Annabel Pitcher

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
Annabel Pitcher

About Author

Annabel Pitcher is an author and script writer from Yorkshire. She studied English at Oxford University before training as a teacher. She taught English at a local secondary school before being inspired to write.

While on a round the world trip, she wrote her first novel, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, which won the 2012 Branford Boase Award for debut children's novelists.

Her second book, Ketchup Clouds, won the Waterstones Children's Book Award.

Author link

www.AnnabelPitcher.com

Interview

SILENCE IS GOLDFISH

PUBLISHED BY INDIGO

OCTOBER 2015


This month we speak to Annabel Pitcher (My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece, Ketchup Clouds) about her new novel, Silence is Goldfish (published by Indigo).

Pitcher has already made a name for herself in exploring complex, emotional situations with a light touch and a tenderness for her very real characters. In Silence is Goldfish, she returns to this territory, exploring issues around identity, family and communication through her teenaged character Tess Turner.

When Tess makes a dramatic discovery about her father, she finds she is not brave enough to confront him with this truth, and not sure what to say to him if she did. So Tess reverts into herself and into silence, refusing to speak to anyone other than a plastic goldfish-shaped torch. As the story's events unfold, however, Tess gradually comes to realise that true power lies in words, not silence.

Here, we ask Annabel Pitcher to tell us more about Silence is Goldfish:


Q: What was the starting point for Silence is Goldfish?

A: I wanted to have a main character who was mute, that was my starting point for the novel. At the start, Tess discovers a big secret about her father. She wants to confront her father but she can't find the right words so she takes a vow of silence instead.

She retreats into herself, because it's the only way she knows how to handle all this. She builds a wall around herself and thinks that it is a powerful place to be. Later she discovers it's more powerful to say the things that are going on in her head which she hadn't had the confidence to do before.

Part of my research into having a mute character was to take a vow of silence for a weekend so I told my husband that when I woke up, I wouldn't be able to speak. I only managed about three hours of silence and then I caved!


Q: How do you drive the action if your main character won't speak? How can readers relate to Tess?

A: Ah, that's where the goldfish came in. The goldfish - a plastic torch that Tess has bought from a garage - was really important in terms of keeping Tess real, making her into a three dimensional person, by giving her some form of dialogue.

While she doesn't talk to anyone else, she does communicate with the goldfish and that helps to make her more charismatic and interesting when she's not speaking to anyone else.


Q: So why did you decide to make her companion through this trauma a goldfish?

A: Well, I once had a pet goldfish called Bubbles and although I only had it for a couple of months, it was a really cute little thing and I wanted the character in my novel to be something you could relate to. I loved this idea of a creature that swims around and can't go far, it just flits about.

I also chose a goldfish because they look like they are talking in the way they open and close their mouths, but you can't hear the words. So in Silence is Goldfish, I have two creatures who can't talk but who find a way to communicate with each other.

It makes for a lot of humour because the fish won't let Tess take herself too seriously all the time. It's really her voice and her reasoning - that tiny voice in our heads that says, 'hold on, are you sure about that?'


Q: Why did you decide to focus on a relationship between a girl and her father in this story?

A: I think the father / daughter relationship felt like a more unusual one to explore because there are a lot of father / son relationships in YA books. My earlier book, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, was also about a father and his children.

I have a really good relationship with my dad, he is Mr Reliable and my parents have been married for ever, so I don't know why I find that father / daughter relationship so interesting. Perhaps it's more unusual than looking at mums and daughters?

I've found it fascinating watching my husband become a dad to our little boy. I think sometimes dads can feel less important than they are but dads are essential. You need to have someone who is there, and reliable, so dads are very important.


Q: A lot of the novel is about Tess trying to work out who she really is. Is that what interests you in writing for teenaged readers?

A: All my books are about identity, that struggle towards self-acceptance, which is a key theme at this age. There are gaps you feel so acutely as a teenager; you question who you really are and who you feel you should be, and there's that sense that there is an ideal way to be.

It might seem that friends, peers, the media are all telling you that the person you are isn't good enough. So it's important to know how to be yourself, and to be able say, 'I'm not going to be that or to do that, I'm this person'.

The whole parental issue is a big part of that sense of identity. Your parents anchor you and your sense of self. If that goes, it creates more of a crisis of identity, and that's one of the things I explore in Silence is Goldfish.

It's an interesting age to explore, to see how young people get from that point of insecurity and vulnerability, to feeling more self-assured. For me, it was such a painful journey but everyone goes through it and hopefully you reach a point where you're comfortable with yourself.


Q: Tess has anxieties, but not about her size; you describe her as comfortable with being large. Why did you want to have a character who doesn't struggle with how she looks?

A: Tess is quite big and I did that because it gets so tedious if everyone always looks perfect, I wanted her to look like a normal girl and most people don't have an ideal body image. She is what she is and she doesn't have any body issues, she's fairly comfortable in her own skin.

I didn't want her to go through the issues she does and to lose six stone and end up as a size eight by the end of the book. I still wanted her to be her own person and at the end, when she's speaking again, she's no different from how she was at the beginning. She has just accepted that she is who she is.


Q: Tess also has a good friend, Isabel; why don't see more of her in the novel?

A: Best friends are so important at that age and Tess is lucky to have a brilliant best friend at the beginning but it's true that we don't see her again until the end of the story.

It was really hard not to have Isabel in the book more because I really loved her but, for the plot to work, Tess has to be isolated. If I'd left Isabel in, the temptation would have been too much for Tess to talk because Isabel is such a straight talker.


Q: Do you have a favourite passage in the book?

A: Yes, my favourite part is when Tess has the showdown with the bully, which is just a quiet moment in the corridor. I wanted that to be a quick moment of triumph, not a Hollywood moment!


Q: What are you writing next?

A: I will be writing another longer book but, as I am about to have another baby, I plan to write something shorter for now. I work from my office at home and it's pretty full on with a two year old and another baby on the way...

 

 

KETCHUP CLOUDS

PUBLISHED BY ORION CHILDREN'S BOOKS

JULY 2013 (paperback)


Ketchup Clouds begins with 15-year-old Zoe confessing that she has done something terrible that no one else knows about. Her story is told through a series of letters she writes to Stuart Barnes, a man on death row, in which she describes the tragedy that has unfolded in her life and the reasons for her grief and her guilt.


In her debut novel, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, author Annabel Pitcher focused on a central character and an idea, but in Ketchup Clouds she explores concepts - love and guilt - as well as secrets.

At the start of the novel, we find out that Zoe is responsible for a boy's death but we don't know why, how, or who has died. In earlier drafts Pitcher revealed who had died but she changed it because the novel "isn't about who is dead", she says. "It's about a girl who is suffering guilt. Sometimes as a teenager you do things that stay with you for the rest of your life; who is alive and who is dead is secondary to that idea in this story.

"I started with the idea that the main character, Zoe, had done something wrong. I wanted it on a big scale, so it wasn't going to be a cheesy high school romance but a story about morality and sin and betrayal which is why I introduced a character who is on Death Row.

"In this story you have a girl who is burdened with a secret that she can't tell anyone, so it works well to have her in the act of confession and to someone who will never know who she is. It can be an unburdening for her, a cathartic process, through which she can find some kind of peace."

When she was 18, Pitcher had herself written to a Death Row inmate, part of her protest against capital punishment. "I went to a talk by Amnesty and heard a nun talking about it and campaigning against it. As part of her stance, the nun wrote to Death Row inmates and offered them her friendship.

"I find the idea of prison barbaric and strange even though I appreciate that people need to be punished for their crimes. But how can someone have the power to stop you seeing your family and friends and decide to put you to death? And as for people knowing they are waiting to die it seems too cruel."

Pitcher was put in touch with an inmate who had killed someone as part of an armed robbery. She says, "He had done something horrendous and yet you can still form a friendship with someone like that; they have done something worse than you will ever do and because it's outside your immediate circle, you can tell them things you don't tell your friends."

In some of her letters, Zoe's comments about Death Row are cruel and heavy-handed but Pitcher says, "I wanted to convey the fact that her understanding of what death row is and her understanding of criminals is very limited - she is only 16 years old. She is trying to make jokes, to be nice, but it comes over as clumsy, not sophisticated."

While the letters describe the past, readers also get glimpses of the present, keeping the momentum going and reminding us that, though the events are set in the past, they still have an impact on the present.

The tragedy at the heart of the story began a year previously, when Zoe finds herself dating two brothers at the same time. Pitcher had wanted a love triangle in which one of the lovers would die and wanted both characters who are left alive to feel as guilty as each other. Using brothers, she says, exaggerated the betrayal aspect.

"I knew the plot but not how to write it in the most relevant way. I wanted it to be quirky and resonant, I wanted her to find she had just ended up in this situation." Pitcher recalls how, as a teenager, she and her friend had found themselves in Marbella in a car with a drunk driver and says, "I didn't know how we ended up there. You act before you think at that age and get swept along with the moment and before you know it, you are in a difficult situation and that happened to me quite regularly. Zoe ends up in this horrific situation because she decides she wanted a little excitement, and when it happens girls can end up out of their depth."

Pitcher also explores issue of casual sex in the book and the added dangers for young people of social networking and inappropriate photographs ending up on websites. "It's so difficult being a teenager now with Facebook and Twitter and videos on You Tube, where people can post pictures without your permission," she says. "As a teacher I came across social networking issues regularly where teenagers were getting upset and not liking pictures of themselves that were online, even if they were not sexual images. Their lives are now lived online."

While there are many dark moments in the story, Pitcher also captures the sense of anticipation of a teenager's life, where opportunities are opening up and the future is full of possibilities - as well as the excitement in new relationships. "It was important to have that moment where things take off for Zoe. I wanted those first stirrings that would stay with her for life."

Pitcher is also adept at humour and despite the looming tragedy of Ketchup Clouds, there are plenty of lighter moments. Pitcher says, "Even thought I write about dark stuff, my interest is in humour. I love that kind of Louise Rennison humour and situational comedy so if anything, I have to tone that down when I write. But I love it when teenagers get in silly situations and that cringing and kicking yourself for it."

As for the title, Ketchup Clouds, that was there from the beginning, Pitcher says. "I had this image of Aron (one of the two brothers) and Zoe kissing outside a party by a river and it being sunset and Aron's brother, Max, seeing them together and walking away towards a red sky. The story changed but I still wanted some reference to sunset, sunrise, and endings and beginnings, and those red clouds."

 

MY SISTER LIVES ON THE MANTLEPIECE

PUBLISHED BY ORION CHILDREN'S BOOKS

MARCH 2011


My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece is Annabel Pitcher's debut. Its subject matter divided publishers and agents, one describing it as 'commercially disastrous', while others fought to buy it at an auction eventually won by publisher Orion Children's Books. The book went on to win the Branford Boase Award in 2012 for promising debut novelists and their editor.

The story follows a family five years after their daughter, Rose, is killed by a terrorist's bomb. The family has fallen apart; the father is an alcoholic, the mother has left and the dead girl's twin sister stops eating.

Ten-year old sibling Jamie Matthews is the narrator. He barely remembers his dead sister, whose ashes are kept on the mantelpiece, and decides to bring his family together by auditioning, with his sister Jasmine, for an X-factor-style talent contest.

Pitcher wrote the book during a year she spent travelling. She says, "I had the idea in Ecuador. My husband and I were watching a programme about 9/11, and discussed how famous events can have so many repercussions for so many people. The entire story and the title of the book fell into my head and the voice of the boy narrator came instantly, it was raw and unsentimental.

"I had a really happy childhood so I'm not sure why the story is so tragic, I've never had anything like this happen to me. I even kill the cat in my story, but I dont like cats very much so that wasn't hard.

"The most difficult part to write was the father's racism towards Muslims as a result of his daughter's death, it's a hugely sensitive issue and I needed a lot of help from my publisher to get it right. I also wanted the dad to come right at the end.

"People are horrified when I tell them what the book is about but I see it as an uplifting book, about warmth, hope and bravery. There is also a lot of humour in it, because the narrator, Jamie, doesn't always understand what he is seeing or hearing.

"I read a lot of children's and teen books, and love teen fiction. Thats my strongest area and where I am most interested - writing things that really move young people."

Author's Titles