Get to know our author of our book of the month for August, Jaclyn Moriarty. Moriarty is the best-selling author of many novels for children, young adults and adults. She has been the recipient of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award, and the Aurealis Award for Fantasy. Her books have been named Boston Globe Honor Books, White Raven selections and Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Jaclyn grew up in Sydney, Australia with four sisters (including authors Liane and Nicola Moriarty), one brother, two dogs and twelve chickens. She has lived in the US, UK and Canada, but now lives in Sydney again, along with her son, Charlie. She is very fond of chocolate, blueberries and sleep..
1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I like it when people ask where I was born because I can say that I was born in Perth, Western Australia. I’m proud of that. However, the family came back to Sydney when I was two, so my memories of Perth are imaginary/based on photos. (I did take a trip back with my parents and son a few years ago, and we cycled around Rottnest Island, and it was spectacular.) I grew up in the north-west of Sydney with five sisters, one brother, two dogs, twelve chooks, two horses and a duck. I went to a Catholic Girls’ High School in Pennant Hills and then did English and Law at Sydney University, before flying overseas to keep studying in the US and UK. This was a procrastination technique to delay becoming a lawyer.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
From the age of six my dream was to become an author. I knew that wasn’t realistic so I made different plans. At twelve, I wanted to be a flight attendant so I could see the world, and an astronaut so I could see… more of the world. At eighteen, I wanted to be in advertising and make cinema ads. At thirty, I really wanted to be an author but I was a lawyer. My plan was to figure out how to phase out the law.
3. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
Books: The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; and The Republic of Love by Carol Shields.
Music: Chopin Nocturne C sharp minor (no 20) (I don’t know why; it just seemed to break something open in my brain); the Popcorn record by Hot Butter (my dad used to play it very loudly and it was so wild it made everything seem possible!); Placebo’s album, ‘Without You I’m Nothing’ (listening to it basically wrote my YA novels for me).
Art: the illustrations in some of my favourite children’s books, only I can’t remember their titles; Modigliani’s portraits.
4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), Time Travel for Beginners.
It’s truly an honour that this is your Book of the Month! Thank you so much! Time Travel for Beginners is the story of a nondescript storefront in a Sydney suburb between a gelato bar and a sushi place. It calls itself the Time Travel Agency and offers customers short trips to anywhere they like in time—from Ancient Rome to the Swinging Sixties, from their great-grandmother’s kitchen to their own troubled teenage years. The catch is that nothing they do in the past will alter the present.
Anna has just got a job there; Teddy is a customer who wants to time travel and figure out where he went wrong in his marriage; and Jade, who’s taking writing classes in a room upstairs from the agency, thinks the place is a hoax and wants to burn it down.
5. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
Well, I would say that I hope they might find themselves a step closer to leaving their regrets behind and embracing the future; and that they might have a new perspective of the nature of time. However, that’s too ambitious, so I’ll say I hope they feel cheerful.
6. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
My writing sisters, Liane and Nicola Moriarty. (I love my non-writing sisters too, to be clear.) I also love Elizabeth Stroud, Kate Atkinson, Anne Tyler, Elizabeth McCracken, Anne Patchett, Laura Bloom, Kathryn Heyman. My life-long favourites include Virginia Woolf, Tom Stoppard, Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome, and Diana Wynne-Jones. And many more.
7. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
Remember that all you’re doing is telling a story. I think it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the advice and tips and rules of writing. But all you really need to do is let yourself disappear into your story. At the same time, imagine you’re telling the story to a good friend: you don’t want to bore your friend, or confuse them—you want them right there inside the story with you.
Time Travel for Beginners
Inside, you’ll be welcomed by the smell of freshly brewed coffee, a selection of baked goods . . . and the question, Where in time do you wish to go?
The guidelines are simple: you can go whenever you wish into the past, and there’s no fear of altering the present. Have tea with Jane Austen, scream at a Beatles concert, witness the Olympics in ancient Greece. Perhaps a more personal trip? Visit your long-lost grandmother, recapture the heady days of your youth, return to the idyllic time when your teen was a babbling baby—or watch yourself make the one decision that changed everything.
Is it a hoax? And if it’s real, what’s the catch?
When single mother Anna is offered a job at the agency, she glimpses the possibility of happiness. Meanwhile, Teddy’s a customer hoping to untangle his recently imploded marriage. And Jade, who has a deeply buried secret, despises the agency for offering false hope.
In Jaclyn Moriarty’s incandescent novel, Anna, Teddy and Jade leap headlong into time, hurtling on a crash course towards one another. At turns entertaining and illuminating, Time Travel for Beginners explores the moments, big and small, that shape our destiny.
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