Clare Furniss
About Author
CLARE FURNISS studied at Cambridge University and worked for several years in political media relations, including for then-Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.
She has completed an MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University and now lives in Bath with her husband and three children.
Her debut, The Year of the Rat, was published in 2014 and was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award and longlisted for the coveted Carnegie Medal. How not to Disappear is her second novel.
Author link
Interview
HOW NOT TO DISAPPEAR
SIMON & SCHUSTER
JANUARY 2016
Clare Furniss's debut THE YEAR OF THE RAT was a critical success so expectations have been high for her second novel, HOW NOT TO DISAPPEAR, which explores the relationship between a teenaged girl, Hattie, and her estranged great aunt, Gloria.
Hattie, who finds herself alone at home one summer, is put in contact with a great aunt whom she didn't know existed. Hattie is pregnant while her great aunt Gloria is in the early stages of losing her mind to Alzheimer's. Together, the two women set off on a road trip to explore Gloria's past and to uncover its secrets. As their relationship develops, Gloria's revelations help Hattie overcome her fears for the future and to decide what kind of life she wants to build. How Not to Disappear is a powerful and beautifully-written novel that has plenty of appeal to teenaged readers aged 14+.
Here, Clare Furniss tell us more about her writing and her latest novel, How Not to Disappear.
Q: Why do you write for 'young adult' readers?
A: I write YA fiction partly because the stories that came to me as I started writing were stories about teenagers. It's an interesting period to write about because it's a time when you find our own identity and explore those big issues. You find your place in the world and start to question all the things you've accepted so far. There's so much to explore so it's a really interesting age to write about.
It's also amazing to be part of the YA book scene, it's such a dynamic community and everyone is really passionate about the value of books and reading. I also like it because it's so positive about teenagers who, on the whole, get a bad press. It's really great to be part of a community that is looking at positive things about being a teenager. YA writing is also breaking down barriers and people are writing about so many different things and with such passion.
Q: What was the starting point for writing about teenaged Hattie and her great aunt Gloria?
A: There is a broad sweep of ideas in the book but it started with the idea of a relationship between a teenager and a much older relative. I wasn't sure what their relationship would be but I knew it would be between a teenager and a much older woman.
I decided quite early on that the older woman, Hattie's great aunt Gloria, would have Alzheimer's. It was something I'd been wanting to write about since I was a teenager. My own grandmother had Alzheimer's and she died when I was about 13 so for a lot of the time I was growing up, dementia was part of her.
Her dementia fascinated me as a child, how she could remember things so clearly from her past but couldn't remember anything from the present. Her short term memory was almost gone so you could have the same conversation over and over again, yet she could remember so clearly things from her childhood. The younger her was still there and coming to the fore and for me, that was extraordinary.
That was the starting point and then so many other elements and ideas came through. I was looking at how memories make us who we are although it is also about losing your memory. I also wanted to explore the fear of facing the future and the idea of losing control over the future, and how overwhelming that can be, whatever your age. That ties in with the pregnancy story around Hattie who, in a different way, is facing her fears of not knowing what her future will be. Despite what happens to you, can you retain who you are? What is the core of your identity and how can you retain that?
Q: How challenging was the book to write, given that you are changing perspectives between Hattie and Gloria, as well as writing in the present and the past?
A: It was a really complex book to write and getting the pace of the story and the timing of the revelations was probably the most difficult part.
There are revelations about Gloria's past during the course of her journey with Hattie, so I was writing their stories from the past and the present and I wanted to make sure they had the right kind of rhythm, that they balanced each other.
I had a very clear idea of what Gloria's memories would be and I wrote most of the scenes from her past in one go because I needed to immerse myself in the world Gloria was growing up in and to really get to know the characters we meet in her story.
I wrote all those chapters together and then had to work out how I would weave that through the road trip, which takes place in the present. I wanted the road trip to feel like a story in its own right and working the strands together took a lot of blood, sweat and tears!
Q: Why do you use the first person throughout the book?
A: I really wanted Gloria's story to feel very present, particularly because of my own experiences with my grandmother. When she talked about her experiences in the past, they felt very real and present and I wanted to get that feeling across. The past seems very distant from us but at the time it feels very much the same for that person growing up and I wanted to get that immediacy across.
Then there's that realisation that old people were not always old, that your parents and grandparents were once teenagers and felt the same things as you have. So I wanted to get that across and writing Gloria's memories in the present tense helps with that.
I think in society today older people are sidelined or put into a very specific role, they get stereotyped, and I just wanted to do something different and to explore that sense that everyone you have ever been mixes up with who you are now.
Q: Gloria's teenaged years are set in the 1950s. Did you need to do much research into that period and were there any surprises for you?
A: I did quite a lot of reading around various aspects of life in the '50s and it's shocking to think how recent it is and yet there was a completely different attitude towards women. I wanted to explore this idea of the perfect, shining 1950s housewife while there were all sorts of goings-on behind the scenes; there was all this hypocrisy around life for women.
I thought that would be really interesting to explore, to look at the gap between the idealised image and the reality of life for many women. I also had a very specific idea of family and the ideal family and how it is a fiction; happy families are not happy because they fit this idea of the 'ideal' family.
One of the characters is black, so I also looked into racism in the '50s and read some first hand accounts of people who had come over on the Windrush, which was the start of this large scale immigration from the West Indies. There was a lot of overt racism, often through sheer ignorance or people's lack of experience of contact from someone from a different culture. People were completely bewildered by the cultural differences, and it's strange to think how recently that was so.
Q: The main focus of the action is the road trip that Gloria and Hattie make to the Lake District. Why did you decide to take them there?
A: I wanted to write it as a road trip because I had this kind of Thelma and Louise link, where they were heading off into the great unknown.
Their destination, the Lake District, felt perfect for where they would begin to confront what they are up to, away from the world, and there is the space to do that. It was the perfect setting and it's somewhere that I really love. All the places they visit are ones I know very well and I have made the same journey myself.
Q: The focus of the novel is the women, but why are the men in the novel so unpleasant?
A: It is true that there is a real mix of men in the story but there are some really good ones. Although the men in Gloria's family are not very nice to her, her boyfriend is lovely and Carl (Hattie's mum's boyfriend) is also lovely. Hattie eventually comes to accept that and to understand that he's a really good thing for her mum even if he doesn't fit the image of an ideal man for her - he's a good bloke.
As for Hattie's boyfriend, Reuben, teenagers are often attracted to 'bad boys'. Reuben is very charismatic, funny and interesting but he can't cope with the situation. I like the fact that in my books everyone is flawed, even the people you love the most. Everyone has things about them that are brilliant and things that are not so great and that imperfection doesn't mean that you don't love them.
Q: There is one very difficult scene in the book and - without giving anything away - how hard was it to write that section?
A: There is a scene where something terrible happens to one of the characters and it was a very difficult scene emotionally to write. It was easy to write in the sense of the actual writing of it, but it was emotionally very hard because it's an awful thing to imagine. My editor wasn't sure about including this particular event but when she read it, she agreed it was the right thing to have happened in the story.
Q: What kind of books did you enjoy reading as a teenager?
A: As a teenager I read all sorts of things. I loved reading the classics, the books we did at school like Jane Austen and the Brontes, and I loved Virgina Woolf's Orlando, as well as contemporary books like The Handmade's Tale by Margaret Atwood or Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising. I loved mythology and historical fiction. You're really open as a teenager to reading lots of different things.
Q: Where do you write and what are you writing now?
A: I write at a desk in our spare room but I'll also write in cafes and the library to have a change of scene because that really helps if I'm stuck. I always listen to music when I'm writing, and the type of music depends what I'm writing at the time, it has to fit in with the mood or tone of what I'm working on so I can get into that space and switch off the rest of the world. I've not started the next book yet but the new year feels like the right time to do it!
Q: How would your favourite day go?
A: It happens so rarely to get a day to myself! I really love going to the cinema or theatre, those are two of my favourite things to do, so I'd do one of those because they really are the best form of escapism. And I would have to spend some of it reading - it would definitely involve reading, and cake!
