valley knew the truth about a life in motion and how growing up is already a kaleidoscope of confusing without sexuality being thrown into the mix… they’d probably say something like this:

•    That mother has never loved her eldest daughter. She only has ‘mummy and me’ days with the younger sister, Ellis. Truth is, she doesn’t much care for her daughter, Astrid – doesn’t really like her all that much.
•    The dad smokes weed because he still regrets packing his family up and moving them from New York into this small town where the highlight of his year is the great stapler thief at work.
•    Ellis cares about what everyone thinks. Everyone. And she doesn’t appreciate other people’s assumptions that all hockey players are lesbians (even if she knows of at least two on her team and a rival school’s). Gross. Can’t they go off and have their lesbian luncheons somewhere else?
•    Astrid Jones might be a lesbian. Maybe. Possibly. In all likelihood. Because she loves kissing her co-worker, Dee Roberts, even if she’s not yet ready to say ‘Abracadabra’ and get hotter and heavier with her. But Astrid doesn’t want to come out. Because she’s seen Kristina and Justin intricately hide their respective boyfriend and girlfriend for two years now – and she can just imagine what Unity Valley would say if they knew how different she really was.

‘Ask the Passengers’ is the new novel from Printz honour author, A.S. King.

This novel has only been out as of October 23, but it’s already made the Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2012 list. And I’m inclined to think that that’s just the beginning… because, as usual, A.S. King is a unique force unto herself and ‘Ask the Passengers’ is truly spectacular for being a quirky, but relatable story, about a girl struggling to find herself.

First of all, it should be noted that there aren’t enough LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) young adult books out there. As the Young Adult Library Service Association’s blog pointed out recently, “There are 55 queer YA novels being published in in 2012, meaning that queer YA is just 1.6% of all YA coming out this year.” That’s pretty blood atrocious. Especially when you think that one of the main reasons anybody reads is to see a little of themselves reflected on the page – to connect to something in a character that they can relate to, struggle through or learn from. It’s awful to think that LGBT teens don’t have as many book offered to them with characters that reflect their experience or speak to them on an emotional/romantic level. So that’s one reason why A.S. King’s new novel ‘Ask the Passengers’ is so refreshing and important – merely for being apart of that 1.6%

I love A.S. King. I think she’s one of the most important YA authors to have emerged in the last ten years or so. I never read a King novel and say “she reminds me of…” No. A.S. King doesn’t remind me of anyone but herself – sure, I can see her influences include Kurt Vonnegut but when I crack open an A.S. King novel I always find something wholly original and crazy/beautiful, and come away truly believing that I’ve just read a little piece of her manic soul on the page. You know that old quote: “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed”? I really, truly believe that of A.S. King because with all her novels it feels like she’s opening wounds and serving up her characters in their raw, bloodiest form. And it also feels like she’s slicing open a little part of the reader – opening up a window in us to look through and connect with her characters on the page, and herself by extension. And she does it again with Astrid Jones and ‘Ask the Passengers’.

Astrid is in many ways your typical teenage girl. She hates trigonometry (triangles – it’s all triangles!), isn’t as cool as her best friend Kristina, had a messy break-up with her ex-boyfriend, thinks her younger sister is the ‘favourite’ and hasn’t had a memorable conversation with her mother since she moved the family to Unity Valley from New York when Astrid was nine. But in many ways not easily seen on the surface, Astrid is trying to cope with being a big-minded girl in a small-town. She’s keeping Kristina and Justin’s homosexuality a secret. She knows her dad is stoned 99% of the time. She thinks her mum is borderline agoraphobic, and that her sister, Ellis, is small-mindedly homophobic. This is particularly troubling since Astrid has recently started kissing her co-worker, Dee Roberts, and liking it. A lot.

Something I love about King’s exploration of Astrid’s sexuality in this novel is that she asks the taboo questions and explores all aspects of wondering what it means to be kinda-sorta-maybe-possibly gay;

But now all I can think about is Dee and how this all started. How she told me how gorgeous I was. How flattered I felt. How exhilarating it was to be wanted. This is why I doubt. It’s the loophole. It’s the question no one ever wants to ask.
Am I doing this out of desperation? Is it some weird phase I’m going through? And why, if any of the answers are yes, does it feel so right?
There is a 747 high, leaving a crisp white line through the cloudless autumn sky. I ask the passengers: Am I really gay?
But they don’t answer me. They are reading their in-flight magazines and sipping ginger ale. I send them love – as much as I can gather. I ask them: What do I do now?

I think this is distilled particularly brilliantly in an exchange between Astrid and her mum – when her mum says “you’re either born gay or you’re not.” Which is the very accepting notion that ‘gayness’ isn’t a choice, it’s who you are. But that doesn’t leave much wriggle-room for Astrid to explore how she feels – about Dee, about girls, about dancing at the only gay bar in town, Atlantis.

Of course, this is Unity Valley and King can’t go past making a mockery of that name. She pulls some really weighty ideas into this novel without ever preaching to the reader. I was particularly chilled by a scene in Astrid’s humanities class; they’re learning about the holocaust and the Jews, Gypsies, black, cripples, and homosexuals who were killed. Of that list – a boy pipes up to say the Nazi’s “got it right” about the homosexuals. Amazing, isn’t it? All these prejudices we’ve conquered (but not entirely eradicated) often after bloody battles and hard-won freedom rights. But same-sex marriage still isn’t recognized and homosexuality is still a crime in some parts of the world – and if some people had their way, it would be illegal in some small-minded towns of America too. How far have we come, really?

I think if we kept a calendar of who gets called gay in high school, there would be a new person on every single day of the 180-day school year. Gay, dyke, fag, lesbo, homo, whatever. Every single one of us has heard it somewhere along the ride. It’s more common than the flu. More contagious, too. Nobody gossips about whether you have the flu or not.

King’s key to dealing with these rather heavy topics is Astrid. She’s a wonderful protagonist – both snarky, clever, thoughtful and lost. She’s pitch-perfect in every way, and we’re able to navigate the rather awful torrential waters of high school bullying only because we have Astrid’s sarcastic defences and thoughtful contemplation to help us through. It also helps that this isn’t a strictly LGBT-only book. King draws in a plethora of issues – like a not so great best friend who thinks she has more to lose than Astrid, a distant mother, determinedly ignorant father and Astrid missing the sisterly bond she and Ellis used to have. Yes, this is as an LGBT book – but King doesn’t write one-dimensional characters or issues. She’s pulling in stories about struggling friendships and a choking home life. Also refreshing in a LGBT novel is the added discussion of sexual pressure – when Astrid’s more experienced girlfriend is desperate to get hot n’ heavy but Astrid isn’t quite ready yet.

This being an aforementioned wholly original A.S. King novel, I guess some people would like to know right away what the ‘quirk’ is. In ‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’ our protagonist was haunted by paper cut outs of her dead best friend, and her father provided helpful flow-charts for the reader to follow. In ‘Everybody Sees the Ants’ our young Lucky Linderman blurs reality as he dreams of saving his POW grandfather from the jungles of Laos. In ‘Ask the Passengers’ Astrid has a habit of laying on a picnic table and sending her love up to the airplane passengers flying overhead – and in small vignettes we read the repercussions of all that love. Oh, and she’s taken to speaking to an imaginary friend who is actually (Frank) Socrates – the classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Yes, it’s trademark King quirky. And I know some people think they don’t “get” these little asides that King writes so beautifully and mesmerizingly. But there’s really nothing to “get”. Life is crazy, A.S. King’s characters just so happen to sometimes manifest that craziness.

I loved everything about ‘Ask the Passengers’. I always love King’s quirky-cool stories in which she offers her heart on the page. Astrid’s story is particularly important for being part of the 1.6% of LGBT young adult fiction to come out of 2012 – but that statistic aside, ‘Ask the Passengers’ is just a damn good story about struggling with small-town minds when you’re a burgeoning philosopher.

5/5