“High-profile cases…have brought the issues to the forefront of public attention, pervading traditional and social media, and pushing society into a conversation that is long overdue…. That these books are all coming out in the same season speaks to the reality that there is more than one story to tell where teen sexual assault and dating violence are concerned.” Quill & Quire
Today, I welcome Robin Stevenson to my blog for an interview about her compelling new YA novel The World Without Us – available from Orca Book Publishers in February 2015.
What do you do when someone you care about wants you to follow him to a really dark place? Do you pull away? Do you help plan the trip? Or do you put your own life on the line in the hope that love will coax your friend away from the precipice? When Mel meets Jeremy, she thinks she has finally found someone who understands her, someone who will listen to her, someone who cares. But Jeremy has secrets that torment him, and Mel isn’t sure she can save him from his demons. All she knows is that she has to save herself.
Set in Florida, against a backdrop of anti-death-penalty activism, The World Without Us examines one girl’s choices in a world where the stakes are very high and one misstep can hurt – or even kill – you.
I was lucky enough to read a preview copy of Robin’s novel, and I found myself devouring it in a few days but pondering it for weeks afterward. I’m glad to have this chance to probe a little deeper in the novel and its intriguing premise and characters.
Karen: At the dramatic start of The World Without Us, Jeremy and Mel have made a suicide pact. In fact, they’re on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida, ready to jump. Where did the idea for this come from?
Robin: I wrote that opening scene without having any plan beyond that point – I didn’t even know who Mel and Jeremy were, how they came to be on the bridge together, or why Jeremy jumped and Mel didn’t. Writing the first draft was all about answering those questions and making sense of that opening scene.
As I wrote it, I remembered conversations I was part of in high school where people would kid around about suicide, and I started wondering: What if one of my friends hadn’t been joking? What if an undercurrent of truth lay beneath the humour?
Also, I used to be a counsellor, and I worked with many people who were suicidal. So it’s a subject I’ve thought a lot about over the years. I thought it might be good to write about it in a way that hopefully would lead to discussions and increased awareness.
Karen: I think the book will achieve that goal. I certainly hope so.
The failed suicide attempt is set against a backdrop of protests against the death penalty in Florida. What sparked you to link suicide with the death penalty?
Robin: I tend to get somewhat obsessed with certain topics. When I was writing this book, I was reading a lot about the death penalty, life on death row, black holes, and lucid dreaming. Sometimes my current topics glue themselves to other ideas and become part of the story I’m writing, which is what happened here. It wasn’t a very conscious process, but I enjoyed writing about these themes together in this novel because it allowed me to explore Mel’s and Jeremy’s ideas about death in more depth. Suicide and the death penalty both raise questions about whether someone should live or not – and who should make that choice. And, of course, sometimes people who seem to have every reason to live choose to kill themselves, while others who have had appallingly hard lives desperately want to avoid death.
Karen:Both Jeremy and Mel are unique, richly developed and intelligent teens. Can you tell me a bit about the process of creating them?
Robin: Mel, who narrates the story, is bright, capable, and very much loved. She’s an only child who is close to her parents. She seemingly has everything in the world to look forward to, and yet she ends up on the bridge with Jeremy. In contrast, Jeremy has experienced a terrible loss, but he’s not suffering in ways that are obvious to the people who care about him. Suicide and depression are so complex – Mel and Jeremy themselves have to struggle to make sense of how they ended up where they did. I wanted to challenge preconceived ideas about who is at risk for suicide. I didn’t want there to be any easy answers in this story.
In terms of process, I think the characters started to take shape as I wrote about their interactions and conversations with each other, and with Mel’s parents and Suzy (the girl Mel babysits). I wrote a lot of conversations that didn’t make it into the final book because that’s one of the ways I get to know my characters. Mel was easier for me to understand than Jeremy. Her family is, in many ways, quite a lot like my own family, and Mel’s difficulties in accepting Jeremy’s ways of coping mirror my own struggle to comprehend and appreciate the different journey he is on.
Karen:On your blog, you’ve said that your books are about “figuring out who you are and what you believe and where you fit in the world.” What do you think your protagonist Mel figures out about herself and her world in this book?
Robin: Both Mel and Jeremy are reading Camus, who wrote that suicide was the only truly serious philosophical problem, and both of them are, in different ways, struggling with the absurdity of life. Mel is a kid who has been raised on both skepticism and activism. She believes that the meaning in life is the meaning you give it, that your life is the sum of your actions, and that what matters are the choices you make. Jeremy is searching for a higher power of some kind and looking for a meaning that Mel doesn’t believe exists. She feels Jeremy is running away from reality, ignoring both his freedom and his responsibility. But Jeremy is terrified by that freedom because it means nothing is holding him back, nothing is preventing him from letting go, and nothing is anchoring him in this world.
Mel doesn’t have a lot of friends, and her deep, intense connection with Jeremy is terribly important to her. She feels abandoned when Jeremy chooses a different path, and her anger comes from this sense of loss. I don’t think Mel ever fully understands Jeremy’s fear and despair, but she does accept that she and Jeremy are two different people, and that he has to find his own ways of coping and creating meaning in his life. She realizes that she needs to stop trying to control what he believes and instead make her own conscious choice to continue to be a friend to him.
Karen: What’s next for you? Can you share a little about your works-in-progress?
Robin: I’m currently working on the edits for my latest middle-grade novel. It’s called The Summer We Saved the Bees, and it’ll be published by Orca in the Fall of 2015. I’m also working on my first non-fiction project – a book about Pride Day that’s aimed at readers aged 11 to 14. It’s been an interesting process – a lot of research, reading, talking with people, sourcing photographs, etc. As a queer mom to a ten-year-old, I feel strongly that LGBTQ families need to be represented in the books our kids read – and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to the growing body of diverse books.
Karen: You’re busy, Robin, which makes readers like me happy. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights. It’s been a pleasure, and I look forward to reading your upcoming books.
If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’m excited about my new novel for teens – Punch Like a Girl – officially available on April 1, 2015, from Orca Book Publishers. In it, a teen girl with a hero complex tries to rescue others, whether they want it or not, in order to avoid facing her own fears of assault. It’s a book that’s both personally and socially important to me, and I hope it sparks much-needed conversation.
Want a sneak peak? Please check out my new book trailer below. You can also read my post about Why I Wrote Punch Like a Girl. Enjoy!
In my workshops for kids and teens, they always have questions about where they can publish and how they should go about it. So I tell them what I can, and I offer my ongoing list of Where Young Authors Can Submit.
I understand how exciting and validating it can be when a story or poem is accepted for publication, and I’m particularly thrilled when marginalized voices get a chance to be heard. But publication isn’t THE goal of my writing workshops.
Writing to Understand Your World
Personally, I write to understand the world around me in all its complex, painful, fascinating glory. It maims us and then celebrates us. It gives us riches and takes them away. I find endless subject matter to write about by lifting my head and really observing what’s happening around me.
So I hope that, in my workshops, kids and teens can get a taste of that goal and its pleasures.
Writing to Move People
I also hope to share my awe of words – how they have the power to make me laugh, cry, or feel inspired. I’m continually delighted by the power of words to move me, particularly the brilliant writing that’s composed in only a few minutes during a workshop.
Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Wonderful advice! Is there are loftier purpose for writing? In his letter, Vonnegut goes on to suggest the students write a poem and then tear it up. Then he writes:
You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
Although it saddens me to hear about this alleged violence and harassment, I’m inspired by the women who chose to speak out against it. I also feel the need to publicly thank them for their acts of courage. They have renewed a global cultural conversation that is topical, relevant and much needed.
We now have mainstream news articles about rape myths, and calls to examine our relationship with violence against women. I find myself nodding as I read, and I feel emboldened by the supportive statements I hear from other women as well as the many caring men I know and love. The topic of violence against women is an important one to me, one I chose to tackle in my upcoming novel for teens — Punch Like a Girl (Orca Book Publishers, Spring 2015).
In the novel, I wanted to write about a girl with a hero complex who tries to save those around her rather than admitting she feels vulnerable. It’s an exploration of what it means to be a hero and a victim in today’s society.
Most of us know someone who has been bullied or abused. I wrote this novel in reaction to witnessing girls and women I care about who have had to face violence in both dating and domestic relationships.
Dating violence among teens is a big problem, affecting youth in every community across North America. According to the Toronto Star, “forty-six per cent of female high school students in Ontario say they have been subjected to unwanted touching, verbal abuse, pressure to have sex, bullying, or coercion.” In the United States:
One in three adolescents is a victim of physical, sexual, emotional, or verbal abuse from a dating partner, a figure that far exceeds rates of other types of youth violence.
Girls and young women between the ages of 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of intimate partner violence — almost triple the national average.
Violent behaviour typically begins between the ages of 12 and 18.
(Source: LoveIsRespect.org.)
Punch Like a Girl is partly based on observation of girls and women I know and partly based on research. Several times in my life, I have helped people I cared about decide whether they want to report an assault, and I have respected their choices. Like my character does in the book, I’ve taken Wen-Do self-defence classes and volunteered at Toronto’s Red Door Family Shelter, which offers help for women and children who are escaping domestic violence.
In Punch Like a Girl, I chose to explore the stages of trauma and recovery. The novel asks questions such as: How do today’s girls deal with violence directed against them? How can we as a society overcome such violence? Punch Like a Girl is a taut, emotional look at one teen girl’s attempt to overcome bullying and violence wherever she finds it.
In 2013, when I was first connecting with my agent, Harry Endrulat of The Rights Factory, I asked him why he wanted to represent this book. Harry’s response? He talked about his daughter and the kind of world he wants her to be able to live in.
I admire Harry’s reaction, and it mirrors why I wrote this book. I need to do what I can to help make this world a better and safer place for the girls and teens who will become tomorrow’s women. I admit that my goal may be lofty and even impossible, but I truly hope they’ll never have to report the violence and harassment we’ve witnessed through the media this month.
