Young Adult Literature
To Tell or Not to Tell
Kirsty Murray knows exactly what she is doing and
where she is going with children in the age group 11- 14 years. Her writings
speak to the section of children who have outgrown candy floss but are yet not
clouded by the consciousness of an adolescent. An ebullient set, no longer
naïve and who, have a mind of their own. They actively think, and search for
answers to questions that tweak their curiosity. She says it is a moment in
space between childhood and adolescence. Her readership also includes
adventurous adults and grandmothers. The former want to keep tabs on what they
missed at that age and the latter are intrigued by the central theme of many of
her books i.e. Australian History.
After a long lacunae in children’s literature in
India, Subhadra Sen Gupta and Ranjit
Lal are to young Indian adults what Murray is to her
young readers in Australia. These writers have made historical fiction-writing
their forte and churn out a fine blend of fact and fiction to hook young
readers to their historical past. History, instead of a series of dates and dry
academic prosaic text, is being rendered in colourful, imaginative stories. No
doubt, the young population is booked- hook, line and sinker with graphic
detailing of periods of history.
Writing historical fiction is a specialized genre
akin to making a film. It involves gargantuan research of a particular period
in history; fiction rooted in truth and reality. The writer has to conjure up
the whole scene of the era; the political, social and economical undercurrents.
The frames or chapters bring alive the fashion of the time, language that
people spoke, the belief systems interweaving the societies in question. With
great dexterity, the writer then threads together historical personalities with
fictional characters in the book which holds the entire fabric of the theme together.
The fictional characters are figments of his imagination, intimate and
thorough, whereas the real life historical characters are elusive and distant.
They have a life of their own, already lived and fleshed out. In the hands of
acclaimed authors like Murray and Sen Gupta, the book acquires the quality of a
classic, the depth of a Dickensian prose and the pace of a thriller. A humble
form of writing, wherein the writer has to metamorphose and tell a true story
that already exists. What a colourful and interesting way indeed of reading and
understanding history compared to dry historical treatise. Its subjectivity is another story altogether,
a topic for another time.
Generation X young adults like me, who were born
between the 60s to the 80s, were treated as children even when they got
married, and it was thought unkind, insensitive to discuss matters of love,
sex, money or death with them. The culture in India did not encourage
literature on any of the taboo topics for young readers, and per force our generation
in the absence of internet had to depend on books from abroad mainly UK. Many
children stopped reading beyond 10 yrs because they did not find literature
that stimulated their minds. They otherwise turned to adult writings and outgrew
their age, fast and furious. Today the story is different. Lal has written about female foeticide and
terrorism in his books, Faces in the Water and Battle at No. 19, which are
everyday issues that young children deal in their neighbourhood. Mind you, there
was a great controversy in India about his books when they were first published
and the debate, though mellowed, still continues across the Indian milieu. Murray’s latest book The Year It All Ended
released in September, 2014, deals with female teenagers grappling with post
World War I trauma and death.
Amongst earlier Murray writings, which particularly
caught my attention, (a thread to this debate), is The Lilliputians published by Zubaan in
2012. The Australian title of the book is Dark India. We can classify it as
historical fiction based on a true story that began in Australia and reached a
palpable climax in India. The renowned Pollard Opera Company in Australia at
the turn of the 20th century also included a troupe of young
performers in age group 10-17 yrs. In
1909, with twenty nine children in tow, Arthur/Baby Pollard set off on a two-year
world tour that ended in disaster. After hundred shows through various countries
on a hot February night in Madras, twenty-four of the children went on
strike. They walked out on Arthur, refusing to work with him ever again. They
charged him with sexual assault, cruelty and sheer negligence. It caused an
international scandal.
In conversation with Murray at the
Writers Readers Festival, we spoke about this intriguing story. She said that fiction
is one of the most powerful ways of telling the truth about real life. To
reconstruct the adventures, she took the cast list of the original troupe
and carefully reinvented all the children as fictitious characters,
matching their ages and roles in the troupe with their real life counterparts.
As to personality and character traits, she had to imagine what they
might have been like, drawing on only scraps of evidence. There were also plenty of newspaper reports that covered the
court case in which the children were eventually embroiled. While she was in
South India, she also gained access to court records. She said, “I’m sure the real life characters
would tell different versions of the events but what made the story so interesting
is that everyone in the troupe told their friends, family and the newspapers
a different version of what transpired. Truth really is stranger than fiction
– or at least it’s more confusing.”
When she first
started working on the book, she knew she wanted a thirteen-year-old girl to
be the principal narrator. “Poesy’s naivety was important because as the
adventure unfolded, she was going to have to become much worldlier”. But as she
researched the story, she began to realize that there were so many ways that
you could interpret the truth of what happened, that she needed to consider
other perspectives. “When you read the newspaper reports, there are so many
angry and differing versions of the truth that I knew I needed to present at
least more than one. Once I started writing from Tilly’s perspective as well
as Poesy, the story became much more vivid and intriguing. Tilly, cynical and
older, allowed me to explore a slightly darker and more powerful version of
the events.”
A true story of
sexual assault, jealousy, competition and secrecy which became a reality
amongst the troupe of children guided or misguided by one adult. The latter was
made out to be a monster by compounded lies, sleaze and differing truths than
he actually was. When young adults read this book, they realise the dark human
elements that come into play in a story of sleaze in real life.
“Those who don't know their
history are doomed to repeat it. You have to expose who you are so that you can
determine what you need to become.” Cynthia A Patterson
Indeed a great genre of
writing taken up by writers like Kirsty Murray, Subhadra Sen Gupta and Ranjit
Lal for young adults!
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