Gordon Reece
( 1963 - )
Australsk forfatter med internasjonal suksess
Gordon Reece er forfatter og illustratør. Han er opprinnelig fra England, men emigrerte til Australia i 2005. Han har tidligere utgitt bildebøker, tegneserier, graphic novels og skjønnlitteratur for voksne. Med "Mus" oppnådde han på kort tid internasjonal suksess
Fødselssted: EnglandLenker:
About the book – from the author
I was always keen to write a novel for sixteen-year-olds. I remember sixteen as being a time lived with an acute sensitivity to the people and things around me – almost hypersensitivity; a time of extreme emotions, of the first meaningful self-discoveries and engagements with the world outside family and school, the gateway where we bought our ticket and – not without some nervous backward glances – passed on into adulthood. There’s a vividness to life at sixteen that perhaps little in later life recaptures – which is why, looking back, that period seems like a dark hill line rising from a flat horizon. I wanted to reflect that hypersensitivity in the character of Shelley – the way she sees the world in acute detail, almost like a slow-motion camera, acutely aware of everything around her, but aware most of all of herself, her own feelings and motivations, of herself crystallising slowly into a new self, her adult self.
My aim was to write a novel that would be so gripping that even if the reader wasn’t a ‘good’ reader, wasn’t an habitual reader, they’d be compelled by the narrative to carry on reading to the end. For that reason Mice is strongly plot-driven with twists and turns designed to take the reader on the proverbial white-knuckle ride. Having said that, however, I didn’t want to make any compromises with the prose style which I worked just as hard to smooth and perfect and to make balance rhythmically – the book took a year and a half to write – as I would have if I’d been writing a novel for adults. This might make it a more ‘literary’ novel than the adolescent reader might perhaps be accustomed to, but I was confident the desire to find out what happened next would keep them turning the pages.
I’m aware that the violence in Mice could be seen by some to be controversial and there are various points I’d make here. Firstly, I think we should be wary of patronising the modern sixteen-year-old. We know that adolescents of sixteen and younger read Stephen King and James Herbert horror novels; we know that they watch horror films with strong content and listen to music with aggressive and sexually explicit lyrics – we may not always condone it, but it’s a fact. If fifty’s the new forty, then maybe we should get used to the idea of sixteen being the new eighteen. Sixteen is the gateway to adulthood – and it’s for that reason the genre is called ‘young adult’ and not ‘older children’. So I would maintain that Mice is age-appropriate, if that appropriateness is based on a realistic assessment of modern sixteen-year-olds.
I concede that the bullying episodes are shocking and unpleasant to read, but I’d argue strongly that they have to be. This is an issue that can’t be debated enough. I was appalled when I researched girl-on-girl bullying in the UK to see just how many cases there were that ended with the victim’s suicide. What happens to Shelley is based on an assortment of these real life cases. I also noticed how after such incidents the school’s attitude was often one of legalistic exculpation, as if the existence of an anti-bullying policy cleared them from any responsibility for the failure to implement it properly. I wanted to show in Shelley’s case how easy it is for the victim to slip through the cracks, how difficult it is for them to reach out for help, and how conditioned submissiveness – conditioned ‘good girl’ behaviour – could lead Shelley to see her suicide as the neatest and most natural solution to the problem. As I say, this is an issue that can’t be debated enough because real teenage girls are still committing suicide to escape bullying.
I want to take issue with those that feel Shelley and her mum somehow ‘get away with murder’. Leaving aside the point that a jury would most likely have found them not guilty of murdering the burglar and the blackmailer, I don’t think it can be argued that they escape scot-free from the circumstances of their actions. The decision to bury Paul Sullivan’s body in the garden leads to agonising mental anguish for both of them (Shelley’s nightmares) and unleashes a series of unknown, uncontrollable forces into their life which culminates in the arrival of the blackmailer. At the end of the book they still have the problem of Sullivan’s body in the garden, the removal of which is fraught with danger. There is also the possibility that the blackmailer has told others about them and that others will come to prey on them. But where they’re most deeply affected is in their own personalities – they’re no longer the people they once were – even if they don’t see it themselves yet – and maybe this is a more profound punishment than their being taken away in handcuffs.
This book was written in the years following 9/11 that saw the US attack on Afghanistan and Iraq. Although this is definitely not a political allegory I did want what happens to Shelley and her mum to quietly echo US actions post 9/11 so that that the killing of the intruder (invasion of Afghanistan) would be seen by most people as a justifiable action, justifiable self defence, whereas the assault on the blackmailer (invasion of Iraq) should create far more ambivalent feelings in the reader – are their actions justifiable? Have they gone too far? At the end of the book, we have the uncomfortable sensation that we don’t quite know Shelley and her mum any more, the morality of the tale has become less clear and we are left asking ourselves questions: what might they do next? What have they become? Have they lost the moral high ground now and become more like the forces they saw themselves as being morally superior to? These were the questions we were asking ourselves about the US after the invasion of Iraq – with Abu Grahib and Guantanamo Bay – do we know our ally any more? Have they changed? Are they still the good guys or have the lines between good guys and bad guys subtly shifted? As I say, this is not a political allegory, it’s a horror story, a suspense thriller, a page-turner – but the political events of those years definitely provided the narrative with its background music.
The final thing I’d say is that although Mice is driven by its plot, my enduring memory of it now is the relationship between Shelley and her mum, Elizabeth. This is a mother and daughter who in a way have been expelled from normal everyday society – the world of husbands and friends and family and school – and due to the circumstances of Paul Sullivan’s death they can’t look to the police for protection like other citizens, nor do they feel they can look to the legal system for justice. Ultimately, they only have each other, but that bond, the strength of their love – particularly Elizabeth’s ferocious maternal love – sees them through the macabre traumas they suffer. Together they survive, bloodied and battered, but proofed against any challenges the future might hold.
