Sarah Carroll
About Author
Sarah Carroll currently splits her time between a houseboat in Ireland and travel abroad. She recently returned from five years in Tanzania where she founded and ran a hostel while working to support local community projects. She continues to promote ethical overseas volunteering through her blogs and films on www.theethicalvolunteer.com, while planning her next book.
Interview
THE GIRL IN BETWEEN
MAY 2017
SIMON & SCHUSTER CHILDREN'S BOOKS
SARAH CARROLL's debut YA novel, THE GIRL IN BETWEEN, is an original and heartfelt story about love, denial and forgiveness, centred around the relationship between a mother and her daughter. Through their story, Carroll also explores ideas around home and homelessness and society's attitudes to vulnerable people.
When the nameless girl and her addicted mother become homeless, they have nowhere to turn and as beggars, become invisible to society. However, an old, abandoned mill in a corner of the city provides a new home, their 'castle', where they feel safe. But, just as the wrecking balls on the horizon move closer to the mill, layer by layer the past and the present are unravelled and the novel moves towards its shocking truth.
We asked SARAH CARROLL to tell us more about THE GIRL IN BETWEEN:
Q: What has drawn you to writing for young people, and why this age range?
A: The way I see it, my stories aren't for children, but told by them. What happened was, I began thinking of stories I wanted to tell and they were always told by a child. I think the reason is because between the ages of 10 and 12, children are old enough to question the way the world works, but young enough to be relatively uncorrupted by it. When we see a story through their eyes, it's with honesty that we hold a mirror to the world. And so, as the reader, we learn as they learn.
I didn't decide to be a children's writer and I wasn't drawn to write for young people in particular. I only began writing when I was twenty nine. Before that I was a diligent student, a terrible hockey player, a pretty good waitress, an earnest actress, a level four kayaker, a reluctant geophysicist, a keen hiker, and a delighted hostel owner. Among other things.
Q: The Girl In Between features homelessness and explores what 'home' means - why did you decide to focus on this in The Girl In Between?
For most of us, home is a given. So what is it like to be a young girl growing up without a physical place to provide the safety, comfort and belonging we all need? What would you do to replace or recreate it? And when you found something that you could call home, as the girl does with the Castle, what lengths would you go to stop it from being torn away?
From the first words that I wrote, 'I'm invisible', I wanted to know that girl who could call an abandoned mill home, so that I could learn what it was like to be invisible but still matter.
Q: What inspired the setting of the abandoned mill, where the girl and her mother live, and why is it such an important part of the story?
The stained granite mill, surrounded by shiny new buildings, really exists. Or at least it did at the time of writing (it has since been torn down and a new development is under way).
To me, the mill represents a crumbling past left behind by an uncaring digital future. And before the construction boards went up, a homeless man had found shelter in its shadow for a brief time. But he and the mill were invisible to those that rushed past on their way to the office.
One day as I passed, I thought, this place has a story. There's a young girl trapped in there, and like the mill, she's invisible because she's homeless. From the beginning, I wanted to link the idea of invisibility with both homelessness and grief.
The mill is important because it represents the past, and as the girl is stuck in it, she is stuck in the past. I knew, in order to leave the mill, she would have to leave the past behind her.
Q: Through the girl and her mother, a beggar, and the 'Caretaker' - another 'lost soul' at the mill, you explore the 'invisibility' of people on the fringes of society. What drew you to this area?
A: While the mill inspired the story, it was one I wanted to explore as I'm amazed by how, as a society, we can turn a blind eye to social issues or villainise the needy. I'm as guilty as everyone else; I've walked passed countless homeless people without pausing.
I wanted to step over the stereotypes and see what was going on behind the begging cup. To tell a story that I so often myself ignore.
Q: The girl at the centre of the story describes herself as 'invisible'; we don't know her name or age, and her setting is limited to a few rooms. How hard was it to develop her as a character?
A: For me, this was the most interesting part of taking on the story. I wanted to know how a young girl could manage to find beauty in such a brutal existence, how she could make the banal wondrous, how she could escape the loneliness of such an isolated existence.
But it was not difficult to develop her, she came fully formed. I wrote the first chapter the very first day the story came to me and it hasn't changed much. She is the person I needed. A person with an unquenchable optimism and rich imagination which helps her to move beyond the boundaries of her existence. Once I had her voice, I could live through that imagination, which helped the story bloom.
Q: Why did you decide to tell her story in the first person?
A: In this story, I wanted to explore the theme of invisibility and the meaning of home through the girl's eyes. And so it needed to be her voice. Having it in her voice does not only mean saying what she sees or feels. It means describing everything the way she would. For example, I couldn't have her say something like, it was as oppressive as August in Madrid, because, not only is oppressive not in her vocabulary, but the girl couldn't know what August in Madrid is like. She's always been poor and can only relate her story using words and experiences she is familiar with. And so, as the writer and as the reader, living through her voice adds to your immersion in her character and, ultimately, in her experience.
Also, by using first person you can have an unreliable narrator, ie someone who tells you what she believes is true but that you, as reader, may know is not. This adds to the naivety of the voice and (I hope) the empathy we have for her.
Q: The Caretaker, another homeless character, is the girl's only friend. How did he develop? He sells books - why did you choose to highlight 'Ulysses'?
A: Caretaker was inspired by the homeless man that lived in the shelter of the mill, and by many others I've seen or met. For example, Caretaker talks of travelling, which is a reference to a homeless Irish man I met in Spain, who always escaped the Irish winter and headed south. Also, Caretaker sells books, which is based on a homeless man that I chatted to in a town outside of Dublin, who also sold second hand books, and spent his days reading.
From the get-go, I knew Caretaker would help the girl, because I remembered the story of the homeless man who saved a girl from being attacked on my old university campus. Afterwards, security turned a blind eye to his sleeping out in the bushes and the restaurants gave him free food.
So Caretaker came from an amalgamation of people I had met and stories I had heard.
After that, I needed him to have his own story, both so he could help the girl by moving on himself and also so that he too had a reason to be stuck to the mill, i.e. to the past.
As for Ulysses, I guess there were a few reasons why it popped into my head. Firstly, because both Ulysses and The Girl in Between are based in Dublin, but as this is not explicitly stated in The Girl in Between, the mention of Ulysses serves as an indirect reference. Secondly, because Caretaker, with his one lens, resembles the cyclops in Ulysses. Thirdly, because I needed a book that never gets read, and most people who tell you they've read all of Ulysses are lying. Except for me.
Q: Although vulnerable, the girl is loved. How hard was it to develop a relationship in which a neglected child is none the less loved by its parent?
That was the most difficult aspect of the novel and the one my editors pushed me on. It's difficult to get across how someone can love their child so completely and yet do so wrong by them. I think focusing on her addiction as the real problem helped me to flesh out the moments of tenderness earlier on, when the addiction is not Ma's primary focus.
Also, denial holds Ma back from moving on. The harder it gets for her to deny, the stronger the pull of her addictions. Once I had mapped out her cycles of addiction and grief, it was then easier to go back and (literally) insert scenes into the right places that show the deep, though flawed, love that Ma has for her daughter.
Q: You also explore the idea of the child as parent; the girl guides her mother and helps her mother move on with her life at the end. Do you feel this changed perception of one's parents is part of the experience of growing up?
A: Absolutely, and I think it occurs in increments throughout our lives. When we are young we think of our parents as infallible. Growing up is the slow realisation that adults are children who've just made way more mistakes, and hopefully learned from them.
Q: The story is an exploration of loss and guilt, and moves towards forgiveness of others and, importantly, of self. What drew you to these emotional drivers for the story?
A: It very much was the mill that inspired the story. So, working back from this place of grief, you have to figure out how they got there.
Ma's addictions lead them to the streets and ultimately to the mill. In a way, the stages of battling addiction resemble those of grief. And the mill is a physical representation of these traps that keep the girl and Ma clinging to the past. For the mill to come down, for Ma and the girl to move on, we need to reach the end of the addiction cycle and grieving process. And to truly move on, the girl and Ma have to find forgiveness.
Although, to be honest, I actually thought moving on was enough of an ending, and my earlier drafts reflect that. My editors, however, insisted on a glimmer of hope, and so we settled on forgiveness!
Q: It is also a contemporary ghost story - why did you decide to bring in the supernatural elements?
Actually, an earlier version had lots more ghost interaction, but we scaled it back. The ghost idea was there from the beginning, again as the mill represents the past. However, another major reason is because the mill (her Castle, her safe place) needs to be attacked from inside as well as out, so that she truly has no escape and must, by the end, face her past. The ghost represents that inner fear.
Q: You explore old versus new in the city - where would you make your home, old or new build?
A: Ahhh! I don't know! I want to live the city but I want to live in the country. I want a modern build with smooth lines and loads of light, but I want an old farm house with an aga.
I think, if money was no option, I'd go for a modern build with loads of windows, surrounded by two acres of land, beside a natural forest, on a hill, only ten minutes' drive from a town and the sea. That would do it.
Q: You have travelled a lot, what is the most inspiring place you have visited?
A: Lake Natron, Northern Tanzania, for its timeless beauty. To sit and watch the sunrise over salt encrusted mud plains beneath a rift valley wall that stretches for hours into the shimmering mirage of afternoon... I could lose weeks there. I have, actually.
It's a place before time, with Maasai moving through the dust and Oldoinyo Lengai, an active volcano, belching ash into a huge sky. The little village of mud huts and wooden shacks has one bar with a pool table. On blankets on the ground, women sell onions, beans and potatoes. There's no phone signal for a hundred miles. There's no running water, just a stream, and when the rains don't come, the cattle die. But when they do, the land is transformed into an oasis. Birds chirp, and zebra and giraffe fill the horizon.
And all the while, the volcano keeps belching like none of that matters. Because on the geological scale, it really doesn't, we're just one layer of lava.
Q: What are you writing now and where do you prefer to write?
A: I've just finished my next book (to be published in 2018), so I'll be editing that for a few months. It's also set in Dublin and deals with bullying and the power of words. I also have a few other books in various stages of completion that I'll be working on.
I'll write anywhere as long as no one interrupts me. Once my head's in a story, I don't know, or care, where I am. Actually, my best scenes are usually composed in my head while I exercise.
Q: What are your top tips for writing for teenagers?
A: English was my worst subject in school (actually, according to my exam results, second worst). I learned symbolism and theme like I was learning my twelve times tables. The subject, and the way it was taught, did not inspire. Yet, I wrote a diary every night because it was the only way I could organise my thoughts. And I loved reading.
So my tip would be, if you like writing, write. It doesn't matter if it's thoughts or a story or a song. Just do it for yourself. I didn't become a writer to be a writer. I became a writer because, age twenty nine, I had story that wouldn't go away. And when I got stuck in, I realised I loved writing.
The Girl in Between
