We are delighted to welcome Anne Fine to the blog to celebrate World Book Day and the publication of her latest novel Shades of Scarlet.  Anne has won the CILIP Carnegie Medal twice, once with Goggle-Eyes (1989) and again with Flour Babies (1992).  Anne is known for her astute observation of complex family dynamics and self-exploration and her pithy wit and sage musings.  Anne writes picturebooks for the youngest readers (Ruggles), right up to darkly comic novels for adults (Taking the Devil’s Advice, In Cold Domain).  Anne was the first novelist for children to be honoured as the UK Children’s Laureate (2001-2003), to learn more about Anne and her work visit www.annefine.co.uk

Could you introduce us to Scarlet.

When Scarlet woke as a toddler, her father would often try to guess her mood: “I wonder what shade of Scarlet we will have today.”  Now she’s a teenager, she’s even more mercurial. And too sharp to be fooled or fobbed off. So when Mum moves out of the family home at almost no notice, and Dad just seems feebly to let it happen, she’s furious with them both. We follow Scarlet for only a few weeks, but in her account of that time we get to know exactly what she thinks and feels at every moment, and how she judges each of her parents for what they do, or don’t do. And that’s not always pretty.

You shine a light on a very clear stage in the development of young people. Was this the aim?

Oh, absolutely. ‘Mummy and Daddy know best’ can’t last for ever. And those times when the teenager can be more clear-sighted than the adult – know who is fooling themselves for their own purposes, or blinding themselves to inconvenient truths – can cause massive upheaval in the family.  Naturally, the parents resist the discomfort and inconvenience such overt criticism brings. In this book, both Mum and Dad have to come to see and respect Scarlet in a very different way, and realise they’re no longer always in the right, and Scarlet has to start to learn the supposedly adult skills of forbearance and understanding.

The dysfunction and disorderliness of families is a major theme in the book, but it is often balanced with humour.  Is this an effective technique for exploring and unpicking big and sometimes emotionally challenging issues?

I don’t deliberately use humour as a technique. But I write about the sort of families we see around us, and day to day lives in most homes and schools have plenty of light moments. Since amusing things happen all the time, to everyone, why not weave them into a story?

Scarlet's mum gives her a beautiful blank book. Is this a ploy for her to reflect on her life? 

We never are quite sure whether Mum gives her the book simply as a gift, or in hopes of nosing through it later.  But we all know it’s almost impossible to write lies in a private diary. It’s what you really think that just pours out. And that’s a lot of why people read and write in the first place. Good stories mirror aspects of our own lives, and help us both make sense of them, and live them more sensibly. At one point Mum defends her choice by saying, “Everyone only gets one life.  Just one.  And it's so difficult if you come to realize that you're not living it in the right way.  Or with the right person."  Books do encourage self-knowledge, and self-knowledge serves to help people not make huge mistakes in life.

There is a story within a story in Shades of Scarlet.  This is a structure you've used into great effect in your Carnegie winning books  Goggle-Eyes, and Flour Babies. What appeals about this form of storytelling and does it present any challenges?

When I was young, on the cover of my favourite Christmas ‘Annual' was a girl reading the very same annual with the same cover, showing smaller and smaller till you could no longer make it out. And I always adored stories within stories, like Scheherazade’s 1001 Nights. But I think the way I write these books comes pretty well naturally. Remember T S Eliot: ‘But set down this. Set down this.’ Once you start on any emotionally true-to-life story, the layers will start peeling off like layers of an onion, down and down.

Scarlet is determined and headstrong and as is consistent with your books for young people there is no condescension  or dumbing down the agency and thinking of young people.  As an author who writes across the ages, what different approaches do you employ for different age groups and how conscious are you of audience when writing?  

I’ve said before that I write only for the reader inside myself. Myself at five, at ten, at fifteen, at fifty. I write the books I would have wanted to have come across at that age. Susan Sontag said that a novel is ‘a piece of the world seen through a temperament’ and I doubt that my personality and temperament have changed much over the years. So, though I do have to make an effort to envisage, or take on board, how various aspects of life are very, very different for a young person now, I still come at each novel with my perfect reader in mind. And that perfect reader will, I suspect, always remain myself.

We wish you every success with Shades of Scarlet, and wonder whether you can tell us a little about what you are working upon next?

Unusually for me, I’ve stayed with this same age level. The novel I’m finishing now is called Aftershocks. We recently had the death of a child in my extended family, and I had been thinking a lot about grief, and how it can affect, not just individuals, but communities at large. Of course, like almost all my work it went off in strange – not to say ghostly -  directions. And though it remains at heart a realistic coming-of-age family novel, most of the story takes place in a setting that’s not just unusual, it’s deeply unsettling.  

A big thank you to Anne Fine for the interview.
Image of Anne Fine copyright Carsten Murawski