Interview with Alison Larkin – Author of The English American

One of the things I love about Blue Archipelago is that hosting this website gives me the opportunity to actually interview the authors of the books I read! Hopefully by now you will have read the review I wrote about The English American – which I really enjoyed and I can highly recommend if you’re looking for Christmas Gift ideas. Alison Larkin, author of that great book, was kind enough to answer some questions about the novel, her life as a writer and the things that inspire her to write.

Clare: Alison – thank you so much for taking time out to answer some questions for me and my readers today. Let’s kick off with what inspired you to write The English American?

Alison: I wanted people to understand at a gut level why someone from a really happy adoptive family might still need to find the truth about the people she came from. I also wanted to explore the differences between England and America through the characters of the British and American parents – and within Pippa herself. Nature vs. nurture, et al. Mostly I wrote the book because I was fed up with the way writers of popular fiction tend to stigmatize adopted people as eternally damaged victims at best or serial killers at worst. Seemed to me it was time for an authentic adopted heroine in the kind of fiction I like to read, which has to have short chapters and a what’s-going-to-happen-next quality as I have so little time and no attention span. I have kids.

Clare: Well I think that Pippa was a fabulous and authentic heroine so you achieved your goal as far as I’m concerned. Now The English American is your first novel – what challenges did you face when writing it?

Alison: The hardest thing was figuring out how to write the book I felt driven to write while maintaining a busy voice and comedy career, giving speeches, feeding my family, driving the kids to and from pre-school, cleaning the house, maintaining close friendships, responding to email and keeping the house clean. Something was going to have to give. It may come as no surprise to you to learn that it was the housework.

Clare: LOL – the housework is always the first thing to go around here when life gets busy too! Sounds like you were juggling a lot of balls at once there. So are you working on anything at the moment?

Alison: I’m getting ready to head off on another book tour – (click here for more details). I’ve been writing speeches, which I give a lot of these days, I’m working on a new novel.

I’m delighted to be able to tell you that The English American was optioned last week by a British film company called Bright Pictures. Roger Goldby will direct and I will be writing the screenplay in 2010. I’ve been writing songs with Emmy award winning composer Gary Schriener – and singing my answers to the questions I’ve received from readers about some of the more serious issues raised by the novel. “Culture Conflict” is a comic song about what it’s like to be both English and American, “Celebrate” is my answer to “If you could give one piece of advice to someone thinking of adopting a child, what would it be?” “The DNA Song” is a song from the heart on behalf of adopted people and people born through anonymous sperm and egg donation who are currently unable to find the truth about their genetic origins.” (Click here to hear the songs.)

Clare: That’s brilliant news Alison! I said when I wrote my review that I thought the novel would make a perfect movie. Who would you like to see cast in the roles of the main characters?

Alison: I don’t know. There are so many wonderful American and English actors and actors who could play these roles, every time I cast one of them in my mind I think “but if they can’t do it, so and so could play it well too”. Maybe I’m not the right person to ask, I may be too close to the characters. Now that the film is going to be a reality, I’d love any help with the casting process! I’ll happily pass on any suggestions to the director! You can shoot me an email at any time via my website, which is www.alisonlarkin.com.

Clare: I’ll have to have a think about that one and send you some suggestions. Hopefully the readers here at Blue Archipelago will be able to offer up some ideas too. Now I’d like to learn a bit more about you Alison. What was your favourite book as a child?

Alison: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Clare: Great choice – one of my childhood favourites too! And what inspired you to become a writer?

Alison: Probably the need to express emotions that I didn’t know how to express accurately in any other way.

Clare: Is there a book in history that you wish you could have written?

Alison: The Encyclopedia Britannica.

Clare: Interesting choice. Why that book?

Alison: I’d know a helluva lot more about a wide variety of subjects than I do now.

Clare: LOL – Fair point! I’m going to turn the tables now and ask if you were the interviewer what question would you ask yourself?

Alison: In what way are you and the main character, Pippa Dunn, similar? And in what way are you different?

Clare: Oh great question! What would the answer be?

Pippa has long red hair, and is achingly beautiful. I have mid-length blonde hair and can look quite cute on a good day.

Neither Pippa nor I care about what were wearing and we are both impulsive and chronically untidy.Like Pippa I was adopted by tidy, practical English parents.

Like Pippa, at the time of my reunion, even though no boyfriend had ever left me for someone else, I was convinced that even the most devoted of men would be making a date with the waitress if I so much as went to the loo. It was not wanting to live or love – like this for the rest of my life that finally made me seek out my birth mother. As Pippa says in the book:
“Maybe if I found out that my mother gave me up for adoption because she had to and not because she took one look at me and went, “yuck,” I’d no longer have a fear of rejection. And then I might finally be able to all in love totally, absolutely maybe even honestly, without the panic that sets in. Like normal people.”

Like Pippa, when I found my birth parents who are free-spirited, energetic Americans I also found myself. However, unlike Pippa I’m not a cabaret singer, my birth mother doesn’t run a company called Art Buddies, she doesn’t live in Georgia and my birth father isn’t a neo-conservative, enigmatic, politically involved business man. The mysterious Nick, who seduces Pippa via email, didn’t exist in my life although he may have existed in my dreams. My Dad isn’t Scottish, my Mum isn’t blonde, I don’t have a non-adopted sister, a dog called Boris or a penchant for Fig Newtons. The list goes on and on. In other words, it’s fiction.

Thanks Alison – I really appreciate your time – and good luck with the movie