{"id":48808,"date":"2015-06-12T14:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T04:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=48808"},"modified":"2016-03-01T09:23:20","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T23:23:20","slug":"annie-barrows-author-of-the-truth-according-to-us-answers-ten-terrifying-questions-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2015\/06\/12\/annie-barrows-author-of-the-truth-according-to-us-answers-ten-terrifying-questions-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Annie Barrows, author of The Truth According to Us, answers Ten Terrifying Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Booktopia Book Guru asks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Annie Barrows<\/h1>\n

author of The Truth According to Us<\/em><\/a><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ten Terrifying Questions
\n____________
\n<\/strong><\/h2>\n

1. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was born, raised, schooled, and pretty much everything else in California. I grew up in a town just to the north of the San Francisco Bay called San Anselmo, which has grown alarmingly elite in recent years, but was just a plain little town during my childhood. I spent most of my youth at the library. I went to college at the University of California in Berkeley, where I studied medieval religious history (how practical!) and later got an MFA in Creative Writing (also practical!) at Mills College nearby. With all this California background, why did I write a book set in West Virginia? \u00a0Sheer mulishness.<\/p>\n

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s easy! When I was twelve I wanted to be eighteen. When I was eighteen, I wanted to be thirty, and when I was thirty, I wanted to be twelve again.
\nOkay, okay.
\nI think at twelve, I was still clinging to the hope that I\u2019d somehow be transported back in time to 1880, so my career planning was confined to reading 19th century etiquette books in order to blend in. I\u2019m sure this will come in handy someday.
\nAt eighteen, I had a fantastic career plan. I was going to be an art restorer\u2014one of those quiet, delicate-fingered people who spend years pasting together shards to make a single Grecian urn. Oh boy, was that going to be great! Except then I did it and found myself restringing thousands upon thousands of teeny glass beads on six inches of an Indian headband and almost lost my mind.<\/p>\n

At thirty, I had attained every career goal I had set for myself in the previous ten years: I was the Managing Editor of one the largest book publishers on the West Coast and I was the acquiring editor of their first New York Times Best-Seller. Everything was great, everything was swell\u2014except that I had just realized that what I really wanted was to be a writer.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Author:<\/strong> Annie Barrows<\/p><\/div>\n

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was eighteen, I thought that the most important thing in the world was to be right. \u00a0Now I think the most important thing in the world is to try to think that other people are right.<\/p>\n

4. What were three works of art \u2013 book or painting or piece of music, etc \u2013 you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Literary influences are such an enormous can of worms\u2014there were so many of them, they were so influential\u2014that I\u2019d better focus on other art forms. (Though I\u2019m pretty sure I would not be a writer if I hadn\u2019t read, at about age 12, J.D. Salinger\u2019s description of the Glass family\u2019s bathroom medicine cabinet in Zooey<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Three major artistic influences are:
\n1. Dumbo<\/strong><\/em>
\nBack when I was a kid, our grubby local movie theater held kiddie matinees on Saturdays. These events were strictly kid-only; no grownup ever entered the theater during them (even the ushers stayed out unless someone threw a chair). As a result, kiddie matinees were mayhem. The kids on the balcony rained spit and chewed candy on the kids below. The kids below hollered threats at the kids on the balcony. Children wailed and sobbed. It was like Lord of the Flies<\/em><\/a> with Milk Duds. But there was no avoiding it; our parents made us go. They\u2019d shove us out of the car and speed off, gravel spraying, to enjoy a quiet afternoon.\"lord-of-the-flies\"<\/a>
\nRegular kiddie matinees were pretty bad, but one Saturday I was dropped off at a matinee of Dumbo<\/em> with my older sister and my cousin. It was one of the most terrifying episodes of my life. Dumbo<\/em> is about death and loss; specifically, it\u2019s about a little elephant whose mama is tormented to death, leaving him to wander, alone and in despair, through various dire misfortunes. There I was, at age six, watching Dumbo\u2019s mother die in agony while children wailed and sobbed around me. I tried to run out of the theatre, and my sister grabbed me and told me to sit still.<\/p>\n

That afternoon was the foundation of a lot of neurosis, but also\u2014and more to the point here\u2014the foundation of a profound distrust of anything that calls itself children\u2019s entertainment, a species that, in my opinion, rarely wants for children what they want for themselves. It was this distrust that ultimately led me to write for children.<\/p>\n

2. The Hunt in the Forest<\/strong><\/em>
\nI stumbled on this painting one day in Oxford, and I can\u2019t get over it. Paolo Uccello kills me in general, but this particular combination of precision and mystery completely mesmerized me. Uccello loves, loves, loves lines, but he doesn\u2019t love lines more than he loves what he can\u2019t see. It\u2019s very instructive. Hilary Mantel<\/a> does the same thing in writing.<\/p>\n

3. Enrico IV<\/strong><\/em>
\nI am not recommending this play. It\u2019s by Pirandello, and it\u2019s kind of tedious. But in 1981, I saw a performance of it that blew me out of my seat. By the end of the show, the stage had been ripped apart\u2014we could see more or less into the dressing rooms\u2014and everything that signals Theater was in ruins. It was definitely the performance, not the play, that held the power, and for me, it was an astonishing lesson about the delivery of story through form, which I had always thought was cheap. I mean, mostly it is cheap, but when it\u2019s on, it\u2019s pure power.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had to. Nobody would ever in a million years read\u2014or publish!\u2014what I\u2019d most like to write, which is story without end, a literally endless following of, say, three lives (not mine) from beginning to\u2014the moment I drop dead. It would be volumes and volumes and volumes long; it would tell story after story after story. Wouldn\u2019t that be great?!
\nWhat?
\nNo?
\nOh.<\/p>\n

This is why I wrote a novel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

6. Please tell us about your latest novel\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Truth According to Us<\/em> is set in the summer of 1938, when the town of Macedonia, West Virginia, is celebrating its Sesquicentennial, an occasion that will be commemorated with parades, picnics, and most importantly, a book recounting its history. Its reluctant author, the debutante Miss Layla Beck, recently disinherited by her father, arrives in town with one goal \u2013 to get out of it as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

Macedonia\u2019s history seems simple enough, easily disposed of, easily understood. Then Layla meets the Romeyns\u2014Jottie, Willa, Felix, Emmett\u2014a family at once entertaining, eccentric, seductive, and inextricably bound up in Macedonia\u2019s most impenetrable historic event.<\/p>\n

Grab a copy of Annie’s new book\u00a0The Truth According to Us<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have to admit it\u2014what I want most is for readers to love my darling people. They\u2019ve been my dearest friends for years now, and I feel a little uncertain about them going out in the world without me. I felt exactly like this on my daughter\u2019s first day of kindergarten.<\/p>\n

On a more theoretical (and less insane) level, I\u2019d want readers to question the possibility of veracity, the endlessly receding goal of knowing the past in order to possess it. Time is a tragedy from which we hope to protect ourselves by believing in the existence of facts.<\/p>\n

8. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?\"life-after-life\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

How many days do you have? My problem here is that there\u2019s not one realm of writing. There are lots of realms and sub-realms. For instance, there\u2019s the realm of children\u2019s writers, and within that realm, there are picture books, chapter books, novels, and young adult novels. I can deeply admire the work of a picture book writer, but my admiration is influenced by fact that I can\u2019t write picture books myself. So that admiration is different than what I accord to people working in the same genre that I work.<\/p>\n

And then, there\u2019s the issue of variability in a single author. I don\u2019t mean that the author\u2019s skill is variable. The variable is my ability to be acted upon\u2014I\u2019m just way less engaged by some things than others. Take murder, for instance. It mostly bores me, so a book that\u2019s centered on a murder has to be really good to overcome my apathy about the topic. An example: what Kate Atkinson is addressing in Life after Life<\/em><\/a> is completely fascinating to me. Her books about Jackson Brodie are probably equally accomplished, but they\u2019re accomplished at something I\u2019m less interested in. Now that I think about it, I should probably admire her more for the Jackson Brodie books than for Life after Life because I liked them so much even though I don\u2019t care about murder.<\/p>\n

9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To finish my next novel in less than seven years.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are as many ways to be a writer as there are writers.<\/p>\n

Annie, thank you for playing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grab a copy of\u00a0The Truth According to Us<\/em>\u00a0here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>The Truth According to Us <\/em><\/h2>\n

by\u00a0Annie Barrows<\/h3>\n

In the summer of 1938, Layla Beck is forced out of the lap of luxury and sent by her Senator father to work on the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program. Assigned to cover the history of the little mill town of Macedonia, West Virginia, Layla envisions a summer of tedium.<\/p>\n

However, once she secures a room in the home of the unconventional Romeyn family, she is completely drawn into their complex world.<\/p>\n

At the Romeyn house, twelve-year-old Willa is desperate to acquire her favourite virtues – ferocity and devotion – a search that leads her into a thicket of mysteries, including the questionable business with which her charismatic father is always occupied and the reason her adored aunt Jottie never married.<\/p>\n

Layla’s arrival strikes a match to the family’s veneer, bringing to light buried secrets that will tell a different tale about the Romeyns and their deep entanglement in Macedonia’s history. As Willa peels back the layers of her family’s story, and Layla delves deeper into town legend, everyone involved is transformed \u2013 and their personal histories completely rewritten.<\/p>\n

Quirky, loveable, and above all human, this novel of small-town life in the 1930s is an immersive experience that will leave readers reeling and wanting more.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

Annie Barrows is the author of the children’s series Ivy and Bean<\/em>, as well as The Magic Half and Magic in the Mix<\/em>; she is also co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society<\/em>. Annie lives in Northern California with her husband and her two daughters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Grab a copy of\u00a0The Truth According to Us<\/em>\u00a0here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Booktopia Book Guru asks Annie Barrows author of The Truth According to Us Ten Terrifying Questions ____________ 1. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled? I was born, raised, schooled, and pretty much everything else in California. I grew up in a town just to the north of the San Francisco Bay called San Anselmo, which has grown alarmingly elite in recent years, but was just a plain little town during my childhood. I spent most of my youth at the library. I went to college at the University of California in Berkeley, where I studied medieval religious history (how practical!) and later got an MFA in Creative Writing (also practical!) at Mills College nearby. With all this California background, why did I write a book set in West Virginia? \u00a0Sheer mulishness. 2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why? That\u2019s easy! When I was twelve I wanted to be eighteen. When I was eighteen, I wanted to be thirty, and when I was thirty, I wanted to be twelve again. Okay, okay. I think at twelve, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[617,5184,6038],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55874,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48808\/revisions\/55874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}