Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
You’ve chosen books for a reluctant reader. Were you a reluctant reader?
It wasn’t me that was a reluctant reader. This is one of those stories I’ve told loads of times. It’s what set me off on writing the first CHERUB book. My nephew Jarred was about 12 or 13 and I was out in Australia with him. He’d always been a reader when he was younger and he’d just sort of got into this, ‘It’s all rubbish. I’m not interested in books any more. I’m not interested in reading.’ And I targeted CHERUB at him really – boys of a certain age who’ve grown beyond the Harry Potter thing. I just thought that that’s where I’m at and what my books are good for, so I thought it would be good to choose other books here that would appeal to that same kind of audience – my core audience.
My son is one of your core audience.
It's so nice, that. So often you set off to do something in life and you don’t achieve it.
You’re telling me.
I was targeting a particular audience and I never really wanted to be a writer. Millions of people churn out books. Most of them don’t sell that well and it was just a light-bulb moment where I thought: ‘Here is an audience that doesn’t seem to be particularly well catered for, so let’s have a go at that.’ My readership is quite broad but I still regard those boys between ten and 14 as the core of my audience and I don’t ever want to move away from that because they are the backbone, the cornerstone.
Tell me about Acceleration.
The first time I went into my publisher’s office I saw this book with a fantastic cover – Graham McNamee is quite famous in Canada and he writes these fantastic books. He’s a total recluse and he doesn’t do any publicity or any marketing and he only writes a book about every four years and his books are really good. Acceleration was the first one I read. See what you think. I was awed by it and thought it was the sort of thing I could do and it appeals to my kind of audience. He wrote another book called Bonechiller a couple of years later, but he’s just really, really obscure. When you compare Bonechiller to all the other vampire books around at the moment, this is so much better.
What’s Acceleration about?
It’s about a kid who gets a summer job in a lost and found department in a metro station somewhere in Canada. I think it’s Toronto but I might be wrong. It’s very dark and creepy. Basically what he does is he finds something in the lost and found, this German logbook or whatever, that he thinks is related to a murder and he starts to investigate it. It’s very atmospheric with lots of dank tunnels and it’s a really well written book. It’s a real shame because it should be huge. It’s an absolutely brilliant book and I just loved it to bits.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This crosses over into being an adult book as well, doesn’t it?
It does, and what’s really funny is that he wrote this spy series for eight- or nine-year-olds and then he suddenly comes out with this rather brilliant novel. It’s so wide open. Is it an adult book? Is it a kids’ book? So many people can read it and approach it.
My favourite story about it is that I went to a library at a very posh public school in Cambridge, and the librarian had a secret cupboard at the back of her library where she kept books that she only gave to her most trusted readers, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was in there. The governors of the school were such prudes, they wouldn’t let the kids read anything. I said to her: ‘What happens if they find out. Won’t you get the sack?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘my husband’s quite well off and I retire in a couple of years anyway. I don’t care, they’re just a bunch of prudes.’ I expect she’s fully retired now, but that’s the kind of reaction that book inspires, I think.
I think it might be quite hard for an 11- or 12-year-old to read. Aren’t there pages of maths in it?
Well, h’m, I don’t remember that. But when you’re thinking about reluctant readers then, no, it’s not going to appeal to the same reluctant reader who’s going to pick up a CHERUB book or the Anthony McGowan or Acceleration. It’s a slightly higher-brow book, slightly different, but kids are different too. Maybe your son wouldn’t enjoy it now, but a slightly quirky 14-year-old girl would absolutely love it. I just think there’s not a prescription for a certain type of kid.
Tell me aboutNoughts and Crosses (which becomes Naughts and Crosses in the US).
This is just one of those books. So well written, and all her books are good but this one is so much better than all the others.
Robert Muchamore is the author of the bestselling CHERUB and Henderson’s Boys series.
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