Interview with Laura Buzo, author of 'Holier Than Thou'

Last year I read an incredible debut novel called 'Good Oil', from Australian young adult author Laura Buzo. I was blown away. Buzo wrote a raw and powerful, true-to-life teen romance full of heartache and messy love and it was one of the best, sucker-punching YA novels I ever had the pleasure to read. I was thrilled at the chance to interview Ms Buzo, and pick her brain about love, loss and the Land of Dreams. 

And I was doubly-thrilled when Buzo's new novel, 'Holier Than Thou' landed in my hot little hand earlier this year. I was not in the least bit surprised that I loved the book; head-over-heels, loved! So, of course, I had to have another Q&A with Ms Buzo.

It is my pleasure to give you Laura Buzo - new Australian YA author extraordinaire!

❦

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

With a couple of key kernels. HTT grew out of two scenes, from which I extrapolated some themes, my main character and then I never looked back. People have asked me if I have the whole thing plotted out in my head before I start but I assure you I have had moments of idling in traffic and thinking ‘hmm, how should I end my novel?’

Q: ‘Holier Than Thou’ is your second novel after the incredible success of your debut, ‘Good Oil’. How is it writing the second time round? Easier or harder? Are you feeling more pressure?

Pretty similar process-wise. I’d like to say I had more confidence this time round and it was easier. And maybe it was, a little. Although as Helen Garner once said, you might think that having written one novel you now know how to write novels. But really, you just know how to write that novel. And have to work the next one out on it’s own.

Q: ‘Holier Than Thou’ is a lovely, looping story – Holly’s narrative slips between the ‘here and now’ and also backtracks through her high school and uni years. Was it hard to wrangle the story and get the right balance between past and present? Did you ever think to write a story set solely during Holly’s Year Twelve, or entirely in her mid-20’s?

The time looping was very intuitive. I just closed my eyes (in a manner of speaking) and moved back and forth in the best way to advance the story. I think I was drawn to this device, as many writers have been, because I believe the past informs the present. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I majored in history too.

Q: Holly’s story is very much influenced by the four men in her life (both past and present). Her dead father, loyal boyfriend, the ‘one that got away’ and her tempting co-worker. Were any of these male characters inspired by real people? Which of these characters was the hardest to write?

As my hero Kate Jennings says, “I write close to life and I cheerfully admit it.” I think all the blokes in HTT are amalgams of people, ideas and conundrums I have stumbled across in real life and they all serve a purpose in Holly’s unfolding trajectory.

Q: When I read I can’t help but think of soundtracks for the books I’m getting lost in. Reading ‘Holier Than Thou’ I kept pairing Missy Higgins songs with Holly’s story, particularly ‘The Special Two’; ‘And you make boundaries you'd never dream to cross’. Do you write to music? Do you have a soundtrack associated with your books? If so, could you give us a few samples from the playlist?

Er…. I may have been quite familiar with this song, back in the day. Way back in the day.

One of my favourite novels is Prelude to Christopher (published in 1934) by quiet achiever and brilliant Aussie author, Eleanor Dark. The frontispiece is six bars of a Tschaikovsky adagio that she claims to have inspired the novel.

One of the ‘kernels’ of the story that I mentioned in the first question came to me during, and kind of from, a Holly Throsby song. I was pinned beneath my then baby daughter during one of her lengthy feeds, on a wintry afternoon, listening to one of Ms Throsby’s many excellent albums. I won’t spoil it and tell you the song, but it was from the album Under The Town.

Q: Your debut YA novel, ‘Good Oil’, was partly inspired by your youth spent working at Woolworths (aka: ‘The Land of Dreams’). In ‘Holier Than Thou’, Holly is a social worker, which also happens to be your day job. So you definitely ‘write what you know’. Do you find it’s cathartic to use your life for inspiration – particularly with Holly’s social work, which discusses holes in the governmental and medical care system? Are you concerned about your co-workers reading ‘Holier Than Thou’?

The thing is Alphareader, I am a very busy lady. I essentially work three jobs, and I don’t have time to research things I don’t know about. So I put a bit of my work experience into my books. A lot of writers and artists have not really experienced the cruel world of work, so that world doesn’t often get a really good representation in literary fiction. Really successful writers don’t need to work outside their craft. But I think it is important to write about what happens at work, because most people will spend most of their lives there and coming to terms with that can be hard. When I was a young person, and certainly in a lot of the YA fiction I read growing up, there was not much exploration of the world of work. I had no idea what to expect or how it would affect my life.

Q: At one point in ‘Holier Than Thou’, Holly reflects on her high-low expectations of Year Twelve. Having read Melina Marchetta’s ‘Looking for Alibrandi’, she remarks: “I was disappointed that Year Twelve did not bring me a handsome, salt-of-the-earth boyfriend and ultimate emancipation from all that ailed my teenage soul.” YES! I think many Gen-Y’ers who grew up on Marchetta books will relate to Holly’s statement. But how do you feel when I compare your writing to Ms Marchetta’s. . .  young people could very well be reading your YA novels and hoping it reflects their lives (or doesn’t, as the case may be). What do you hope your young readers will take away from ‘Holier Than Thou’?

Honoured! Chuffed! To even be in the same sentence as a writer who has reached into the hearts of so many readers is a thrill.

As for what I hope people take away from reading HTT… well, I hope that no-one will ever accuse me of failing to ‘keep it real’.

Q: So, February last year I asked you if there were any plans for a sequel to ‘Good Oil’, continuing Chris and Amelia’s story. You replied with a very cryptic “possibly”. Has that answer changed at all?

Nothing immediately planned Alphareader but I wouldn’t rule anything out.

Q: Barring a ‘Good Oil’ sequel, what else are you working on . . .  and when can we expect your next novel to hit shelves?

I suspect this is not the last you’ve heard from me.

But right now… I really need to get my roots done, I haven’t made it to the hairdresser’s in months. And the dentist. That’s been, like, over a year. Maybe two!

And you should see the pile of dirty dishes piling up in my sink.

Don’t even ask about the piles of laundry.

❦

Pictures used are from http://weheartit.com/ (all, except for the Sydney harbour bridge and night shot of Melbourne - those two were taken by me, using instagram on my iPhone)  

'Holier Than Thou' by Laura Buzo

 Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

    'What do you want, Hol?' Abby looks into my eyes.
    'I ... I want to know that I'm using my powers for good and -' 

'You want to make a dead man proud.' 

'Whoa!' 

'You want to put bandages over severed arteries that really need to be sewn shut. You want the moral high ground.'

Holly Yarkov has a boyfriend who is a gift from the universe. She has a job that fulfils her even as it wears her down. She has a core group of friends from high school. And she has a layer of steel around her heart that is beginning to tarnish. Just as she is reaching for a future she can't quite see, Holly is borne back into the past by memories of her beloved father, and of the boy-who-might-have-been...

Grief and longing run like veins of quicksilver through this beautiful novel, at once gloriously funny and achingly sad.

All roads lead back to Jindarra Street . . .  or at least, they do for Holly Yarkov.

Holly is a social worker in the toughest town of Sydney, Elizabethtown (affectionately called ‘Befftown’). She works closely with registered nurse, Nick (affectionately called ‘Nicholarse’), and together they work the town’s toughest hood, Jindarra Street.

After Holly and Nick make a gruesome discovery at the home of one of their clients, Holly starts backtracking through her life leading up to a potential crossroads that lies before her. . .

Holly’s story is sliced between ‘now’ and ‘then’, and focuses on four important men who continue to exert their influence in her life, even though some of them are dead and gone.

There’s her beloved boyfriend Tim (‘Timbo’), who Holly has just moved into an apartment with. Nick is her co-worker; a bong-addicted nurse who is 26 to Holly’s 24, he attends circus school in his days off and Holly is becoming increasingly wary of their relationship, while also enamoured of their effortless friendship. Liam was Holly’s bus-friend at school, a year above her and apart of the ‘cool’ crowd; Holly harboured a secret crush on him for years before he became an official member of her uni gang . . .  but the story of Liam’s absence in Holly’s life now is a slow and painful explanation, and needs time to be told. And then there’s Holly’s dead father – an out-spoken Left-winger who used to crop up in the newspapers all the time (and incited the Liberal fury of a few of Holly’s classmates’ parents). Her father died when Holly was in Year Ten, and she never quite recovered from the loss.

Events in Holly’s life, from job dissatisfaction to inconvenient thoughts about her dreadlocked co-worker, have Holly questioning her life and the path she is on (and how she got here in the first place). As Holly backtracks through the relationships and death that helped define her, she battles losing touch with the very people in the present who once defined her past.

‘Holier Than Thou’ is the new Australian young adult novel from Laura Buzo.

Last year I read Laura Buzo’s ‘Good Oil’, and found a new favourite Australian author. In ‘Good Oil’, Buzo told a deceptively simple story of first-time-love and heartbreak, which was so brutally honest that it was simply sublime. However, I was somewhat disheartened by the wide-open ending of ‘Good Oil’, and asked Ms Buzo in a Q&A if she had plans for a sequel. At the time she replied with an infuriating ‘possibly’ – and mentioned that her next novel seemed to be taking up a ‘bigger canvas’, and was unrelated to ‘Good Oil’. Now having read ‘Holier Than Thou’ I feel I should say that ‘bigger canvas’ was an understatement. I should also say that, as someone who had my fingers crossed for a ‘Good Oil’ sequel, I feel that ‘Holier Than Thou’ is a logical sort-of extension of Buzo’s first book, and I am actually glad that I read this book before any sort of sequel to Amelia and Chris’s story.

‘Holier Than Thou’ is a prime example of why I love Aussie YA so darn much. Buzo’s book is exactly what I was talking about back in November 2011 when I tried to explain my affinity for the YA literature of my homeland; ‘It's about holding a mirror up, finding a spark and a connection, recognizing a little of yourself in the stories and setting. It's that 'aha!' moment, when you're sure the author is writing about you and yours, the possibility that this story could be set in your hometown and you recognize a character from your own friendship group.’ ‘Holier Than Thou’ is that spark, connection and ‘aha’ moment – it is, simply, an incredible book.

The plot of ‘Holier Than Thou’ sounds complex – so much so that after reading the blurb, I really didn’t have a clue what kind of book I was getting into. The nuts and bolts of the plot are tangled and complicated. We begin in the present, and then backtrack to one year earlier and follow Holly’s life leading up to the explosive opening chapter. But as Holly begins re-examining her life, and friendships, she starts reminiscing about the past – and her core group of high school/uni friends who are slowly starting to drift away (and in one case, vanish to Canberra) in the present. Complicated? Yes. But this is a book about that strange age of mid-20’s, when everything is changing and the ties that bind start loosening. This is a book that explores the very tangled webs of friendships and buried hurts – it is meant to be complicated (such is life). The tangles make this a tantalizing read – and even though the back and forth time-shifts sound confusing, Buzo executes them beautifully. She writes Holly’s recounting of the past like trains of thought that she is following in the present – she leaves bread-crumbs in her real-time narrative about her father’s death and ‘the one that got away’, and as readers we happily (and hungrily) follow the trail. Tangled? Definitely? Worth the journey? Absolutely.

We meet Holly when she’s 24 and past the point of ‘newbie’ in her social worker job. She is now at the part when she knows her job is to put bandaids on bullet wounds – to work long hours for crappy pay and still be expected to meet Government targets and sit performance reviews. She is starting to wonder what got her to this point, and if she’s strong enough to stay in a job that seems determined to slowly suck the life out of her. Holly’s job is a real focal point of the book, and particularly fascinating. Laura Buzo actually is a social worker, and she writes her true-to-life struggles through Holly beautifully. From the healthcare system that doesn’t care about the ‘crazies’, to people’s misconceptions about what social workers do and the patients they treat. 

Meanwhile, Holly has just moved out of home and into an apartment with her scrumptious boyfriend, Tim. For a little while there, Holly had the trifecta – her home life, love life and career in some sort of sync. But then it all starts going pear-shaped. Holly becomes more and more enamoured of her co-worker, Nick. She becomes despondent in her thankless job, and her home life degenerates into nights spent on the couch with Tim, watching telly and spying on her neighbours in the building across the way.

Holly becomes increasingly despairing of the way her life is changing, and the myriad of ways that her past is disconnecting from her present. Holly tries to organize catch-ups with her old high school/uni friends, with little success. Lara, Abigail and Daniel were her rocks in high school, particularly when her father died. But their jobs and commitments are pulling them all further and further apart. Abigail is training to be a doctor. Dan works for a corporation that deals in lay-offs, and Lara works for a law firm with dubious big-business clientele. Holly especially doesn’t want to lose these friends, since they are already one man down. Liam started as Holly’s bus-buddy in high school. Eventually, Liam slowly and thrillingly progressed into their social group – and pretty soon they were an inseparable fivesome; Dan, Lara, Abigail, Holly and Liam. But then it all went horribly wrong when Holly started to act on her long-standing crush on Liam.

Memories of Liam start creeping back into Holly’s thoughts when her casual work friendship with Nick takes on a new rhythm and connection. In Nick, Holly has an intellectual and visceral bond – much like she once did with Liam. Nick and Holly do have an enviously syncing connection – they motivate one another with ‘Gallipoli’ quotes (“What are your legs?” / “Steel springs!”) and their banter is enviably witty and warm. He affectionately calls Holly ‘Holier-Than-Thou’, for her seeming unbending moral core. But Nick is proving to be a potentially dangerous temptation;

‘A nurse and a social worker took fifteen minutes out of their shitty thankless job in the roughest corner of town, sat on a couple of milk crates drinking coffee, flopped their real selves out on the cement and both liked what they saw.’
‘Nicholarse. That’s beautiful.’ I didn’t know where to look.
‘You get me through the days, Hollier-than-thou.’
‘Likewise.’ I drained my coffee cup and our moment was shattered by the shouting of one of Nick’s clients who had spied us in the alcove.

Dissatisfaction at work has Holly thinking about what led her to becoming a social worker. One of the old-timer social workers comments that it’s past hurt which equips social workers with more capacity for caring, and that’s true of Holly. Losing her father to cancer in Year Ten left a wound that Holly is only just starting to reopen and re-examine.

‘Holier Than Thou’ is definitely going to be a 2012 favourite. It feels like I read this book at the right time – like Holly, I am 24 going on 25 and relatively settled in my first ‘real’ job. I too am dealing with drifting friendships and changing relationships. I could even relate to Holly’s touchstones and young influences; 

Finishing Year Twelve had been a blessed relief. Although, having read ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ several times since Year Eight, I was disappointed that Year Twelve did not bring me a handsome, salt-of-the-earth boyfriend and ultimate emancipation from all that ailed my teenage soul.

Funny that Buzo references Melina Marchetta, because ‘Holier Than Thou’ did remind me of ‘The Piper’s Son’. Like Marchetta’s ‘Saving Francesca’ follow-up, ‘Holier Than Thou’ is about that odd time in your life when you start growing and changing, leaving friends behind and trying to hold on tight to others. Buzo reminded me of Marchetta – they both favour gritty ‘real’ stories and they don’t shy away from teaching tough life lessons. Likewise, Buzo’s characters are like Marchetta’s in that they’re enviably quick-witted individuals who banter beautifully and make the reader wish they were real people that we could be friends with. These characters are also entirely fallible, and relatable for their imperfections. Holly makes mistakes in her friendship/relationship with Nick, not because she’s a mean person or doesn’t love Tim, but because her instant connection with Nick surprises her in its intensity, totally catching her off guard. Holly has very high ideals of how she’s supposed to be (partly to live up to her dead father’s standards). Holly reminded me of that Missy Higgin’s song, ‘The Special Two’; ‘And you make boundaries you'd never dream to cross’. Over the course of the book Holly also comes to slowly accept that she might have made mistakes in her friendship with Liam. Likewise, she is starting to realize that her friends, those people she relied on so much in her youth, are not necessarily the people she needs around her in the future. That’s a hard lesson to learn, when to cut ties and accept that the past is in the past.

‘Holier Than Thou’ is a story of tangled webs and grey areas. Protagonist Holly Yarkov is not perfect, but she is brilliant. You will wish Holly was a real person, so you could count her amongst your friends. She is caring, funny, equipped with ‘steel springs’ and an enviable backbone. Holly is an entirely relatable protagonist; she’s at that mid-way point in her 20’s when relationships start dropping off and life events begin changing us for better or worse. . . What was really incredible in this book was the beautiful melding of Holly’s past and present. We follow her memories as events in the present trigger thoughts of her dead father and Liam, her ‘one that got away’. And although we know the outcome of those memories, Buzo’s writing is so seamless and addictive that even Holly’s unfolding past-heartbreak with Liam keeps you on the edge of your seat, futilely rooting for a happy outcome, even though you know it cannot be.

Buzo has written another beautiful young adult novel that doesn’t pull punches, but tells a beautifully relatable tale of lost love, missed chances, growing up and growing apart. As good as ‘Good Oil’ and further proof (not that I needed it) that Buzo is fast becoming a powerful new voice in Australian YA.

5/5

What advice do you have for young writers?

Thomas Mann hit the nail on the head when he said:

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

Amen to that!

Every writer stumbles and hits roadblocks. What can help pick yourself up and trudge on is advice from authors who have been there, and overcome the very same roadblocks. 

Below are a few writers I have interviewed over the years, and their answer to my question: "What advice do you have for budding young writers?". Some are wacky, others are practical. All are worth thinking about.

 If you have a good piece of advice, then please share it in a comment. Every little bit helps, after all :)

 

Alison Stewart 

Don’t be afraid to write and keep writing, but also don’t be afraid to edit. Don’t be put off by rejection – easier said than done! It goes without saying that you should read widely and when you come across something you love, take note of how the author has achieved this. And as I said earlier, enter your writing in competitions. You never know your luck!

Kelly Gardiner 

Read. Write. Read. Write. And again. That’s all. Just keep being as good as you can be. On a more practical level, read passages out loud so you can hear if they ring true – and if something makes you hesitate or wonder, then it needs more thought. I learned that the hard way.

I’m currently writing in 25 minute bursts with a five minute break in between, just about chained to the desk so I can’t get distracted. It really works, especially for rough drafting. If I can’t think of the right word or I don’t know some historical fact, I just write “something” and go back to it later. Otherwise I can spend twenty minutes looking up the etymology of one word or the price of boat hire on the Thames in 1640 and not write any more for hours.

 

Margo Lanagan 

Read as much and as widely as you can - not just in the areas where you're already a fan but in new genres.

Don't just focus on "being a writer" and living in your own imagination - have another life, another career, that feeds into your writing by connecting you to the real world.

Write a lot, and again, write widely. Try lots of different ways to tell the stories, or communicate the impressions, that you carry around inside you. That way you'll find the forms that suit you.

Doug McLeod

Get a really terrible job first. I worked on a building site for a short time and it was horrible. When I find it hard to write or just don't feel like it, I remember how it felt holding those bricks around. If you really want to be a serious writer, don’t get married or have kids.

 Laura Buzo

Get a wife.

And also, don’t try to do it all on a laptop. Even is all you have is a laptop, buy a separate keyboard that you can set up to reach ergonomically. Seriously. Look after those tendons. You only have one set.

Kelley Armstrong

Keep writing. It’s boring advice, but it really is the most important thing, I think. You need to love writing and keep at it, always practicing and writing new things, even if you don’t get published quickly (most authors don’t)

Q and A with Laura BUZO

I absolutely fell head-over-heels into fandom when I read Laura Buzo's 'Good Oil'. It's a novel of highs and lows - teenage triumphs and puppy-love heartbreak. It's so raw and real and vicariously fantastic.

So I jumped at the chance to pick Buzo's brain and ask some burning Q's...

♥

Q: How did you get published, agent or slush pile?

I sent my manuscript for Good Oil in to a few competitions. It got shortlisted for one. Then I decided to send it to Margaret Connolly and Associates. Margaret loved it and took me on. She sent it to the Young Peeps section of Allen and Unwin and they offered me a contract for G.O and a second, unwritten novel. Yay me.

Q: Your father was the famous and genius author playwright, Alex Buzo. So was it inevitable that you’d grow up to be a writer?

I don’t think it necessarily follows that I wanted to be a writer just because of my father. My father’s father was an engineer, so you know we all come up with our own crazy shit. But certainly his example taught me a love and respect for writing as an art form, and I find his writing inspiring. I think coming from a family where the humanities are valued helped me along in a general way.

Q: I loved ‘Good Oil’ because it was an unconventional YA romance, often uncomfortably truthful and heartbreakingly honest. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Chris and Amelia’s experiences with love. What do you hope your young readers take away from the novel?

I hope they see some truths about themselves in there, I hope they see a message about acceptance of realities that are hard to swallow, I hope they see that everyone has their own ‘narrative’ and we don’t necessarily understand other people’s… that sometimes we judge our parents too harshly, that you have to be your own ‘little trooper’ in your own tale of war, a sense that friendship is a powerful and can change people… and a sense of the excitement that comes from reading and responding to literature.

Q: The novel does have a chasm of a cliff-hanger ending . . . which is at once brilliantly realistic and slightly maddening. Did your agent/publisher/editor ever push you to write a ‘happier’ ending with no loose ends?

My editor never pushed for a ‘happy’ ending with Chris and Amelia getting married and having perfect babies in a nice house in the suburbs. Most people got that Amelia and Chris were not going to ride off into the sunset within the scope of this story. There were a few changes made for Amelia to have the final ‘say’ of the book and made her feelings on Chris’ departure more concrete, but in essence the ending remained as I had originally envisaged. Which is to say – WIDE OPEN.

Q: At some point in your youth did you work in the Land of Dreams (aka ‘Woolworths’)? If so, how closely does the ‘Good Oil’ storyline mimic your experiences?

Yes I did put in a stint behind the checkout at Woolworths, circa ages 14 – 17. The book mirrors a lot of aspects from my own life, particularly the falling in love with a person – and subsequent people - who, for whatever reason, can never be mine. A skill I developed young, and have continued to perfect.

Q: I loved Chris! . . . but I only started to warm to him once we got his perspective and understood his vulnerabilities. How hard was it to keep his character realistic (often making stupid mistakes) but still crush-material for Amelia?

I freakin’ loved writing him. Everyone assumes that Amelia is me, but honestly I see a great deal of myself in Chris. Chris was inspired to a degree by an old friend of mine but in large parts was pure creation and loved that process. I relished getting into a male headspace and imaging how they see the world, women etc. As for his being crush-worthy – I think some readers find him crush-worthy and some find him a bit of an A-hole. Says a lot about the readers…

But I wanted to show how you can fall in love with someone through conversations – and fall in love with how you feel in their company.

Q: Did you always intend to change narrators between Chris and Amelia? And where exactly did you get inspiration for Chris’s voice? He was such a *boy*! I could have sworn ‘Good Oil’ was a duo-job (à la Rachel Cohn and David Levithan) because Chris’s male perspective was chillingly truthful.

Yes. That device appealed to me straight off, to see the same events through different perspectives, to see how each of the characters perceived each other and how they were aware or unaware of the other’s struggles. The diary….seemed a good way to do that, and the fact that we know Amelia gets to read Chris’ diaries adds a layer of richness and closeness to their relationship. Hmmm, I guess Chris was pretty honest, and sometimes the truth isn’t pretty. I have had some close male friends over the years, and like to think that I have comprehended something of what it is to be male through them.

Q: Okay. This is the question on EVERYONE’S lips . . . will there be a sequel to ‘Good Oil’? (Pretty please with a cherry on top?)

Possibly. I think it would be very exciting to see how Chris and Amelia relate to each other in the next chapter of their lives. Right now is not the time for me to write a sequel. The novel I am working on at the moment is completely unrelated to Amelia and Chris. So the answer is definitely maybe.

Q: When can we get our greedy little hands on your next novel?

YA again. For Allen and Unwin. Hope to get a manuscript to them by July. Bigger canvas. It seems.

Q: What other books/projects are you working on?

Number one project is about yea high, three years old, gorgeous, and usually dressed in pink with fairy wings. I also work a few days a week (I’m a social worker), and fit writing around the above. Working on the new novel at the moment, although I’m expecting the editorial report for the American publication of Good Oil to arrive soon, from Noo York.

Q: Favourite author(s)?

Hmm. Kate Jennings for sure. Eleanor Dark, Margaret Atwood, J.M Coetzee, Helen Garner, Lionel Shriver, Christopher Koch, Susan Johnson, Catherine Jinks, Kathleen Stewart, Kate Grenville, Carl Hiaasen…and, I have to say, my father. Screen writers Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon. I could go on. I know I’m forgetting someone majorly favourite…. I’ll remember when I’ve pressed ‘send’ on this questionnaire.

Q: What’s the hardest thing about writing for a Young Adult audience?

I don’t really think about it that way on a conscious level. I try to keep it relevant to experience of being young I suppose. Thus far. Writing is hard in general, I find, no matter who the target audience will turn out to be. I hope that my work will be read and enjoyed by people of many age groups.

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

Get a wife.

And also, don’t try to do it all on a laptop. Even is all you have is a laptop, buy a separate keyboard that you can set up to reach ergonomically. Seriously. Look after those tendons. You only have one set.

'Good Oil' by Laura BUZO

From the BLURB:

Miss Amelia Hayes, welcome to The Land of Dreams. I am the staff trainer. I will call you grasshopper and you will call me sensei and I will give you the good oil. Right? And just so you know, I'm open to all kinds of bribery.'

From the moment 15-year-old Amelia begins work on the checkout at Woolworths she is sunk, gone, lost...head-over-heels in love with Chris. Chris is the funny, charming, man-about-Woolies, but he's 21, and the 6-year difference in their ages may as well be 100. Chris and Amelia talk about everything from Second Wave Feminism to Great Expectations and Alien but will he ever look at her in the way she wants him to? And if he does, will it be everything she hopes?

Amelia is fifteen and has just started her first part-time job, at supermarket Woolworths (aka: ‘Woolies’, aka: ‘Land of Dreams’). Her trainee supervisor is twenty-one-year-old Chris. . . Much girlish crushing ensues. But if there’s one thing Amelia has learnt from a year of doom and gloom English texts (hello Sylvia Plath!) it’s that love stories rarely have happy endings. . .

‘Good Oil’ is Laura Buzo’s debut contemporary young adult novel. And it’s a doozy.

In all honesty, the storyline is bare and simple. A fifteen-year-old gets her first job and first crush on her unattainable University-aged co-worker. That’s the crux of the book. But I think the beauty is in Buzo’s simplicity.

For one thing, the storyline is a page out of everyone’s childhood, in one form or another. Everyone has been Amelia at some point in their life – crushing on the unattainable boy/girl and having to (slowly) accept the crushing blows of romantic defeat. But Buzo goes one better and also offers a few chapters from Chris’s perspective. . . and he turns out to be an equally relatable narrator.

Chris is a young adult who is desperately grasping at the ‘young’ and trying to avoid the ‘adult’. He is in his last year of university, and like most twenty-something’s, he is aimless and despondent of his situation;

I have decided to do Honours next year after all, because the idea of leaving uni in three months’ time and looking for a real job is quite frankly a little too much for me to contemplate in my (perpetually) delicate state.

Through Amelia we get to read the impossible impotence of being young. She’s at that odd age (fifteen) when you: can’t drink, can’t drive, go to school, go home, listen to your teachers, listen to your parents. . . Day in, day out. It seems endless. Buzo has distilled in Amelia everything that it means to be young and lonely. Her parents aren’t interested in her, her best friend is expanding her social circle (that doesn’t necessarily include Amelia) and nothing seems to fit. I get it. I lived it. . . we all did. And that’s what makes ‘Good Oil’ so darn good.

I especially loved Amelia because she has that same innocence I can remember in myself. She admits to having not talked to boys since primary school, and now finds her and her friends’ crushing a little odd. Buzo also precisely captures the High School jungle (though school is rarely a setting in the novel). Little things are perfectly pin-pointed and articulated, like that clique of ‘Beautiful People’ who act as school celebrities;

Luke Silburn, Monty Donachy and James Roberts. To name a few. The funny thing is – how is it possible that I know so many of their names? I have nothing to do with them. I've never even spoken to one. Yet somehow their names have seeped into the collective consciousness of the whole school. You hear whispers of their names along the corridors and across the school grounds at lunch. Information about which of them are dating what girls, who had a party last weekend, who was invited and who is casually mentioning that they went and did what to whom. I even know that Monty Donachy’s first name is short for ‘Montague’. Go figure.

I liked the contrast between Amelia and Chris’s narration, if only because I felt connected to both of them.

In Amelia I remembered. With Chris, I understood. Chris is roughly the same age as I am now, and has just completed his uni course (same as me). Now he finds himself battling the parental inquisition (“what kind of job are you going to get?”) and feeling suffocated in his childhood home. He is waiting for his life to start. . . but at the same time reluctant/scared to be his own catalyst. YES! I *get* him! I *am* him!

I also liked the juxtaposition of Amelia/Chris because, through them, Buzo reveals the unchanging obstacles of love. Amelia pines for Chris, unaware and unconcerned by their age difference. Chris pines for the girl who broke his heart, and is in the pursuit of ‘The Perfect Woman’. Both have unrealistic expectations and dead-end feelings. It’s a nice symbiosis that reveals how this funny little thing called love doesn’t change all that much as we get older. . . nor does it get any easier.

The book does feel unfinished, and if there is no sequel I will be miffed. I suppose that precipice feeling at the end is indicative of being young – Amelia about to turn sixteen and enter the last leg of her teenage years, and Chris off to lands unknown to figure out the next stretch of his adult life. . .

I feel the same way about ‘Good Oil’ as I did about the TV show ‘My So Called Life’. It wasn’t all fireworks and love triangles (that was reserved for ‘90210’ and later, ‘Dawson’s Creek’) – but by golly, that show told the truth! Buzo in ‘Good Oil’ does the same thing. I found the book to be quite depressing, mostly because it’s so fucking true. She captures and shines a (glaring, neon and fluorescent!) light on what it is to be young. To be young and lonely, young and incapable of change. I think this novel impacted so much because it hit so close to home. . . And ultimately, I did love ‘Good Oil’. It’s not all doom and gloom – Amelia and Chris, respectively, are very entertaining and witty narrators. They pepper their POV’s with pop-culture references (from ‘Platoon’ to ‘Kings of Leon’) and are often sharply self-aware and self-deprecating. I loved this book for the honesty of its protagonist’s.

Having said that. . . ** SPOILERS highlight to read** Please, tell me there is more! Tell me there’s going to be a sequel. . . It can’t end that way – it just can’t! Not with a drunken 3AM phone call from Japan saying he misses her! IT CAN’T END LIKE THAT! I NEED MORE!!! ** end SPOILERS **

5/5

P.S. - Big hearty thanks to Naomi of ‘inkcrush’ fame for putting me onto this little Aussie YA gem – I owe you one!