Have you read THE KNIFE THAT KILLED ME?
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Thursday, 8 January 2009
Friday, 11 January 2008
A word from the author
Anyone who comes to The Knife That Killed Me after reading my other novels for teenagers, Hellbent and Henry Tumour, is in for a bit of a shock. Although my other books deal with some weighty issues (death, illness, crap haircuts) they try, above all else, to be funny. They’re packed with jokes and rambling digressions on whatever came into my head and struck me as amusing (a hellish torment consisting of all the most painful things with which to wipe your bottom; a teenage boy’s daydream about having intimate relations with a crocodile skull - you get the idea).
But when I came to write The Knife, I realised that it was time for a different sort of book. A serious book. There are no jokes in The Knife. Well, maybe one. Two at a pinch.
Why?
Two reasons. The first is that I wanted to write a book that gripped utterly from the first page. The tension had to be palpable. I wanted the reader to race feverishly through the book, desperate to find out what happens next, uncovering the fresh traumas that await them. There’s no room for comic rambling in a book like that. Comedy evaporates tension - that’s partly its job - but I didn’t want the tension to evaporate. I wanted it to lie like frost on every page.
The second reason is that the subject is one that really isn’t funny at all. Knives.
I went to a pretty tough school in a rough part of Leeds. Although I made some amazing friends there, and many of the teachers were truly inspirational, there was a definite air of menace to the place. There were a few genuine psychopaths as well as the usual minor sadists and bullies. It made life interesting, to say the least.
I’ve visited enough schools over the past couple of years to know that much has stayed the same. There’s the same smell of cabbage in the corridors, the same mayhem when the bell goes. The teenagers I meet could have been my friends. Or my enemies. However, one thing has changed. Those knives. Kids just didn’t carry them, back in those days. I’ve a feeling that they were felt to be for cowards and weaklings.
It’s different now. A startlingly high percentage of schoolkids say they carry knives, most of them because they believe it makes them safer. Every year dozens of teenagers are killed by other teenagers, and it’s usually a knife that does the job. How can you make a joke out of that?
So this is a book about knives. But I didn’t want it to be simply an ‘issues’ novel. Who really needs to be told that knives are B-A-D? What I wanted to do was to show the consequences of carrying a knife, of using a knife - consequences for both the victim and the perpetrator of the violence.
The writer’s first task is to create rounded, believable characters. My narrator, Paul Varderman, is just an ordinary kid, lonely, inarticulate, lost. The school he goes to is a lot like my old school. Terrible things happen to Paul, but these are things that will be familiar to thousands of teenagers. Every day is filled with trials, humiliations, battles, with the fleeting comfort of doomed friendships. And like many teenagers, Paul is torn between good and evil, and a war rages over his soul. Right up to the end we don’t know which will win.
The Knife That Killed Me is a brutal book, but I trust also a compassionate one. I think it’s the best thing I’ve written, and I hope you do too.
Anthony McGowan
But when I came to write The Knife, I realised that it was time for a different sort of book. A serious book. There are no jokes in The Knife. Well, maybe one. Two at a pinch.
Why?
Two reasons. The first is that I wanted to write a book that gripped utterly from the first page. The tension had to be palpable. I wanted the reader to race feverishly through the book, desperate to find out what happens next, uncovering the fresh traumas that await them. There’s no room for comic rambling in a book like that. Comedy evaporates tension - that’s partly its job - but I didn’t want the tension to evaporate. I wanted it to lie like frost on every page.
The second reason is that the subject is one that really isn’t funny at all. Knives.
I went to a pretty tough school in a rough part of Leeds. Although I made some amazing friends there, and many of the teachers were truly inspirational, there was a definite air of menace to the place. There were a few genuine psychopaths as well as the usual minor sadists and bullies. It made life interesting, to say the least.
I’ve visited enough schools over the past couple of years to know that much has stayed the same. There’s the same smell of cabbage in the corridors, the same mayhem when the bell goes. The teenagers I meet could have been my friends. Or my enemies. However, one thing has changed. Those knives. Kids just didn’t carry them, back in those days. I’ve a feeling that they were felt to be for cowards and weaklings.
It’s different now. A startlingly high percentage of schoolkids say they carry knives, most of them because they believe it makes them safer. Every year dozens of teenagers are killed by other teenagers, and it’s usually a knife that does the job. How can you make a joke out of that?
So this is a book about knives. But I didn’t want it to be simply an ‘issues’ novel. Who really needs to be told that knives are B-A-D? What I wanted to do was to show the consequences of carrying a knife, of using a knife - consequences for both the victim and the perpetrator of the violence.
The writer’s first task is to create rounded, believable characters. My narrator, Paul Varderman, is just an ordinary kid, lonely, inarticulate, lost. The school he goes to is a lot like my old school. Terrible things happen to Paul, but these are things that will be familiar to thousands of teenagers. Every day is filled with trials, humiliations, battles, with the fleeting comfort of doomed friendships. And like many teenagers, Paul is torn between good and evil, and a war rages over his soul. Right up to the end we don’t know which will win.
The Knife That Killed Me is a brutal book, but I trust also a compassionate one. I think it’s the best thing I’ve written, and I hope you do too.
Anthony McGowan
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