I’ve been a fan of Adele Griffin’s for a long, long time. And I don’t mean to make her feel old by saying “long, long” instead of merely “long.” We’re the same age, after all. What I’m saying is: Adele began publishing back in the day when YA occupied one slim shelf in the back of the store, and I was only submitting, getting rejected, and dreaming. Adele was one of a small handful of YA authors breaking ground in the 90s and giving me something to dream about. She has one of those careers I’d love to emulate: sustained, prolific, diverse, and riddled with award recognition. I finally got to meet Adele earlier this year and, well, it’s too personal and meaningful to go into, but it was not a letdown after the years of anticipation, let me tell you.
Some of my favorites of Adele’s: Sons of Liberty, Amandine, Picture the Dead (illustrated by Lisa Brown), and Where I Want to Be. Her newest book, Tighter, re-imagines Henry James’ Turn of the Screw. In it, a 16-year-old au pair heads off to an island for the summer to take care of a girl who is a leeeeetle bit more troubled than your average tween. Maybe. Or maybe not.
The first book of yours I read, years ago, was The Other Shepards. Which is at least partly about ghosts. Last year you had a wonderful book out with illustrator Lisa Brown, called Picture the Dead. Ghosts? Check. Tighter is…sort of…about ghosts, maybe. And I know those aren’t the only examples from your body of work that include ghosts, ghost-like apparitions, or the sense of being haunted (though I do not think of your books as “paranormal” in the way we now use that word to describe s a sub-genre of YA). Okay, Adele. What is the deal with you and ghosts?
Ah, your question “gave me pause!” as my grandmother used to say. You know that Elizabeth Bishop poem “The Art of Losing”? Here’s the first stanza: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master;/so many things seem filled with the intent/ to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” I love this poem. It speaks so well to process. Perhaps writing about ghosts is how I use art to handle loss. In each of these books, I can sense a core, personal loss that I was dealing with at the time. So while the plotted storylines are fiction, I do think my ghosts are conjured out of an intense longing to make sense of that hollow space. To lay it bare and let it go—that’s my process.
Getting specifically to Tighter, when did you first encounter Henry James’ novella, and why do you think it stuck with you so, to the point that you wanted to do your own version?
Turn of the Screw is fascinating! It’s the Rosetta Stone of ghost stories. It was first published as a serial for Collier’s in 1898, and magazine readers were scandalized by it. Crazed for the next installment, and the weird, sexy game of it. James knew he was stirring the pot, and I loved the novella’s devilishness and its delirium. Plus I was enthralled by its point of view—being trapped in the maze of this young woman’s mind. She’s such a girl on the edge. It felt perfect for YA.
What were the challenges of retelling the story for a modern audience, specifically for a YA audience?
James’ deliberate ambiguity is dearly-held by fans of Turn of the Screw, but I didn’t feel I could pay an homage in that way and make a modern YA reader not feel short-changed. And I think in any homage, you must take what you yourself love most and not get paralyzed or obsessed with what others hold precious. James wrote a masterpiece, and I wasn’t looking to reinvent it—I couldn’t possibly. But I had fun making my own decisions and “answering” on some of his more cryptic points.
Without giving anything away, in Tighter, your narrator, Jamie, well…let’s just say she is a little free and easy with prescription drugs that were not prescribed to her. I really like how this gives the reader (and Jamie) the sense of not being able to trust what we’re seeing.
When I was Jamie’s age, raiding the medicine cabinet was a common practice. We went after the NyQuil and the Benadryl and sleep aids. Most kids will walk away from that stuff while some will find it very seductive. I did, and I got pretty dependent on artificially regulating my wake and sleep. I didn’t see ghosts, but it certainly altered my chemical makeup, and not in happy ways. I sought help for this problem years later, in college. And while I didn’t write Tighter as a “message” book, I do hope, considering what happens to Jamie, that I’ve underlined the issue as serious, with repercussion.
You’re a two-time National Book Award finalist. Would you ever want to be there again, or does the idea of going a third time and possibly not winning feel too harrowing? (I know how it feels to sit there and not hear your name – as wonderful and miraculous as it is to be there at all, it’s a challenging moment.) What is your take on awards in general?
Well, there are worse things than being the Susan Lucci of the National Book Awards (and I must credit that comment to my friend Lisa Brown’s husband, Daniel). When I was a kid, my dad used to make my brothers and me complete a punishing round of pushups every night before bed, and one of the first prizes I ever won was “Iron Woman.” I was eleven years old and maybe the skinniest kid in my class but I was super strong. When my win was announced in assembly, I jumped up to get my plaque, and everyone in the audience nearly died laughing. They thought it was a joke. Mortifying! So heaven help me if I win an award, I’ll likely leap onto the stage and do pushups to prove my worth.
Please, please do that. I beg you. What are you working on next?
A book called Wolf, out in Fall 2012. It’s about a pair of sisters whose lives have been sabotaged by their mother’s re-marriage to an extraordinarily wealthy man. I will now guess the CIP data: “sisters; mental illness; emotional problems; Greenwich, Connecticut.” Alas, no ghosts.
That sounds great, seriously. I will be first in line.
Order Tighter
Adele’s web site
Adele on twitter
