Interview with Fiona Wood, author of 'Cloudwish'

Q: Where did the idea for Cloudwish first spring from? And did you already have Vân Uoc’s story in mind when you were writing Wildlife?

Vân Uoc’s story was bubbling away while I was writing Wildlife. I took a long time naming the character – the translation of her name is the book title, Cloudwish. Her story wasn’t fully developed, but I knew she would be the protagonist. I liked the idea of taking a very minor character and saying, have a closer look, she has an interesting story, too; and taking a smartarsed jock (Billy Gardiner), and showing that he’s more complicated that he looks; and suggesting that these two characters might have a lot more in common than is immediately apparent.

And I wanted to use Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte as a reference point for the story. Vân Uoc calls Jane the quiet girls’ hero. Jane is a character judged by some within her narrative as being insignificant because she has no money or status or ostensible power, but she’s magnificently strong. Like Vân Uoc, she is relatively unprivileged in a world of privilege, but at every point she prevails. Vân Uoc lives her life by the credo: What would Jane do? She can’t always manage to do what she thinks Jane would do, but she gets better at it as the story progresses.

The magic story strand was suggested by a gift from Simmone Howell to me, and to Cath Crowley, of little glass tubes with slips of paper inside them. As soon as I held that object in my hand, it was asking to have a story told about it.

Q: Your first two novels – Six Impossible Things and Wildlife – were both written in first-person. I wonder if you can talk through your decision to change Cloudwish up and write in third-person?

In Cloudwish, I use the third person to note in a formal way that I am writing a character with a cultural and ethnic background that is not my own. It’s something that readers might not even notice particularly, but it was important to me to keep that in mind throughout the writing process. My point of departure was as a respectful, observant outsider. I wasn’t writing from inside a lived experience. Often, writing fiction, you’re not. You do take on imaginative tasks that are outside your experience, but as someone from a majority culture writing about a character from a minority culture, respect, research, and asking for advice and feedback from people within the cultural group were integral to the job.

Q: Vân Uoc has probably jumped to the top of my list of all-time favourite protagonists in Aussie YA … She’s the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who arrived in Australia in 1980, and she brings such an important and unique perspective that’s rarely explored in YA. I wonder how did you go about researching Vân Uoc’s Vietnamese background, to portray her experience as the daughter of refugee parents?

Vân Uoc was in part inspired by my now seven-year involvement in a volunteer tutor program, Friday Night School, where my student, and many other students, come from the Vietnamese Australian community. So I’ve seen over a number of years the particular challenges that students have in cases where their parents have sought refuge and settled in a new country, and the children’s understanding of the local culture and language exceeds that of their parents. At the same time there is an understandable expectation within families that the culture of origin is respected and adhered to. Living with two cultures provides a great richness, but also a frustration when two sets of expectations differ and sometimes collide. And I’ve seen the strong love and respect that children have for their parents, and the understanding of the bravery of their parents in looking for a new home. I also interviewed Vietnamese Australian people outside the tutor program, and did the usual desk research. But I wouldn’t have taken the character on if it weren’t for being part of the tutor program.

 

Q: I also love Alice Walker’s quote at the beginning of this book, from her 2014 Sydney Writer’s Festival appearance. I wonder if you can speak more about what Walker was saying, and how that influenced/helped you in writing Cloudwish from a cultural perspective that’s not your own?

To me, that quote is about empathy, which is not simply projecting yourself into an experience that is superficially just like your own; it’s about seeing a deeper commonality in the human experience. It’s an invitation to look more carefully and to understand how connected we are. Majority groups aren’t always so good at doing this. Minority groups have always been expected to do it, for example, to engage with texts that feature predominantly white characters. The character of Vân Uoc is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants. She negotiates two languages and two cultures, and she’s a typical teenage girl living in Melbourne. I have such a strong sense of books and reading connecting us across time and language and cultures. Because Jane Eyre is an important book for Vân Uoc, it was a serendipitous delight to read Alice Walker saying that she, too, had loved and related to the character of Jane Eyre. I was about to deliver Cloudwish here and in America when I read the article that included the quote; it was the last thing I added to the manuscript before pressing ‘send’.

Q: There’s been some talk lately that teens are “over” romances. I, personally, don’t believe that and I love that Cloudwish is all about Vân Uoc’s very complicated romantic feelings for Billy Gardiner (made more complicated by some magic) … you’re not writing strictly romance here, but what do you think is driving teens to reject the romance genre right now?

I love writing the romance story strands in my books and I don’t think that teen readers are rejecting romance, as much as just pushing back against romance that is gratuitous to the narrative. I can imagine that if it seems like an arbitrary add-on, as though it’s a box that has to be ticked, then it probably won’t be well received. For me romance is always a subset of identity, it’s not the main driver, but it’s an important part of someone finding out who they are. One of the ways you do that is by finding out who you are in different roles, and relative to other people, and how your decisions and actions affect other people. Romantic relationships are great places to investigate those things in fiction. (Also I asked a big group of teenagers yesterday if they were over romance, and got a resounding ‘no’ in answer to the question.)

Q: I love that your books are all interconnected and feature students from Crowthorne Grammar … how many more books in this universe do you plan to write? … which is a round-about way of asking WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW AND WHEN CAN WE READ IT?!?!

Thank you – I love coming across characters that migrate from book to book as a reader, too. To me it plays into the notion of a suspension of disbelief and an immersive reading experience in which the fictional world is ‘real’. There are more books in this world, for sure, but the next thing I’m working on is the book that Cath Crowley and Simmone Howell and I are writing together with the working title, Friends Anonymous.

Q: Your books are now available in America – what has the response been to them over there? And have you had any funny reader-interactions (especially around your being Australian?)

There’s been a really good critical response to both books. Wildlife was published first, in 2014, and Six Impossible Things has just come out recently. It was definitely a highlight when Wildlife was reviewed very favourably in the New York Times Book Review, and a great honour that both books have been Junior Library Guild Selections. There are no funny reader interactions that come to mind, but lots of lovely reader reviews and responses. An occasional person will mention the slang or food being a bit different, and readers have been intrigued by the outdoor education setting of Wildlife. I’ve had a great experience with my publisher, Little, Brown, as far as keeping the Australian settings and language intact. I hear people saying that the US requires big changes for the local market, but that hasn’t been my experience. 

Q: You’re a big supporter of the #LoveOzYA movement – so I wonder if you could share your top 3 favourite Aussie YA books?

There are so many fabulous #LoveOzYA books and writers, I feel really proud of our community. When I was first creating a story for Dan Cereill, these four books made me think, yeah, this is where I want to work: Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta, Notes from the Teenage Underground by Simmone Howell, Chasing Charlie Duskin by Cath Crowley and Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty.

'Cloudwish' by Fiona Wood

From the BLURB:

For Vân Uoc Phan, fantasies fell into two categories: nourishing, or pointless. Daydreaming about Billy Gardiner, for example? Pointless. It always left her feeling sick, as though she'd eaten too much sugar.

Vân Uoc doesn't believe in fairies, zombies, vampires, Father Christmas - or magic wishes. She believes in keeping a low profile: real life will start when school finishes.

But when she attracts the attention of Billy Gardiner, she finds herself in an unwelcome spotlight.

Not even Jane Eyre can help her now.

Wishes were not a thing.

They were not.

Correction.

Wishes were a thing.

Wishes that came true were sometimes a thing.

Wishes that came true because of magic were not a thing!

Were they?

‘Cloudwish’ is the new contemporary young adult novel from Australian author Fiona Wood.

In case you don’t know by now, I’m kinda obsessed with Fiona Wood and her books. From her first ‘Six Impossible Things’ to the sublime ‘Wildlife’, Fiona has fast become one of my all-time favourite authors, and now with ‘Cloudwish’ she’s gone and written one of my all-time favourite Aussie YA characters in Vân Uoc Phan (whose name translates from Vietnamese to the ‘Cloudwish’ of the title).

Vân Uoc is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who arrived in Australia in 1980. She lives in a housing commission flat and attends the prestigious Crowthorne Grammar (the pivot-point of all Fiona’s books thus far) on a scholarship. She’s fiercely smart and a quiet dreamer, and one boy – Billy Gardiner – has been occupying her dreams a lot lately. A freeform creative writing exercise and a glass vial with the word ‘wish’ inside sparks something in Vân Uoc though, something powerful and magical …

Vân Uoc is one of the most interesting characters to come out of Aussie YA. Her perspective as the daughter of Vietnamese immigrant parents who rely on her for English-translation in social situations alone makes her intriguing – and absolutely speaks to an article that fellow Aussie YA author Sarah Ayoub wrote recently; ‘Still looking for Alibrandi: migrant teens deserve their own young adult fiction.’ It’s also the fact that Vân Uoc feels so much pressure on her shoulders to get good grades and embark on a worthy career to make her parents proud, and fulfill the wish that saw them settling in Australia in the first place – to give their daughter the best life possible. And she’s an interesting character to be exploring the current state of Australian politics – particularly our abysmal treatment of asylum seekers – to see this through the eyes of a young person who comes from a side of this debate that makes it hit so close to home;

… I wish I hadn’t read the article about the fucking government’s new legislation on boat people how dare they how dare they stand in the fortress the high places the towers of privilege stamp down rain down reign down on the people who can’t find the first foothold in the green water floating drowning the soft sand the sand too far too far far far below never making it to shore they are no different from us us and then us is them we are them …  

And at the heart of Vân Uoc’s intrigue is that she’s coming from a place of diversity. Not just racial, but that she’s from a somewhat lower socio-economic background trying to fit in as a ‘scholarship kid’ at Crowthorne Grammar – that alone sets her apart in Aussie YA right now. And I appreciated that Fiona Wood wrote her with such tenderness and deep respect for her community – the fact that the book is written in third-person alone (when ‘Six Impossible Things’ and ‘Wildlife’ were first) is partly because the author didn’t want to appropriate that voice. I was also not surprised to learn that she worked very closely with the Melbourne Vietnamese community to get the story and character just right – that authenticity and deep respect shines through in this book, and lifts the story.

And the story itself is just beautiful – very much inspired by Jane Eyre (whom Vân Uoc is quite obsessed with). It’s a story that I’ve heard Fiona Wood refer to as a celebration of ‘quiet girls with big thoughts’, those people who fly under the radar but if you pay them a little attention they will floor you. There’s the sweetest dash of romance to this tale of Vân Uoc and her crush on the elusively cool Billy Gardiner, helped along seemingly by a little magic … it’s another one of Fiona Wood’s romances that I want to celebrate; and makes me want to put her books into the hands of boys and girls everywhere.

‘Exactly when did I go from being invisible to being visible?’ 

This was his cue to say that he’d gradually been noticing her over the last year or so – he hadn’t wanted to be obvious in his attentions, but he knew by now that, though quiet, she was smart; though shy, she had a sense of humour; though not a self-promoter, she was a dedicated, passionate artist … 

Billy smiled. ‘It was that class – the first week back, when the visiting writer came. The one with the pink hair?’ 

Vân Uoc stopped dead. It took a huge effort to retain her cool, but she managed it. Just. ‘Yep. Yep, I remember. So, what was it that made you notice me?’ 

Billy nodded and looked into the middle distance as though he was trying to replay the scene in his mind. He looked puzzled. ‘It was like you suddenly had a spotlight on you.’ 

‘So, just to be clear: it was a sudden thing more than a gradual thing.’ 

'Can’t answer that – because who knows what’s been going on subliminally and for how long? Am I right?’ 

God, of all the annoying times for him to become reflective. ‘Billy, just concentrate on that particular class – what else did you notice about me, if anything?’ 

'The best way to put it, I guess, is that it was just blindingly obvious that you were the most interesting person in the room.’ Billy smiled the Doritos smile. ‘Apart from me.’

I loved this book. I’ve already re-read it twice and have found new things to love in the re-reading. It’s just one of those books that burrows deep – and I want to gift it to everyone, but since I can’t physically do that I’ll take my platform here and just say please read it – you'll thank me later.

5/5  

Reading Matters 2013 - The Reception

This weekend it was my absolute delight to attend the 10th biennial Reading Matters, hosted by the State Library’s Centre for Youth Literature. For those who don’t know, Reading Matters is Australia’s leading youth literature event – where local and overseas authors mix with their young readers in school’s day events, followed by a two day conference with teachers, librarians, teacher-librarians and other industry professionals. It’s epic. 

This was my first ever Reading Matters and I honestly didn’t know quite what to expect . . .  I knew that I loved the author line-up and the topics to be covered (everything from gate keeping to gender identity) piqued my interest. But I went along to the reception on Thursday night a little bit nervous and timid, afraid people would think that, as a blogger, I was encroaching on a professional space (then I felt a bit pretentious, having ‘Alpha Reader’ on my name-badge, like I was throwing a gauntlet down amongst all these fellow bookish types. I’m surprised nobody challenged me to a read-off). 

But, actually, quite a few people chastised me when I introduced myself as “just a blogger.” And then any nerves I had dissipated when I started talking to the authors. 

I got to meet Ambelin Kwaymullina, who I've long admired since reading (and loving) ‘The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf’ and interviewing her for Kill Your Darlings. I got the low-down on ‘Ashala Wolf’ #2 (due out in November) – and have been promised big revelations and a wee bit of romance. 

And then there were my other favourite Aussie authors – Gabrielle Williams, Vikki Wakefield, Fiona Wood and Myke Bartlett. All four are currently working on new books and spoke a bit about them– everybody, watch this space because there are some amazing stories coming our way! 

It was also my great pleasure to meet Jess, of Tales Compendium fame and a fellow blogger who became my conference bestie (bloggers, unite!). If you haven’t already, do check out her blog for some thoughtful and killer reviews (and because I think she might have a few giveaways up her sleeve following Reading Matters. . . ) 

I also got to meet Libba Bray and Gayle Forman at the reception (after spending a good hour quasi-stalking them around the room, then eventually getting the nerve to ask someone to introduce us). You guys. You GUYS! – these two are like rock stars. I’m not kidding. They’re cool like rockers, and they swear like sailors (I do believe Tim Sinclair even taught Gayle Forman some special Aussie profanity – like she needed more?). And they are horrendously hilarious – I thought they were funny individually, but get them together and it’s awesome-sauce. They are like the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler of the young adult scene . . . .don’t even get me started on what they said after we introduced them to the word ‘spunk’ (in reference to an attractive individual). I'm such a huge fan of both Libba and Gayle - and it was just the best thing to meet them and become even bigger fans of them as people, not just authors. 

 

And it was pretty cool when Centre For Youth Literature Program Coordinator, Adele Walsh (also known as Persnickety Snark) offered Gayle Forman an ‘If I Stay’ casting idea – Australian heart-throb, Brenton Thwaites . . . and the very next day Gayle actually mentioned him in a movie-news tumblr post! Argh! It’s like we were present to hear (possible) movie magic happening!

So, that was the Reading Matters reception; swilling wine, hanging out with some formidable authors and feeling an electric buzz in the air for what tomorrow would bring . . . 

. . . Notes on the 2-day conference will be posted soon!

Interview with Fiona Wood, author of 'Wildlife'

Thursday was the launch of Fiona Wood’s ‘Wildlife’ – companion novel to ‘Six Impossible Things’ and one of my favourite books of 2013 so far.  

‘Wildlife’ was introduced into the world with the help of Simmone Howell, who admitted it; ‘Bought me back to being 15, like a photograph can (or listening to teenagers on the tram!)'. Cath Crowley was also on hand to celebrate Wood’s latest triumph, admitting; ‘I want to go back to this book again and again and again...' 

I couldn’t have said it better myself. And I couldn’t believe my luck when I got the opportunity to ask Fiona Wood some pressing questions, which I’m now thrilled to share with you. 

Q: How were you first published – agent or slush pile? 

Somewhere in between. I didn’t have representation, but I did have the introduction of a writer already published by Pan Macmillan – the lovely Simmone Howell, whom I first met when we both worked in TV. I have a wonderful agent now, Cheryl Pientka at Jill Grinberg Literary.

Q: Are you a ‘plotter’ or a ‘pantser’ - that is, do you meticulously plot your novel before writing, or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ and let the story evolve naturally? 

I’m definitely a ‘plotter’. I would never be able to start writing a novel and just see where it took me. It would feel like starting the work before the preparation had been done – or starting to cook before checking I have the right ingredients. I need to set out with a sense of where I’m heading and what I want to say. It doesn’t mean things don’t change along the way; they do. If I look back on my plotting notes, I can see how far I’ve departed from some of the early ideas, but I couldn’t have started without them.

Q: How long did it take you to write ‘Wildlife’, from first idea to final manuscript? 

I started thinking about ‘Wildlife’ (which wasn’t called Wildlife then) and doing very early planning in 2009, while I was still editing ‘Six Impossible Things’. I sent my publisher, Claire Craig, an excerpt in the second half of 2011, and I delivered the full manuscript in April 2012. It had a release date scheduled for this year, so editing, copy-editing and proofreading happened at a quite leisurely pace in the second half of 2012. (The components of the work are: staring into space plotting and planning, letting things bubble away in the background while you get on with other things, putting down plot points, working out story, working out chronology, working on character, doing research, trying out various approaches to form, getting voice working, terrified procrastination as you are bludgeoned mercilessly by the mean inner-critic, writing and doing a daily minimum number of words, editing and getting through a daily number of pages, too much coffee and hysterical laughter/tears with other writers.)

Q: Where do story ideas generally start for you? Do you first think of the character, first line, theme, ending? Or is it just a free-fall? 

For me the most influential starting point is character, but themes and story and setting parallel that. They are all twisted together. And deciding on the way in which the story will best be told travels alongside those things. With ‘Wildlife’ my early work included two additional points of view, which I ended up ditching because they slowed the narrative pace and diluted the drama. (The characters are Ben and Holly, who are still there, but they don’t have POV.) But you can’t know things like that until you write it and look at it. So – that’s an example of how, even as a planner, you can end up changing things a lot along the way. The very first scene I had initially planned for ‘Wildlife’ was one in which Sibylla, the main character, accidentally drinks her younger sister’s Sea Monkeys. The first line was, ‘I drank my sister’s sea monkeys, but it was an accident.’ That stopped being the opening line quite early on, and was edited out completely further down the track, but it is still a part of who Sibylla is, to me. And I knew the ending at the beginning. With both books I’ve gone back and done more rewriting to the opening chapters than to any other part.

Q: ‘Wildlife’ brings back a beloved character from your first book ‘Six Impossible Things’ – Lou. When we meet her in ‘Wildlife’, she’s “grieving a death that occurred almost a year ago.” What was it about Lou that made you think she should be the star of her own book? And did you know that Lou would be stepping out on her own while you were writing ‘Six Impossible Things’? 

I really enjoyed creating Lou and Fred in ‘Six Impossible Things’, but it wasn’t their story, so they didn’t have that much time on the page. I knew I wanted to spend more time with one of them. I couldn’t have them both in the book, because they were happily going out, and that is not an interesting place to be story-wise: no conflict. So something awful happens in the narrative space between the two books, which propels Lou into starting at a new school. Lou is a smart, self-contained, self-reliant only-child with a dry sense of humour, and she is brave, not swayed by peer pressure; I could happily spend another book with her, but that is not on the cards – she is a minor character again in the next book.

Q: It sounds like you really put Lou through the emotional ringer in this book. Is it hard to hurt your fictional characters – especially ones that you’ve effectively ‘known’ for 3+ years now? 

It’s really hard! When it occurred to me what I needed to do so Lou’s and Sibylla’s stories would intersect, I was very upset. I spent quite a lot of time howling as wrote this manuscript and there are passages I’ll never be able to read aloud, because they’ll still make me cry. But you have to put your characters under pressure and see what they’ll do – it’s where the interesting stuff happens, it’s when we really find out who they are. There’s another character, Michael, who has something horrible happen to him, and when I realised what that needed to be I was so miserable for him. I wished I hadn’t thought of it. But you have to be tough. 

Q: Are you done with the ‘Six Impossible Things’ universe now – or are there still characters you’d like to draw out and revisit? 

The next book, which has the working title ‘Cloudwish’, does include characters from both ‘Six Impossible Things’ and ‘Wildlife’. The main character is a very minor character in ‘Wildlife’. And it is set at the beginning of year eleven, back at the school’s city campus. 

Q: BIG CONGRATS are in order – it was announced in February that Poppy (imprint of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) acquired US rights to ‘Six Impossible Things’, ‘Wildlife’ plus an untitled third novel! Such fantastic news, and you’re sure to be as big a hit in America as you are in Australia – especially because you explore such vital, universal themes in your books. Can you give us any hints about the untitled third novel? Can you tell us if it’s going to be set in North America, and when we can expect it to hit shelves? 

Thank you! (I’m feeling more that I will be a very little frog in a much bigger pond, but I’m extremely happy I’ll be in that pond.) Via the abovementioned wonderful agent, I was very lucky to have offers from three US publishers, and chose to work with Farrin Jacobs, who was Melina Marchetta’s US editor for ‘On The Jellicoe Road’. My first book out there will be ‘Wildlife’ and that release is planned for the fall list next year. So ‘Cloudwish’ won’t be out until 2015 at the earliest in the US, but could be released a bit sooner here. It’s set in Melbourne. In terms of hints – it’s about identity and the conflict that occurs when parents have expectations for their children that are not shared by the children in question. That sounds a bit grim, but humour and an unlikely romance also play a big part in the story.

Q: Why do you choose to write young adult fiction? What is it about this genre that you love? 

It’s (all too) easy for me to remember and access my teenage self. And in part I’m writing the sorts of books I would have liked at that age. These are amazing years. You are finding out about yourself and recalibrating your sense of who you are all the time - your academic self, your sexual self, your family self, your political self, what sort of friend you are, what sort of friends you need. This time of life and these experiences suggest characters and story material that I find so interesting. 

Q: A big appeal of ‘Wildlife’ (and ‘Six Impossible Things’, in my opinion) is that it’s crossover – I’m just as likely to pass your books onto my grandmother as I am my sixteen-year-old cousin! So what would you say to someone who wholeheartedly refused to read a YA or children’s book, purely because they assume it will be childish and uninteresting? 

I think I’d want to say, relax. To me it’s a joy be able to read a well-written book, whatever the intended age of its primary readership. I also think there’s brilliant writing done for TV, for example, particularly in the US at the moment, but some people would never put that writing on the same footing as novel writing. Some people turn their noses up at sci-fi or crime fiction. But there are beautiful examples writing in every genre, and I like the idea that readers can be open to it all. But not everyone has that openness. (Confession: I am not personally particularly open to most fantasy writing.)

Q: Favourite author(s) of all time? 

Jane Austen. For me there is no one else whose work bears rereading so well. Each time I sit down with Jane Austen, I am struck anew by the beauty of her prose, the sharpness of her humour, her perfect understanding of human nature… I love her. The very first place I wanted to visit when I first went to England was her house. In short, I am a tragic fan. I think Emma and Northanger Abbey are fabulous YA reads.

Q: Favourite book(s)? 

Any favourites list ends up leaving off too many books and writers I love, so instead I will mention three books that were very influential at different times: ‘Milly Molly Mandy’. I can’t overstate how strongly Joyce Lankester Brisley’s illustrated world engaged my imagination. I longed to step into those pictures. ‘Anne of Green Gables’ delivered two things that struck a perfect chord for me as a middle-grade reader: the well-meaning but often misunderstood protagonist who frequently got into trouble, and the ideal of friendship between ‘kindred spirits’. ‘Saving Francesca’ by Melina Marchetta was one of the first Australian YA books I read. I completely fell for the characters and the writing and the compassion of that book. That was 2003 and it was the first little seed planted that maybe I could try writing a book for this readership. 

Q: What advice do you have for budding young writers?

There are two essential things to do. One is to read heaps. The other is to finish your manuscript and start on the next draft. 

'Wildlife' by Fiona Wood

 Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Life? It's simple: be true to yourself.

The tricky part is finding out exactly who you are...

"In the holidays before the dreaded term at Crowthorne Grammar's outdoor education camp two things out of the ordinary happened.

A picture of me was plastered all over a twenty-metre billboard. 

And I kissed Ben Capaldi."

Boarding for a term in the wilderness, sixteen-year-old Sibylla expects the gruesome outdoor education program – but friendship complications, and love that goes wrong? They're extra-curricula.

Enter Lou from Six Impossible Things – the reluctant new girl for this term in the great outdoors. Fragile behind an implacable mask, she is grieving a death that occurred almost a year ago. Despite herself, Lou becomes intrigued by the unfolding drama between her housemates Sibylla and Holly, and has to decide whether to end her self-imposed detachment and join the fray.

And as Sibylla confronts a tangle of betrayal, she needs to renegotiate everything she thought she knew about surviving in the wild.

A story about first love, friendship and NOT fitting in.

The Crowthorne Grammar outdoor education term is meant to impart life skills and self-reliance. Mobile phones are strictly forbidden (and reception sucks anyway) solo-hikes are a requirement and Milo is rationed – all in an effort to prepare the Year Ten’s for their imminent arrival into adulthood.

But for Lou, adulthood has already come much too soon, after the accidental death of her boyfriend, Fred. Now she’s dealing with the ache of never letting go and the shattered illusion that death is for the old. Her public school friends, Dan and Estelle, are putting their own pieces back together – and venturing on a different type of adventure, in the form of a French exchange program. But Lou, fearful of somehow abandoning Fred, instead chooses to attend her mum’s old private school, Crowthorne Grammar. It’s just a shame that her first term coincides with the dreaded outdoor education camp. Now Lou is packing up her grief into a waterproof backpack, breaking in her boots and carting her bruised heart to the middle of nowhere.

Sibylla is in the middle of a very different life lesson when the outdoor education term rudely interrupts. Despite her feminist mum’s reservations, family friend and advertising producer, Bebe, managed to convince Sibylla (‘Sib’) to be the new face of an international perfume ad campaign. Sib recently had braces off and zits cleared, emerging beautifully butterflied – but her transformation is accelerated ten-fold when a twenty-metre billboard of her appears the day before school camp. Now Sib’s emergence from the cocoon is advertised in an international campaign for all to see, and comment on. Sib’s best friend since primary school is Holly, whose bark is as bad as her bite – she seems to be a walking conundrum, at once jealous of Sib’s unbelievable good fortune, and thrilled that she can cash in on popularity-by-association for her own gains. Less enthused is Sib’s older oldest friend since kindergarten, Michael. Michael is a genius and unimpressed by the social strata at school – he’s focussed (and can sometimes get obsessed) with his piano-playing and running. To him, Sibylla will always be beautiful – billboard or no – and the resulting hubbub around her sudden popularity has him nervous.

What’s really got Michael riled is Ben Capaldi – future class president, straight-A student, ladies-man, guys-guy and all-round Mr. Popular. Normally Sib wouldn’t even be on Ben’s radar . . . but since ‘the billboard’, things have gotten interesting – in the form of an unexpected party kiss. Now Sib is going to spend an entire term in the great outdoors with her crush, trying to figure out if their kiss was a one-off, or if there;s possibility for more.

Along with four other girls, Lou and Sib are bunked together in Bennett House. Sib tries to steer clear of the new loner, and Lou is determined not to care about Crowthorne’s petty popularity stakes . . . but when you’re thrown together in the middle of nowhere, you quickly discover that the art of survival can sometimes mean depending on others, as much as yourself.

‘Wildlife’ is the new young adult novel from Australian author, Fiona Wood.

With some authors, it’s as though they’ve twisted off the top of your head and taken a peek inside, and then acted as brain stenographer to jot down privacies and idiosyncrasies you thought were wholly unique to you. Fiona Wood is such an author, and ‘Six Impossible Things’ was one of those books I read and felt an instant kinship with. So when news of Wood’s follow-up novel came through the YA grapevine, I marked its release date in my calendar and got excited . . . and when details of the blurb emerged, revealing that one alternating protagonist would be Lou (Estelle’s friend from ‘Six Impossible Things’, and insta-crush for Dan’s bestie, Fred) I was doubly-thrilled. There’s nothing quite like reading a book and feeling that a fictional friendship has been established with the characters – the next best thing is knowing that you’ll be able to catch up and touch base with them again (à la ‘Saving Francesca’ and ‘The Piper’s Son’). 

Of course, readers are not catching-up with Lou under the best of circumstances. When the book begins, Fred has been dead for months and Lou is still not coping . . . Dan and Estelle are making attempts to get on with their life by participating in the French exchange program, but Lou feels she should stay grounded in the country where Fred died, as a sort of allegiance to him. Fans of ‘Six Impossible Things’ will no doubt feel the crushing blow of once again meeting these characters they fell in love with, only to discover their world that we left semi-happily ever aftered, is now bleak and fractured. It’s tough, I’ll admit, but for Lou’s story it’s a hell of a place to start from. 

Sib is dealing with very different issues. She’s a forward-thinking young feminist who hates misogynistic rap lyrics and isn’t terribly impressed by the girly cliques at her school. At seeming odds with Sib’s moral fibre is the massive twenty-metre billboard of her face that’s just been erected in the city – part of a perfume ad campaign that her mother’s best friend, Bebe, talked her into doing (with the tempt of money being put towards Sib’s end-of-school travel fund). Now Sib is on everybody’s radar, for various reasons; girls look at her wondering why she’s so special, boys feel the need to comment on her ‘hotness’ and her social standing is fluctuating (from non-existent, to suddenly being kissed by the most popular boy in her year level). 

More barking. But maybe I've got traction with guys like this these strange days, and I decide to use it, instead of pretending to be a good sport and let them say any dumb thing they find amusing while I give what I hope is an ironic or non-committal smile. 

‘Being gross doesn’t make you funny.’ 

‘And being on a billboard doesn’t make you pretty,’ Vincent says. 

I catch the briefest flash of triumphant in Holly’s eye.

At first glance, Lou and Sibylla seem so different, that they’re doomed to fail in the same book. How can Lou’s grieving for her dead boyfriend possibly act as counterpoint to Sibylla’s sudden popularity sky-rocket and lustful developments with Ben Capaldi? It sounds like it shouldn’t work . . .  but this is Fiona Wood, so it does. And the magnet that initially brings these two polar opposites together is Michael – Sib’s oldest friend, and Lou’s new confidante. 

In a book with two stellar protagonists, Michael was actually my favourite character, hands down. He was just brilliant – a boy genius, tender soul and utterly unimpressed by popularity and the personality change that comes with clawing your way to the top of the ‘cool’ ladder. Michael may have Asperger syndrome, or else he simply suffers from always being the smartest person in the room (and it’s probably been that was since kindergarten) – I loved that Wood and Sib don’t hark on Michael’s quirks that mark him as different, they just accept him. And it’s his forthrightness and gentleman charm that has Lou seeking comfort in his friendship, and has him acting as a sort of bridge between her and Sib . . . and as much as Lou is gaining something from her new-found friendships, so too is Sib finding comfort in a new and old friend when romance becomes too much and frenemy, Holly, goes too far.

Sibylla’s story acts to remind Lou (and readers) that there is life beyond grief, and the world keeps turning. Sib and Michael are there to pull Lou into a different orbit; one that’s not defined by what’s missing but rather, what’s ahead. And I think if this had just been a book of Lou’s grief, it would have been very tough to get through. Tasked to jot her feelings down in a journal, Lou writes so eloquently about her hurt, bewilderment and never-ending sadness. It’s a vicious cycle that she communicates so well on the page, but poorly to the rest of the world; 

Grief settles comfortably into any host; it is an ever-mutating, vigorous organism with an ever-renewing customer base. It generates a never-ending hunger, a never-ending ache, an unassuageable pain to new hearts, brains, guts every minute, every day, every year.It is the razor edge of a loose tooth shrieking to be pressed again and again into the soft pink sore gum.  

It’s a one-way tunnel with no proof of another exit.

It’s actually a blessing to have Sibylla’s story alongside Lou’s – with her we get the butterflies-in-stomach, rollercoaster-highs of first crush turning into something more. It’s grief and giddiness, sweet and sour . . . two halves making an incredibly whole and fulfilling book. 

Fiona Wood has done it again – I was happy to get lost in the wilderness of this story, and I’ll be passing it on to friends and family (young and old – because there’s no age-limit on relating to first experiences with love and death). A beautiful book with characters I didn’t want to leave, but I feel lucky to have met (some of them for a second time). 

5/5 

In conversation with Vikki Wakefield and Fiona Wood, recap: 'Caterpillars and Underdogs'

 

I had my biggest bookish day on Tuesday; attending the Melbourne Writers Festival ‘Meet Melina Marchetta’ talk, stumbling upon the ‘Hard Lines’ discussion between Vikki Wakefield and Julia Lawrinson and then attending a very special event at the State Library, hosted by the Centre for Youth Literature. This event was a conversation between Fiona Wood and Vikki Wakefield, concentrating on Vikki’s new (brilliant!) novel ‘Friday Brown’. I should stress that this was not a Melbourne Writers Festival event, it was just a lovely little additional treat put on by the Centre for Youth Literature, who actually do lots of fabulous author events, and everyone should keep checking their What’s On page.

In the lead-up to the talk I was calling it ‘Wakefield & Wood’ and envisioning them as characters in a cozy mystery series about two female authors/sleuths … but my mind goes off on bizarre little tangents like that. It was in fact a lovely, heartfelt discussion between two of my favourite new voices in Aussie YA literature, talking about one of my favourite novels of 2012. By the end of their conversation I decided I desperately needed to re-read ‘Friday Brown’ and start peeling back some of the layers that were unearthed between them … since Tuesday I’ve still been thinking about what was discussed between Vikki and Fiona, and I’ve since started thinking of the discussion as ‘Caterpillars and Underdogs’, for reasons that should become apparent in my recap. So, here it goes…

•    Fiona asked if Vikki writes with a young adult audience in mind, and Vikki said she doesn’t. It’s partly to do with the fact that, when she was growing up, there wasn’t such a vibrant Young Adult reading culture as there is now. Vikki said she went from reading Hilda Boswell’s disturbing omnibus of tales (like ‘The Little March Girl’) to Elyne Mitchell’s ‘Silver Brumby’ series, and then careening towards Jack London. So she made a giant leap in her younger reading habits, and as such still hasn’t become quite imbedded in that YA ‘culture’, so doesn’t write for it.

•    Vikki pointed out that, unlike many authors, she wasn’t a writer when she was younger. She took a long time to get where she is today, but has since decided that she has definitely found her “thing.” She later said that she wrote ‘All I Ever Wanted’ between the hours of 8pm and midnight, after the kids had gone to bed and her husband had passed out watching TV on the couch. After the book’s release (and success!) Vikki decided to take a ‘gap year’ … which has now extended into 2 years, in which she has found a writing routine and now scribbles away between 10am – 2pm.

•    Now onto discussions of ‘Friday Brown’… Vikki spoke a little about the process of writing the novel (which she has famously said began with Chapter 28, and then went forwards, backwards and every which direction!). Really fascinating to discover that the prologue to ‘Friday Brown’ was written last, and before she wrote it there was no curse, or quite so much history ... so because of the prologue, which quite nicely bought everything together, Vikki had to go back and completely re-write the whole book. But Vikki didn’t seem fazed by this massive overhaul; she said her books often have to ‘break’ before she can fix them. And even in her final draft with her editor (who was sitting next to me in the audience, and was nodding her head vigorously agreeing with Vikki’s recounting of events) she actually changed the tense in the final draft. Fiona bemoaned that there’s no quick-fix button to go through and change an entire manuscript from first-person point-of-view to third, and Vikki agreed it was a huge re-edit (but a necessary one). Again, she maintains that her novels have to be broken before she can fix them.

•    Vikki again touched on the fact that she likes writing an underdog (as she mentioned in her ‘Hard Lines’ talk). She creates an underdog by taking away either wealth, status, beauty etc … but she admits Friday Brown was perhaps the most downtrodden underdog, having lost her mother and finding herself living on the streets (and at Arden’s mercy). But Vikki finds it interesting to see a character come back from that, seeing them rise above their underdog status and become something more. Vikki also said she “gets a kick out of leading characters astray.”

•    Fiona picked up on a mother connection between both ‘All I Ever Wanted’ and ‘Friday Brown’, wherein the absence (or imperfections?) of Mim and Friday’s mums have a lot of influence on the protagonists. Vikki agreed, and said that in both books Mim and Friday have to shatter their childish ideas of their mothers in order to go forward in life (When Vikki said that, I kept hearing that Corinthians quote in my head: “I put away childish things”). But then Vikki made a point of clarifying that her own mother is lovely, and she should really write a book with a wonderful mother character and dedicate it to her.

•    Fiona asked if Vikki plans her novels, and she replied that her story ideas always start with a clear plan, but then go pear-shaped. Like with ‘All I Ever Wanted’, for example. That was supposed to be a book about Mim getting out, escaping her home. But then Vikki started writing characters around Mim who she actually really liked and the plan went out the window.

•    More ‘Friday Brown’ talk, Vikki said that when she started writing Arden, she really liked her. But at some point in the writing she knew that Arden had to be nasty, and then embraced that. Arden is now the most horrible character she has ever written (very true!) Vikki also said that Arden’s character really started to take form when she decided she’d have dreadlocks and an animal-like quality, certain viciousness. About this point Fiona commented that the subtle power-plays Arden orchestrates with the other runaway girl’s hair was very clever, and Vikki said she hadn’t even made the Samson & Delilah biblical connection until just recently. She did say that the idea for Arden to have long, dreadlocked hair and then insist that the others cut theirs off came from Vikki observing how much of female sexuality and identity is caught up in hair. Vikki also said that Arden was based on an old school friend of Vikki’s, who was very much into power-plays (particularly using her sexuality to mess with people).

•    Fiona bought up the very unconventional families that Vikki wrote in both her books, and where they came from. Vikki said that they came from her own life, particularly when she was a teenager observing her friend’s broken families where things like drug abuse, physical abuse and teen pregnancy were everyday occurrences. At the time, Vikki’s home life was the most stable of all her friends (and didn’t break until she was older, when her parents divorced).

•    Vikki spoke about two characters in ‘Friday Brown’ who were also very unconventional, and hard to write. Silence (who she loves, and I do too!) doesn’t speak because his father once stepped on his throat when he was younger, and now it hurts to talk. Vikki said that when she started writing Silence, he just didn’t speak to her and she had to write around that and give him emotion without giving him a voice. Likewise, Friday’s mother Vivenne is key to the story and Friday’s life – but she’s dead for the entire book. So Vikki had one character who didn’t speak, and one who was dead but both had to still live on the page. It comes together, I think (and as Vikki pointed out) that Friday has only ever loved one person in her life, and that’s her mother Vivienne…and then she meets Silence, and she finds a second person to love. So these two unconventional (one silent, the other dead) characters gained a life in the story simply for being tethered to Friday in a very profound way (that’s how I think of it, anyway).

•    With regards to setting the second half of ‘Friday Brown’ in a wonderfully creepy outback ghost town, Vikki said she was very much drawing on her own experiences. When she was fifteen-years-old (and without her parent’s permission) Vikki went camping with a bunch of older kids, to an abandoned town in South Australia called Beltana. In writing a ghost town in ‘Friday Brown’, Vikki wanted to evoke that moment her fifteen-year-old self saw Beltana arising out of the outback night, and her sinking feeling that she’d made a horrible mistake in agreeing to this trip. She said she had the thought “I could disappear and no one would know,” and then spent two nights in the cold, dusty ghost town with nothing but a pillow and blanket.

Beltana ghost town

•    In discussing the ghost town of the novel’s second half, Fiona commented that ‘Friday Brown’ is very much a Gothic novel. Vikki agreed, and said that she loves and is influenced by novelists like Flannery O’Connor, and books in which good people do bad things. Vikki also mentioned movies like ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘The Green Mile’, but particularly ‘Winter’s Bone’ as having a big influence over ‘Friday Brown’ (Vikki also said that if Jennifer Lawrence should be famous for anything it should be ‘Winter’s Bone’, and not for playing Katniss!)

•    Fiona made a few connections for Vikki, when she mentioned that in both ‘All I Ever Wanted’ and ‘Friday Brown’ some very pivotal scenes occur on towers and at great heights (Vikki admitted she has a fear of heights!). Fiona also commented that Mim and Friday both faced mortal danger barefoot! Vikki hadn’t even noticed these things, but concedes it must be a pattern in her (her very own inner-caterpillar? More on that in a moment!) and that she likes putting her characters in physical peril. Fiona also wondered if these moments of physical peril can be attributed to the two professions Vikki said she would choose to do, had she not been a writer – either “a demolition expert on ‘Mythbusters’. Or a stunt designer on ‘Jackass’. Or a ninja on Prank Patrol”

•    Fiona asked Vikki if morality is important to her, in her stories and Vikki said definitely. Vikki herself has a strong sense of what’s right and what's wrong, and while her stories don’t necessarily have strong resolutions, she definitely writes up until her character is alright and in a good place, at least.

•    The question of how Vikki first got published was asked (always an appreciated question) and Vikki said she submitted the first page of her manuscript to a Writers Festival that had a panel critiquing them. Hers was picked up by a publisher (not Text, interestingly) and it snow-balled from there after she received a bit of interest and some great feedback.

•    Then it was question time from the audience, and I put my hand up (clearly I was feeling confident after asking a question of Melina Marchetta earlier in the day!). I very inarticulately asked why Vikki thinks it’s important for her young characters to save themselves – that in both her novels, the plot would have been very different (Friday’s particularly, had the storyline with her father had gone another way…) if her young character had more interaction with the adults in their lives. Vikki replied that she again draws from her own life, and when she was younger nobody was saving her (especially not adults, partly because she didn’t tell her parents half the stuff she was doing!). Vikki feels that her characters need to be unsafe, both physically and emotionally. She also said that adults are important in both Mim and Friday's lives (Vivienne especially) but part of that underdog theme is that those adults aren't saviors, the girls have to save themselves.

•    Somebody asked Vikki if the focus on homelessness in ‘Friday Brown’ was also her writing from life, and while Vikki admitted she had never lived in a squat, the abandoned house that features in the novel was a real place where she stayed for a night. She remembered that house because there were newspapers stacked everywhere, and stuck to the walls

•    The final question for the night was perhaps the most interesting, and a nice one to cap-off this wonderful discussion. In ‘Friday Brown’, Friday is fascinated by this factoid about caterpillars in the Arctic who can only eat so much during the summer period, and then freeze themselves during winter before pupating and becoming a moth. Friday thinks it’s amazing that the caterpillar will maybe panic that it can only eat so much during summer (may even worry that it's going to starve to death!) only to have its body freeze itself for protection, and later emerge a moth. Vikki was asked if all that was true, and Vikki promised it was and she researched it. She said she loved the idea of things being packed into our DNA that we don’t even know what they do until they’re called on to help us. I really loved that idea too, and in hindsight I think it’s a wonderful ongoing metaphor/theme in both of Vikki’s books – that these broken characters aren’t quite sure what they’re capable of until the time comes for them to prove themselves (often from great heights).

I have since researched and (not that I ever doubted!) found that Vikki was telling the truth. For the record, it’s the Banded Woolly Bear caterpillar, which turns into the Isabella Tiger Moth.