I first encountered Keren David when I signed up with her agent, Jenny Savill. Jenny slid an advance reading copy of Keren's first novel, When I Was Joe, across the table. 'You might want to read that,' she told me. I did - and loved it.
Keren and I have other things in common - apart from the first name with the crucial differing vowel. Keren is published by Frances Lincoln, and her editor is the rather wonderful Maurice Lyon. I had a short story published in a Frances Lincoln anthology called Under The Weather, also under Maurice's watchful editorial eye. And I believe that a woman in my writing group is a cousin of Keren, or her husband - or have I just made that up? Anyway!
The publishing community is notoriously suspended on a spiderweb of tenuous connections. This editor is friends with that editor, who once worked at a certain publisher who had dinner last night with an agent... The world of books thrives because of people who like each other - that's why the face-to-face of book fairs still works, even in unglamorous locations such as Frankfurt. Keren was one of the stars on Jenny's burgeoning children's list at Andrew Nurnberg and it felt, well, right to join this growing family of authors. I haven't looked back.
Earlier in the year I attended the Islington launch party for Almost True, Keren's second novel following the adventures of Ty, a London teenager who finds himself in the wrong park on the wrong night with a knife in his hand. There's been lots of gripping fall out since. What do I love and admire about Keren's novels? Ty's voice, the page-turning drama, social observation, humour and - crucially for me - warmth that a writer just can't fake.Enough rambling! I'm here because Keren kindly agreed to be interviewed by me about Almost True. Here's how the conversation went:
There's a great Twilight pastiche in chapter 17 when Ty desperately wants to kiss Claire but can't - not because he's worried about vampire tendencies, but because he's paranoid about bad breath! There seemed to be more comedy in Almost True than in When I Was Joe. Is this what led you to write a humorous third novel (Lia's Guide To Winning The Lottery, for interested readers)?
I don't believe a book about serious issues has to be completely grim and depressing. I think that one of the great things about life is that humour is always there, mixed in with all the worst moments. It's a survival technique. So I did crack a few jokes in When I Was Joe. Ty's got even more problems in Almost True, so I felt there was scope for more humour to balance all the difficult things that are happening to him. If I hadn't lightened the mood, the whole book would have been too angsty and melodramatic. Some of the humour just comes from the way that teenage boys are intrinsically comical, but with the Twilight pastiche I tried something more complicated. I thought it worked, so I left it in.
I was surprised when some publishers thought When I Was Joe might not be a commercial success because it was too gritty (I wondered if they'd ever watched Skins). So I actively looked for an upbeat subject for my next book, and what better than the lottery? I also get a bit irritated by the lack of respect shown to writers of romantic comedies. It's a very difficult genre, because both the love and the laughs have to be right. So I thought I'd have a go!
Many YA authors are advised to get the adults out of the picture as quickly as possible, but you fly in the face of this! Adult characters fill the pages of Almost True and they're all so real I could touch them. Your social observation is fantastic. I particularly enjoyed meeting Ty's dad in this book. (He reminds me of many men I have known!) Why do you think the adults are so crucial to the telling of Ty's story?
Because I was very new to writing fiction I didn't know about that advice when I wrote When I Was Joe, and I definitely wouldn't have paid any attention. When I was a child and particularly a teenager, I liked reading about adults. I was very interested to know how their minds worked. I enjoyed authors who created rounded and interesting adult characters, such as Noel Streatfeild and Antonia Forest. I also think that a lot of teenagers read adult novels, in part because it offers them insight into the adult world. So I suppose I just found it natural to include the adult characters in the story. Ty's parents are pretty young, and the story of how they got together and why they split up is a big part of Almost True, so you could say that they are partly teenagers in the book.
I think it's part of being a teenager to understand that adults are fallible and human and sometimes not much more grown up than themselves. Ty's always had that knowledge with his mum, and in Almost True he gets to find out a lot about his dad.
I'm glad you enjoyed Ty's dad, he was one of my absolutely favourite characters to write. He was vaguely based on an ex-colleague. I imagine him as looking like the young Johnny Depp.
I was fascinated to discover Nicki's backstory and a certain issue she once had. (Nicki is Ty's mum.) I immediately had to go back to When I Was Joe to see if this was seeded in your first novel. It was, but I hadn't noticed at all! (A sign of true authorial greatness.) Did you have a clear idea of book two when you were writing book one?
Thank you! I always knew that particular thing about Nicki, but I didn't need to spell it out in When I Was Joe, so it was there waiting when I came to write Almost True. I thought more readers would pick up the clues.
When I first started writing When I Was Joe, for a course I was doing at City University, my friend Anna, who was also doing the course, read the second chapter in which I'd carelessly killed off Ty's dad, and said: 'Don't kill him off, because you might want him for a sequel one day.' I laughed a lot because at that point I had no idea if I would ever get beyond chapter 3, but I resurrected him and so I always had in mind that a sequel was possible in which Ty met his dad.
I started writing Almost True when I was querying agents, and getting bored with nothing to write. Mostly I just made it up as I went along. I'm not a great planner - too impatient.
Some publishers baulk in the face of an 'issue' novel, because the topics can weigh down the plot. You've dealt with several of the biggies, yet both of your novels are rip-roaring reads. Do you have any tips for other YA writers dealing with some of the important issues that revolve around the contemporary teenage experience?
There are various sorts of typical 'issue' novel I think. There's the emotional issue story which has one big emotional problem at its heart, often solved by sessions with a sympathetic counsellor. Then there's the political issue book, which highlights a particular injustice or social cause. I don't see my books as an 'issue' novel like those, and I have a problem with the kind of books which centre on one person's struggle with one problem because they can sometimes give the impression that most 'normal' people don't have problems and that counselling offers a complete solution.
In my experience most of us live with multiple emotional 'issues', against a backdrop of several political 'issues' and help may not be forthcoming or may come from unexpected sources. I always want the story and the characters to be more important than the 'issues'. If I wanted to write about 'issues' I'd stick to journalism.
I seek to reflect life as I find it - messy, difficult, full of possibilities - and raise questions rather than offer solutions. I'm influenced by Dickens and EastEnders!
Talking of riproaring reads... Both of your novels made me nearly miss my stop on the tube, I become so absorbed! Are there any techniques you consciously use to draw your readers in?
Oh, I do like to hear this! I try and end a chapter with the reader wanting to know what's going to happen next. I spend quite a lot of time thinking about what the reader might be thinking/feeling at any point in the book, and I try and manipulate those thoughts and feelings. I'm easily bored, so I try and make every line as interesting as possible. My training is in newspaper journalism so my instinct is for succinct story-telling.
Is there going to be a third novel about Ty's adventures? There's still so much more I'd like to know about his path forwards. And not only Ty - the family that's grown around him. This is a very different boy to the one we first met, living with his mum above a newsagent, isn't he?
When I finished Almost True I felt emotionally worn out. I didn't know if I could bear to make Ty suffer any more. I also wanted to try creating new characters, writing in a different voice. Ty's voice had become very easy for me; I needed to try something else.
Recently though I've had quite a few readers contact me, asking if I'd write a third book and so I've been working on an outline and talking to my publishers. So it's possible that there will be a third book.
One idea I've had is to have Archie as a narrator, which would give readers the chance to see Ty from the outside, which could be interesting. He has changed and matured a lot since the beginning of the first book - but he's got some way to go!
Ooh, I loved this chat. How reassuring to know I'm not the only writer too impatient to plan. I adore the fact that Keren is influenced by Dickens and Eastenders.We should all embrace high and low culture, as far as I'm concerned - snobbery just puts you in an ivory tower and then how can you write? Finally, Keren's thoughts about romantic comedies chimed with David Nicholl's observations when I went to hear him talk, blogged about here.
Thinking about it, Keren and David have a lot in common: they're both superb at social observation, they both have London as a fantastic character in their books and they both keep you breathlessly turning the pages. Keren, you know David's novel has been made into a film, don't you? I can just see the flurry of excited Facebook comments when casting begins for When I Was Joe...
Thank you for a wonderful interview, Keren.
When I Was Joe and Almost True are published by Frances Lincoln.
Lia's Guide To Winning The Lottery is due to be published August 2011. I, for one, can't wait to see this latest new direction.
