Natasha Carthew
About Author
Natasha Carthew is a working-class country writer from Cornwall. She has written all her books outside, either in the fields and woodland that surround her home or in the cabin that she built from scrap wood. She has written two books of poetry, as well as three novels for young adults; Winter Damage, The Light That Gets Lost and Only the Ocean, all for Bloomsbury. Her first Literary novel for adults, All Rivers Run Free, Published with Riverrun/Quercus earlier this year.
Natasha has also written on the subject of Wild Writing for several publications, including the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook, Eco-fiction, Trip Fiction, the Guardian, Project Twist-It, The Big Issue and the Dark Mountain Project. She's currently writing her second literary novel for adults and a full-length performance poem.
Interview
ONLY THE OCEAN
BLOOMSBURY
NOVEMBER 2018
In ONLY THE OCEAN, two girls - kidnapper and kidnapped - find themselves at sea, battling the ocean, and trying to survive in a world where climate change has pitted community against community, and water has eaten away much of the land.
Both girls have troubling home lives and through the novel, we discover how they confront their pasts and adapt to find new possibilities in their world.
Author NATASHA CARTHEW tells us more about her latest novel, ONLY THE OCEAN.
Q: This is a story about survival at sea; why did you decide the ocean would be your setting for this book while your previous books have been very tied to the land?
A: I really wanted to write a swash-buckling adventure on the high seas! I loved books like Robinson Crusoe, Kidnapped, Lord of the Flies and Huckleberry Fin when I was growing up and wanted to write an adventure that was also a story about love forged in adversity.
Q: Kel is an outsider and isolated from much of the world. How did her character develop and her story emerge to you as you wrote the book?
A: I think outsiders make the best characters, they are interesting because they stand outside, they are apart. It was important to me that the reader saw the world through Kel's eyes, that the inequalities in the society in which they are a part were shocking, especially seen at a distance.
I also wanted to see her be slowly drawn into this new world and through circumstance and getting to know Rose, to slowly become a part of things, to be less isolated.
Q: Only the Ocean is also a love story, was the relationship between Kel and Rose always going to be at the heart of this story?
A: Totally. As a writer the ending generally comes to me first and the growing relationship between captor and the captive was the initial idea that I knew I could build the story around.
Q: Because of her experiences as a child, Kel finds talking about her feelings difficult so was it hard to develop the relationship between the girls?
A: I think a lot of young people find it hard to talk about childhood trauma, they might not have complete understanding as to what has happened/is happening, or they try to block it from their minds. Anybody who has been abused finds it hard to talk about abuse, but through love and time and the forging of relationships, they can learn to trust.
It was important for me to get this right, Kel was used to not talking about her feelings, they are painful, confusing, they make her angry and she uses self-harm as a way to stem that anger and confusion. I knew that if I was true to her feelings, the relationship that slowly developed between the two girls would be true, heartfelt and enduring. It wasn't hard to develop the relationship because I knew the girls so well.
Q: You explore what each girl thinks of the other's community and the division between the haves (Rose's privileged life in the tower) and the have nots (Kel's miserable life in the swamps); why did you give them these opposing backgrounds?
A: I looked at society today and gave both sides a little push in each direction. There is a massive divide in this country between the haves and the have nots, I just imagined that split a little wider.
Q: Kel and Rose are also escaping troubling family backgrounds; was it important for you to show that young adults can do so?
A: It's important for Young Adult readers to know that they can do so. It's not easy and can be hard to find the right help and guidance, staying in education helps to keep them under the watchful eye of adults who care, and friendships matter greatly.
Q: Your stories often feature survival and having the skills to survive; what draws you to write about this?
A: Survival against-all-odds type stories are the most fun to write and provide a great background for the more intimate, intricate inner battles that I like my characters to have.
I also think if a can teach a young person about survival and give them the skills to light a fire or forage for food then that's brilliant, who knows what will happen in the future?
Q: Your books also explore near-future worlds with extreme climactic changes; in Only the Ocean, much of the land has been flooded and the rain is constant. Are you pessimistic about our current ability to deal with climate change?
A: Yes! When writing ONLY THE OCEAN I didn't have to imagine the country flooded out it was all around me, I don't think people realise that the tipping point is close, the point where we can no longer go back, but if society acts fast we can still avoid a dangerous rise in temperature.
The near-future world that exists in all my books I call Justopia, it's just about to happen or has just happened, the slip into total chaos isn't too far in the future.
Q: Kel learns, through the story, to be true to her heart. If you could visit your teenage self, what would you want to tell her?
A: Stay in School; study more, party less. I've learnt everything the hard way.
Q: You write poetry as well as fiction, how does that influence how you write fiction, and are you still publishing poetry collections?
A: I'm told my prose is quite poetic and I think subconsciously the rhythm of poetry is always there. As well as writing my second Literary Fiction for adults, I'm also writing a performance poem, which is great fun.
Q: Do you have a favourite place to write?
A: I write outside in a cabin that I built from scrap wood. I've written all my books outside.
Q: Can you tell us a little about your school events for our teacher members?
A: I love to chat to students about my work and am really looking forward to taking ONLY THE OCEAN into schools, there's so many themes to explore in the book including abuse, self-harm and social injustice. I'm also looking forward to talking about the love story between Kel and Rose, as a LGBTQ writer it's really important that young people talk openly and positively with writers such as myself.
I also like to talk to students from disadvantaged backgrounds and inspire them to think big. I come from a poor, socially disadvantaged working class background and I love to talk to them about what I call the possibility of maybe, I want to encourage them to be positive, be confident, be brave!
I can be contacted through my agent Jane Finigan [email protected] or by sending me a Direct Message on Twitter: @natashacarthew
THE LIGHT THAT GETS LOST
BLOOMSBURY
NOVEMBER 2015
NATASHA CARTHEW'S debut, Winter Damage, marked her out as a writer to watch and her new book, The Light That Gets Lost, is another powerful and lyrical story, driven by themes of loss, revenge and redemption.
When Trey witnesses the murder of his parents as a child, he spends his teenaged years planning his revenge. He is eventually sent to the correctional Camp Kernow for young people, where he plans to enact that revenge.
Hidden behind its electrified fences, the regime at the camp - farming and butchering - is harsh but gradually, Trey begins to bond with a small group of friends and to see his beyond his desire for revenge. However, when the adults in charge of the camp abandon their charges, events soon get out of control and violence errupts. Trey has to decide whose side he is on and whether it is his past, or his future, that will win.
We spoke to author Natasha Carthew about The Light That Gets Lost and she answered the following questions:
Q: Like your previous book, Winter Damage, The Light That Gets Lost is set in Cornwall where you live. How important is it for you to know the area you are writing about?
A: My settings and where I am physically are so important for me as a writer. I do a lot of my writing outside where I can see the sky and the moors, and the settings in my stories are quite wild. You can put your characters wherever you want and I don't want them to be somewhere where they have phones or television; those get in the way of storytelling. I have to have them in a world where you can really throw things at them and see how they cope.
Q: Why do you choose to write in the local dialect? Does this make dialogue harder to write?
A: I write in dialect because that's how the characters talk in my head, that's how they all speak. For me it's like watching scenes in my head, almost like a film, and I just write it down as the words are spoken.
I'd be worried about writing dialogue that wasn't in dialect because when it's like this, the characters almost write the story themselves.
Q: Your characters are often very disturbed young people who need to turn their lives around. How do you manage to think your way into their mindset?
A: I was a very angry teenager, a wild child. I did things as a student that I shouldn't have done so I find it easy to write about these kinds of characters. It's good to be able to tap into that time in my life.
There can be things in your life that turn you upside down and you go off the rails and eventually you just become that kind of person. I can see how that happens to young people and the question is, how do you find a way to get your life back on track again?
The books I write show that, while you might have messed up your life so far, you can turn things around at any point. Reading about characters who manage to do that can help change a person's life because it opens up their world and its possibilities.
In the end, Trey finds friends who become a kind of family to him. It doesn't matter what your past is or where you came from, if there is just one person around you who isn't interested in drink and drugs, it can help change your life.
Some children have a difficult background and it makes them more determined that their own lives will be different; they work hard to not be like their mum or dad. School is great in these situations because it gives children a chance to meet other kinds of people and make friends with people whose backgrounds are different; it is their route out of the lives they are living.
Q: The young people in your story end up at a camp that promises much more than it delivers. Have you based the camp on a specific place?
A: I wanted the camp to sound perfect and to those who have never been there, it does because they think the young people being sent there to be 'corrected' are learning a trade; but no one really wants to know if that is the case or not.
I was thinking about young offender institutions when I wrote that and I have done some research into that area. I don't think these institutions work because they are so overcrowded and because they are not focused on rehabilitation. These units need to be smaller and to be more caring.
No one at these institutions has the time to get to the crux of the problems of the young people who have been incarcerated there. I remember the story of one girl who was in and out of care, she was adopted and then she was unadopted; that was her life. Where was the love? She had so many social workers and staff involved in her life but inside she was just very angry. That's what I meant about the 'light that gets lost'.
Q: So although there is a sense of dystopia in the novel, these are very current issues you're exploring?
A: People might read The Light That Gets Lost and think it's fantasy or dystopia but I don't think we are far from the kind of world where young people are locked away and forgotten about, because it's easier to do that.
Look around at the economy, and decisions that are being taken and which are making it harder for people who are already poor to get by; or education, where companies invest in academies simply to make money. Take Cornwall, where the book is set; it's beautiful but we have a big housing problem. Local people can't afford to buy their own house because so many have been bought as second homes, so people who are already poor are being made poorer.
Parts of the book are quite dark but I think all writers know that you have to say it like it is; I'm not going to pretend that everything is rosy. There are things going on like environmental damage, which young people see and think about. But I also show that things can get better.
Q: Your story is one of revenge and your main character, Trey, wants to exact revenge for something that happened to him in the past. Did you always know if he would choose revenge or if he would overcome that desire?
A: At some point we all have that feeling of wanting revenge, the desire to repair a wrong, and it's very emotive in a character; readers will be rooting for him. I knew that Trey was seeking revenge but also that at some point that desire would be overtaken by something else. In the end, we see that revenge is a futile emotion, it burns you up, eats you up.
I like the fact that his anger, that uncontrollable impulse to burn things with fire, is ultimately used for good.
Q: Things get very violent at the camp where they are incarcerated. How dark can literature for young people be?
A: In the story, the young people are left to their own devices behind this fence; they are shut away from the rest of society and it gets very violent. It's an expression of what society is doing to these young people.
A lot of them have anger issues and there is a pecking order that comes into play. When that happens, you only need one or two people to say 'let's do this or that' and it raises the bar of what they will think about doing.
How far can people go when they are being driven to do things in a crowd? Look at the looting that happened during the riots in the UK; when normal people see others looting they think it's okay so they join in. It's the same with violence and I do think you could quite easily get into that situation. In the story, it's a question of survival; kill or be killed.
I think by this age young people are ready for stories that are bleak and harsh and as an author, I've a responsibility to be honest with young people. I'm interested in truth and maybe that comes from the harshness and grittiness of my own background. You tend to write about what you know and what you're interested in. I often advise young people to write about what they know; I think that's a good starting point for writing.
Q: Can you tell us about your next book?
A: It's called Only the Ocean and it is set entirely at sea; I have broken out of the moors! It's about a girl who has had a baby and who wants to escape from everything, so she decides to sail to America. Her journey isn't a simple one but it helps her understand where she really wants to be.
Q: You started writing as a poet before moving into YA fiction. Are you still writing poetry?
A: Yes I still write poetry and at the moment I'm putting together a collection. I approach that as if I'm writing a book because I want my poems to tell a story, to have a shape and to show a journey. It makes putting together a collection a lot harder.
Q: What do you do to relax?
A: I like to relax by reading, or walking in nature. My favourite time of day is first thing in the morning and I can't wait to start writing when I wake up. I make a cup of coffee at 7am and then I'm off. I sit outside and write in my little cabin in my back garden. In the winter, if it's still dark I have a little lamp I can write by. In the summer, people often think I'm just sitting outside in the sun; they don't realise I'm actually working.
Being outside works for my writing because my characters are predominantly outside so they are there with me. I love to feel the elements and to be able to watch the sky and the clouds and trees; you can write what you see.
I run 'wild writing' sessions because, when people are outside, you see them relax in a way that they don't in front of a computer. If you live in a city then you can still experience this by going to a park or sitting by a river.
Q: How hard is it to make a living out of writing?
A: It is hard, and while there are things you can do to help support yourself like workshops and events, you have to write because you love it but it's not an easy nor a glamorous job and if you ever sat down and worked out your hourly rate, it would be in pennies rather than pounds! But to me it's still the best job in the world and it's something I love doing.
WINTER DAMAGE
BLOOMSBURY
AUGUST 2013
Poet Natasha Carthew has turned to writing novels with Winter Damage, her first novel for young adults, which is published by Bloomsbury.
Winter Damage is set in the near future in the West Country, a landscape that Carthew knows well having been born and brought up in Cornwall.
In the novel, the UK has suffered some kind of economic and environmental collapse and people are left largely to survive by their wits. The country is also in the midst of a harsh winter.
Teenage Ennor is living with her father and younger brother in a trailer adjacent to the farm they lost a few years previously. The family is impoverished and when the social services threaten to take her autistic younger brother into care, Ennor naively decides that she will walk across the moors to try to find her mother - who left their family several years previously - to find help.
During her journey, Ennor faces death and several near disasters but she also discovers true friendship, loyalty and what it means to really live. While this is no 'happy ever after' story, she also discovers hope.
Carthew says, "I had the idea for Winter Damage walking around in my head for a long time. I like to write about things that might happen and for me, Winter Damage could happen whereas I find other dystopian novels quite fantastical.
"A lot of young people worry about the future as well as the environment and society, and I wanted to tackle these issues but to move it along a little to explore things that might happen. It's not about aliens landing but things that we have already started to see happen, like the London riots. Young people have the imagination to think and to ask, how far away from complete breakdown are we?
"I feel that there is a veneer around everything but that we are not that far from the kind of collapse - economically and environmentally - that I explore in Winter Damage. That's why I wanted to cover this, it's interesting and exciting. It could happen and if it did, what would you do? Would you have the skills to survive?"
While she hadn't previously written a young adult novel and hadn't planned this one as such, Carthew says she simply wanted her characters to be this age. "When I began writing it, I thought of the students I worked with and how a lot of them were in crappy situations at home and thought how, even in the worst situations, there is always hope, so I decided to aim it at the young adult readers and I hope they are the ones who pick it up and read it."
Much of the book was written by the author outside in a three-sided cabin looking out over the moors, something that helps give her novels their shape and atmosphere says Carthew. "I write books outside, where my characters are. That's how I have always written, I am a country writer; I can't write if I am staring at a screen." Carthew, who knows many of the survival skills that her characters learn, also knows the moors well enough to know where her characters would journey and the markers they would see on the way - the tors, the standing stones and the rivers.
Ennor is eventually joined in her journey by Sonny, another teenage girl who she finds living with a group of travellers. Carthew says, "I introduced Sonny because she's positive and full of fun. She knows danger and understands the world better than Ennor does, and she has this bravado and can push on. Even in the worse situations, she and Ennor can have banter and bickering and that lifts the reader."
Carthew made a conscious decision to limit the number of characters in the novel so that she would be able to "really get under their skin so the reader would really get to know them." Her characters speak with the dialect of the West Country in the novel. "I wanted that clipped sound, which is how people speak here, it's very clipped and quick."
She decided to make Ennor's younger brother Trip autistic because "I wanted a character that wasn't just a younger brother but one who had something that would make him that much more precious," she says. "Ennor has to look after him because of that, and she worries that other people won't look after him."
The novel also explores what real poverty is like in rural landscapes, something that Carthew was determined to show the reader. "In Cornwall we have one of the highest rates of children living in poverty so as much as it's beautiful, it also has its share of difficulties.
"People tend to think of this kind of hardship as belonging to inner cities but there is also hardship and abuse in the country although a lot of people don't know about it. We don't have a huge number of police in the countryside and things go unnoticed in isolated places."
In her second book, which is already completed, Carthew revisits the world she has established in Winter Damage although it is set slightly later and she follows different characters. In Winter Damage, society has begun to break down but in the next book, things have moved the other way and young people can quickly find themselves incarcerated in young offenders camps. The story is about how the young people forge gangs and alliances and, eventually, survive in a world without adults.
Coming to writing novels from poetry has, says Carthew, given her a "whole toolbox" to use in her novels. "Being a poet has been my identity from my childhood to now and it has put this amazing amount of paints and colours at my disposal.
"I love to use just the right word and I can spend hours searching for it. That comes from being a poet, you have to know the word that is quite right to describe a particular situation or feeling. Having that approach, I feel, gives your writing more texture and makes writing a more organic process. When I edit my work, the last thing I do is to make sure that every single word is right and looks and sounds right."
She advises young writers to "read as much as possible, adult books as well as books for your age, and books that you might not think are not interesting, because it's all about the style as well. So if you read something that is badly written, think about why that is and what you would do to change it - thinking about writing is important." And finally, she advises, "write something that you want to write".
As a teenager, Carthew would read authors including DH Lawrence, Hardy and Steinbeck while today she enjoys the "simple and beautiful prose" of US writer Cormac McCarthy (The Road).
Only the Ocean
The Light That Gets Lost
Winter Damage
