Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Time Traveler's Wife: an interview with the author

So Writer's Digest has a great interview with Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote The TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE and just scored an advance in the neighborhood of $5 million for her new novel.

The best part is the last paragraph, in which she inadvertently reveals she maybe doesn't read a lot of YA:

Would you classify that as mainstream fiction, or a genre?

You know how ideas tend to morph, but at the moment if it had a genre the genre would be coming of age. It’s about a 9-year-old girl who has hypertrichosis, which basically means she’s covered with hair. She’s been home schooled and it’s about her effort to go to school and have a normal life. Originally when I started it I was thinking of trying to write a YA book, but—this happens over and over again. I get going on something, and all of a sudden it’s full of darkness and sex and swearing and, you know, so I think I might try to hold back on the swearing, but it’ll probably end of being unsuitable for children! I don’t know, we’ll see. I was thinking the other day about Linda Berry’s book Cruddy, which I think is about an 11-year-old, but you would never let your 11-year-old anywhere near it. It’s a wonderful book, but it’s just too dark.


Welcome to the club, Audrey! Make that character 16 and you're good to go.

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