Annabel Pitcher: An Act of Terrorism

Annabel Pitcher studied English at Oxford and has since worked as a scriptwriter and an English teacher. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband and is a full time writer.

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece is her first novel, a moving, funny, compassionate book which examines how an act of terrorism slowly tears a family apart.

Hi Annabel, tell us a little a bit about your life to date.

After graduating I trained to be a teacher, worked for a bit, got married, went travelling and then settled in a small town called Holmfirth in Yorkshire (famous for Last of the Summer Wine). It’s wonderful living in West Yorkshire with family and friends again. There’s a real community around me. I was worried it might be a step back but it’s not, it’s great, my mum’s round one corner my sister’s round the other corner. It’s funny how all this has happened just as my life was all settled, married with a nice job.

It sounds idyllic. The idea behind My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece began when you were travelling in Ecuador. Can you tell us about where the idea for the book came from?

Ecuador was our first stop in South America during our year travelling. I’d never been outside Europe or the States before and Lonely Planet had said not to go out at night, so I thought I might die, which I realised was ridiculous the next day. So for the first night I was stuck in the hotel which had three English language films including United 93 the 9/11 film and we watched that and then I couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards – thinking about the families that get left behind after such a tragedy.

I thought it would be interesting to write a children’s book to explore the effects of terrorism on a family, as it might be more interesting for it to be told through the voice of a child who can’t remember the incident and only thinks about the present. I thought that was an interesting way to explore it in an unsentimental way.

You cover a lot of ground in this book, terrorism, bereavement, racism, abandonment, alcoholism, eating disorders. It seems too much to bear at times for Jamie.

I didn’t see it as an issues book, or a depressing book. When my mum read it she found it really harrowing – but for me it was a realistic situation, these things do happen. It was interesting to see how one event could shape this family, like a pane of glass with a crack in it.

It's interesting that it's the adults who are prejudiced and set in their ways and the children who challenge their prejudices.

Yes absolutely, this comes from my teaching experience. I find that today children are more open minded, more accepting of people being different through their own experience of friends and family. I think children are more PC and aware that everyone is different. Jamie comes across many challenges and has to be very strong not to adopt his father’s racist views.

I found it particularly difficult to read about the mother who ends up walking out on her children.

It was tricky to get right. I wanted the mum to be really unsympathetic, as it has to be psychologically convincing that she was in a state where she could do that – walk out on her kids, or you don’t believe the book. The mother feels responsible for the accident and it’s the guilt that made her act the way she did. The dad blamed her for it and she could never escape it. When she met the man at the support group who could understand her – this offered an escape for her. She was depressed, guilty and desperate to have someone understand her. People do act in this way in real life – they have affairs, I’ve seen it with children I’ve taught – mums make mistakes – she did, she chose wrongly.

How about the father? Jamie can’t understand his dad until he experiences death for himself. It must have been difficult for him to see Jamie not going through the same grief.

Luckily I’ve never experienced this personally, where you’re so consumed with grief that it takes over your life, and the dad can’t understand why his son doesn’t suffer too. Children do bounce back and they are resilient.

Jamie's friend Sunya is a wonderful character - where did she come from?

Sunya was the one who was most fun to write – I don’t know where she came from. When I first thought of the idea I wrote the first couple of chapters very quickly and then plotted the book. I thought he’s going to meet a girl, a friendship he has to keep hidden, and learn a lot from her. I didn’t know who she’d be – she leapt off the page. I didn’t want her to be the token Asian girl, I wanted her to be full of life and adventures, spirited, brave and funny. I hate saying she wrote herself but she did – she was really easy.

Have you always been a writer?

I’ve always written. I was an avid diary keeper when I was younger. It’s only now I see how my life was always building towards this. I have always loved reading and writing since I was a child. I remember handing in a 150-page ring bound story when I was 12 and the Head teacher liked it, I was very proud. When I was 10 I thought I could be a writer – but also an actress, spy, doctor, I could be anything! Writing is a hobby I always had. I always loved writing and got a lot of pleasure from it.

When I graduated I really wanted to be a teen author but thought that’s ridiculous, you’re not good enough. I was always reading how impossible it is to get an agent and get published. So I thought the next best thing is to work in entertainment and TV so I did that for a bit but the desire to be a writer was always there.

Then one day I was in Ambleside bookshop in my early 20s and I always gravitate towards the children’s section – and looked at writers like Meg Rosoff  and Jenny Downham and thought these are amazing writers, people do make a living from it. So I started taking my writing more seriously and wrote all the time, mostly short stories and then had the idea for this book in Ecuador.

Have you always been a reader?

I love talking about books. I’ve always, always, always been a reader, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. I think it’s massively, hugely important. Particularly in schools when you don’t get to read any more and there’s no time to let kids read a full novel. You very rarely get a chance to get kids to enjoy reading because you have to do this assignment and hit that target instead.

Were you involved in Booked Up for Year 7s?

Yes that caused a lot of excitement. I think there are quite a few things going on for reading for pleasure extra curricular, but in the curriculum because of the targets I found it very difficult to ever read for pleasure with the children. Sometimes it would be nice to just read a book, but then you could argue that’s not educational.

Tell us about some of your favourite writers as a child.

When I was growing up I was a massive Enid Blyton fan like everyone at my age. Malory Towers, St. Clare's, I really liked The Five Find-Outers and Dog, a Blyton series no one has ever heard of. It was a bit like Famous Five but cooler – rather than go on adventures they solved crime – it's not one of her more popular series. I couldn’t get enough of Blyton. Now Meg Rosoff, Jenny Valentine, Jenny Downham they are all incredible writers and they are the women that made me want to write for teens. They write brave, beautiful, literary work. I was also really obsessed by Harry Potter and I love Philip Pullman’s trilogy.

And what books were your students reading?

At school the kids were all reading Twilight, which is good as they’re still reading. I’ve never seen anything like the reaction to Twilight, it was like a fervour – girls aged about 12 – 15 years couldn’t get enough. They absolutely loved Revolver and there was a massive fashion for Before I Die. These are the kind of authors that really manage to identify with teenage girls. Jacqueline Wilson was popular with younger girls. Chick lit authors like Meg Cabot and Louise Rennison were popular as well as Michele Paver and Malorie Blackman.

The nice thing is that everyone read different things – boys liked Terry Practchet and Philip Reeve and the girls were quite diverse – year 10s and 11s were reading more hard hitting adult books like The Kite Runner, We Need to Talk about Kevin, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. These are books that started debates.

Can you tell us a bit about the new book you’re working on – Ketchup Clouds.

Ketchup Clouds is narrated by a 15-year-old girl in a terrible situation. It's about first love, family, morality, it’s got death in it and it’s set in York. It’s all about the choices you make and the repercussions they have. No one has read it yet apart for my husband.