Q&A with Jaclyn Moriarty (summer reading)
BOOKS & AUTHORS | A short Q&A with Jaclyn Moriarty.
In the summer of 2005, I was asked to produce a huge summer books preview piece for Dose magazine. I conducted short email interviews with authors who had books coming out that summer to get quotes for the piece. This Q&A with Jaclyn Moriarty is one of those interviews, reproduced here in full.
I Have A Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes, Jaclyn Moriarty, 2005
Jen Selk for Dose: There’s a lot of talk about “beach reads” in the summer – titles that are easy to get through and relatively light and fluffy. What makes a good summer read?
Jaclyn Moriarty: “In the summer, people like to sit outside in the sun. The sun makes the people drowsy. I think a summer read has to be compelling enough to stop the people falling asleep.”
“Also, if you can’t get away to the beach, you need a book which will provide you with a holiday, by letting you get lost in its own world.”
“I think a lot of books by women, which tell stories about women, are referred to as light and fluffy. Sometimes they are. But sometimes I think there’s a tendency to confuse pace and lightness of touch with vapidity.”
What’s better: fantasy or realism?
“I like books set in a real world with fantastical corners. I like how children’s books place their characters in the real world and then, without apology, start throwing magic at the characters. Adult books don’t do that very often. I think this is because adult readers get anxious about issues like plausibility and genre.”
“In I Have a Bed Made Of Buttermilk Pancakes, I wanted to write about the presence of impossibility in everyday life: how impossible it seems that you have to go to work even while your marriage is collapsing; or to be a 12-year-old girl in Grade 7 and realize it’s impossible to make friends; or snow falling in cities where it never snows. I was also interested in the fictions that people construct around their lives to make their mistakes seem acceptable. So, I guess I was always tipping between reality and fantasy.”
If you were stuck in the city all summer, what sort of books would you like to have with you?
“I’d like to have books that are funny, warm, and subtle, like the books by Carol Shields, Elizabeth McCracken, Lorrie Moore, Elizabeth Jolley, Joan Aiken, and Louis Sachar.”
Jaclyn Moriarty is an Australian novelist, best known for authoring YA fiction such as I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes, in stores July 2005. Find her on Twitter @jaclynmoriarty.
More from this series:
Published in Dose, June 24, 2005.