Meg Rosoff Meet the Author


Meg Rosoff

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You are watching BBC

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You are watching BBC News.

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Now it's time for Meet the Author.

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Mal Peet was a much-loved writer of what book shops

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like to call 'young adult fiction' although he greatly disliked labels

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of that kind.

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When he died last year he left an unfinished novel, Beck,

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the story of an orphan boy marooned in Canada during the Depression and

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trying to make a life for himself.

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Now the book has been finished by his friend,

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another favourite among young readers, Meg Rosoff.

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So what is it like to finish the story of a friend

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and bring it to a conclusion?

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Welcome.

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It must have been quite an emotional experience to pick up the manuscript

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of a friend and try to finish it?

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Yes, it was emotional in the best way, actually.

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We had never really made a firm arrangement and when Mal called me

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to say that the chemo hadn't worked and that he knew he was going to die

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quite soon, he said my great regret is that I haven't been able

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to finish this book.

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And I just said, I will do it for you and that was it.

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And we never spoke about it, he never told me what he intended

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or what I should do with it.

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So it was like a kind of silent dialogue, in a way,

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and because we were such close friends, it was like keeping

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that conversation going.

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That's rather interesting.

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Did you know anything about the book before these conversations?

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Nothing, literally nothing.

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I had no idea it was historical...

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So you opened it like a reader?

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Yes, yes.

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It was...

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I guess it was incredibly lucky, actually, that I connected with it

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enough so that I could treat it as my own book.

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But every writer has a voice, a way of expressing himself

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or herself on the page.

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That is individual.

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That's what makes a writer a writer.

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And here you were, with your friend stalking the pages.

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Did you want to write as him or as yourself

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and will we see the join?

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Well, I hope you don't see the join, although I think anyone

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who knows my writing and Mal's writing really well might recognise

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bits and pieces that are more Mal or more me.

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But...

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Yes, it is two separate voices but on the other hand,

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he and I were so close, in a way, and we had such similar sensibility

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that I didn't have to think about writing like Mal Peet.

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I was writing as the voice of the book and that,

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for some reason...

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Because it's a strong enough voice.

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So that you can pick it up.

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Get its rhythms.

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Exactly.

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I found it remarkably effortless in the sense of picking up the voice

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and because I can't write the way Mal writes.

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He and I write quite differently but...

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You know, it's like adopting someone else's baby.

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You're not always thinking of someone else's mother, you are

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being the mother to that child.

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The boy in Beck, he is born as it were, by accident,

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by a sexual liaison, as a result of a sexual liaison that

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shouldn't have taken place or wasn't meant to.

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He is orphaned, educated by the Christian Brothers,

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in a school, in pretty harsh circumstances.

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He finds himself in the wilds of Canada during the Depression.

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This is the classic boy thrown into the wilderness and having

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to find himself, isn't it?

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It's an elemental story.

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It is an elemental story and it's interesting that the trajectory

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from Liverpool to Canada...

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I mean, Canada was such a wilderness and it was a wilderness

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after the American West was a wilderness.

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It almost has elements of the western, you know,

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the individual against nature as well as...

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The emptiness that lies ahead.

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The great emptiness and the kind of emptiness of his future and how

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he is going to somehow resolve what it means to have a home.

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Do you think because you didn't talk to Mal Peet about this,

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as you've told us, do you think the way you see

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the boy coming through it, developing,

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finding himself, is probably the same as he would have found it?

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I think he would have written a whole extra section to the book

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and I didn't want to get into writing a quarter of a book

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completely from scratch.

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I wrote a bit less than that in the end and...

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Do I think he would have been happy with what we did?

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Yeah, I think he would have been very happy, actually.

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And in fact I was rereading at the other day and thinking,

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damn, it would have been such fun to collaborate on a book

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because he did all the stuff that I don't particularly like doing,

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which is the plot and I did all the stuff that I think he liked

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doing less, which is the going over and over and refining

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and refining and you know, adding characters and fixing

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the dialogue and all that kind of stuff.

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You have written, both of you, he did and you do,

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for the same kinds of readers.

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He didn't like and I don't think you like the categorisation

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of readers by age because it can become a straitjacket, really,

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you write a book for all ages.

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But your focus has been for a similar, maybe

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what they call young adults.

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And I suppose in that sense, you are looking at the world

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through the same lens.

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I think both of us were interested in adolescence, more than interested

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in an adolescent audience and I think that there's

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a distinction, in a way and most writers will probably tell

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you that they are not very much focused on their audience

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when they are writing.

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No.

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You are focused on what is in your head.

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My own adolescence was quite a difficult period, not in the sense

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of having ended up in jail or being a drug addict or anything

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like that, but in terms of struggling to figure out

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where the edges of the world were and what it

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meant to be grown-up.

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Now, now that I am somewhat older, I actually think that really

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the whole trajectory of life is a transition from childhood

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to adulthood and that really, that process doesn't end

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until the day you die.

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The question is, do you ever get there?

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And I think the answer is no.

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A lovely phrase you used earlier when you talked about finding

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the edges of the world and in a way that is what the boy in Beck

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is trying to work out.

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He is in the wilds of Canada, has had a particularly

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difficult childhood, no home, cast adrift,

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so it's a very unusual experience and yet, the feelings he has

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and the things he learns are things that people who are living

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very conventional lives will also recognise.

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Yes.

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They've just been exaggerated.

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Exactly.

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That is what fiction does, an awful lot of the time.

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I'm always a little bit suspicious of too much plot in a novel

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because I sort of think the ideal novel should have no plot

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at all and really just concentrate on the mental journey but actually,

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it's a little bit more readable when the character

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is going through real hardship, in real life.

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I suspect what you hope most of all about this book

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is that Mal Peet would have liked the way it ends.

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I feel...

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Absolutely convinced that he'd have just had a laugh and a drink

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and said, you know, thank you for doing this,

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let's try it again.

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So I...

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Never felt any self-doubt in picking this up as a project and it was

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partly because when you are very close to someone you can almost

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hear their voice in your head.

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And it wasn't that he was directing me what to do, he was mostly,

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kind of, cheering me on.

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Meg Rosoff, thank you very much.

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Thank you.

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Hello.

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Hello. Good

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