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Stuck
In Neutral is the first book to be published by
the American author Terry Truman. We caught up with Terry
when he was in London recently promoting his book, here
is our interview with him.
Jubilee
Books: Your book, Stuck
In Neutral, deals with the condition of cerebral
palsy, can you explain how this condition affects its sufferers?
Terry Trueman: Cerebral Palsy is a brain condition,
like many medical terms it covers a wide range of symptoms,
cerebral palsy describes the symptoms rather than the cause.
Usually it is the result of some kind of injury to the brain
either at birth or in the uterus.
You
say that the book is loosely based on your own experiences,
your own son Sheehan has cerebral palsy, did you feel the
need to do any other research for the book?
Because it's a fictional work I didn't feel a great deal
of research was necessary, really this is a work from the
heart rather than the brain. The book is about a father
and son relationship more than it is about the medical dimensions
of the condition so a lot of research wasn't necessary,
any research I did involved researching my own heart and
my spirit and to be able to define the full range of what
I felt about my son's situation.
You've
written the book in the first person, what made you write
the book in this way?
The book is first person and also present tense. The nature
of the story is that a boy, the 14 year old protagonist
Shawn McDaniel, thinks his father wants to end his life,
so if the book were told in the past tense the suspense
would be gone. The idea of giving a boy with cerebral palsy,
who has a complete inability to communicate, a voice so
that he can speak about his world as well as his dilemmas
and conditions I think is the central strength of the piece,
everything about the book that is good is a result of the
decision to make the book first person and present tense.
You
just spoke about suspense in the book, when you were writing
Stuck
In Neutral did you start with the ending or the
beginning of the story?
I had a clear idea of where I wanted the novel to start
and an unclear idea of where I wanted it to end and I think
the ending of the book shows that dilemma. In
fact I had only one rule when I went into the process of
finding a publisher, I would not allow Shawn, the protagonist
in the novel, to develop communication abilities at the
end of the book. That would have been a cheat to everyone
who deals with the realities of this kind of situation and
thank God no one ever came close to asking me to do that.
Was
there any books that you looked at that influenced your
style of writing for this book?
Absolutely, I certainly looked at Christy Browns book Down
All the Days from which I believe the film My
Left Foot was made. I looked at a book by a French writer
while I was writing my book, although I had by this time
already committed myself to the central themes of the book.
The book is called The Butterfly and the Diving Bell
and is written by a former editor of Elle Magazine in France,
Jean-Dominique Bauby who had what is called locked in syndrome,
he was finally able to communicate by learning to communicate
by blinking out a code to a nurse. But what I've always
said about Stuck
In Neutral is that it is My
Left Foot without the left foot, it's the dilemma
of a boy who is locked in and has no way of ever communicating
that he's ever in there.
Did
you encounter any difficulty trying to get the book published?
I think that it's always difficult to get a book published
regardless of how good it is, to find a publisher is an
extraordinary difficult procedure, I was enormously lucky
that I had writer friends who helped me with contacts, finding
an agent George Nicholson who is very well connected and
finding a publisher, HarperCollins. The timing was also
right for my editor Antonia Markied to take on the project.
So I was really lucky, but yes it is extremely difficult,
especially for a first time novelist.
Do
you have any hobbies?
I love riding motorcycles, walking in the woods with our
dog, swimming, but writing, which started as a vocational
and artistic creative hobby has now become, thanks to HarperCollins
in the United States and Hodder in the UK, what I always
wanted it to be which is really to be the centrepiece of
my labour and creative energies. To me the ultimate success
as a writer is to be able to pay for the writing addiction
or habit by the work I make as a writer. That's all success
is to me. I mean I would love J.K. Rowlings millions but
it's not really about the money and I'm sure she would say
the same.
What
are you working on at the moment?
I have a three book deal with HarperCollins, my next two
novels and a collection of stories that I will edit, I will
have one story in the collection and my editors and I will
select other stories, it is tentatively entitled Bad
Boys and will be about adolescent males and their struggles.
My next novel is a book about mental illness, and no I don't
intend to write all my books about psychological or cognitively
impaired individuals, it just so happens I know a bit about
these subjects.
How
different has the response to your book been in Britain
compared to the US?
As you know in America we won a Michael L. Printz Honour
for Stuck
In Neutral which gave the book an enormous boost
of attention and sales, the book has only just come out
in Britain so it hasn't had the chance to get legs under
it yet. I must say that the promotional work Hodder is doing
here is brilliant so I'm confident the book will be well
receive in Britain. Actually both Hodder and HarperCollins
USA have been enormously supportive of Stuck
In Neutral. I love the tour that Hodder is helping
set up here in the UK, but of course without the faith and
hard work of all my friends at HC-USA, none of this could
have happened. I'm hoping that children from the UK will
send in their responses to the book, contact details are
available from my
website. It's a bit early to tell what the response
is in Great Britain.
You've
worked in schools in the UK to help promote the book, how
has that been compared to your experiences of schools in
the US?
Yes I have. I've noticed that kids in the UK seem more interested
and more engaged. That might be partly the result of the
education system. From my observations schools in the UK
do a good job of treating kids as though they have something
to add as though their thoughts have value, and as a result
of that most kids I've talked to in the UK behave as though
that's the case, as though their thoughts, their questions,
their opinions and feelings are valued. In the States schools
try hard too, but in some cases there's just not the resources
to do much more than warehouse kids - this is a scandal,
in my opinion, not giving teachers and schools the resource
and priorities they need to do the best they can do with
kids, but it's a whacked out reality of the US system.
You've
also worked in TV in the US and you've talked about your
own website. What do you feel can be the contribution of
new and emerging technologies like the Internet?
Well in the same way as at the turn of the last century
we were beginning to come out of the industrial revolution,
I really do think there is an information, which equals
knowledge, revolution going on now. Kids are able to get
so much information so much more rapidly than any generation
before them. The downside of it is that they are expected
to get that information, the demands to be knowledgeable
are enormous now. The notion of the digital divide is a
real issue I think, kids who are not Internet or computer
literate are going to fall further and further behind, kids
who can utilise the technology are going to grow faster
and faster. So I think it's a wonderful thing, I think that
as a society we have a responsibility to make sure we give
kids these tools.
The
book also deals with the issue of euthanasia, where do you
stand on the subject?
It's my understanding that one critic in the UK condemned
the book very roundly as being a pro euthanasia book, while
I deeply appreciate the attention of the critic and respect
her views the fact is that I think you couldn't have a more
anti euthanasia book than this. A boy with tremendous intelligence,
spirit and heart is trapped in a body that doesn't work
and is unable to communicate is facing possible euthanasia
at the hands of his father, not because his father dislikes
him but because the father loves him very much and is fearful
of his pain. That's the strongest argument I can think of,
that in reality the boy has tremendous cognitive abilities,
they're just unknown.
Actually a reading group of teachers in Spokane chose Stuck
In Neutral as their bookclub selection, eleven of
the twelve women in the group revisited their concept of
their living will after reading the book. Several of them
changed their living will to ask that they not have life
extended in the event of extremely damaging injuries and
several others went the other direction, but they all revisited
the issue, all this book does is engage the question and
if we want to tell kids they shouldn't talk about this question
I think we are doing them a disservice, kids should be able
to talk about any question, that's what being a human being
is about, facing up to and dealing with difficult issues.
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