YA Books
Aberration
Penelope Foster, seventeen, is shocked to wake up as a boy. She is now a freak, a monster. She runs away but, unprepared for life on the street with internet and GPS, soon returns. To her relief, the boy she's named Yuli leaves. Temporarily. Over the next months, he pops in and out of Pen’s life, forcing her to scramble, hide, lie, and avoid her friends. Infuriated -- particularly when classmates prefer the boy to her -- Pen tries everything she can think of to eject him. Only after she nearly kills herself does she recognize that neither she nor Yuli, who wants more life, is at fault. If Pen is to survive, the two must make common cause.
Penelope Foster, seventeen, is shocked to wake up as a boy. She is now a freak, a monster. She runs away but, unprepared for life on the street with internet and GPS, soon returns. To her relief, the boy she's named Yuli leaves. Temporarily. Over the next months, he pops in and out of Pen’s life, forcing her to scramble, hide, lie, and avoid her friends. Infuriated -- particularly when classmates prefer the boy to her -- Pen tries everything she can think of to eject him. Only after she nearly kills herself does she recognize that neither she nor Yuli, who wants more life, is at fault. If Pen is to survive, the two must make common cause.
Q & A: Aberration
Why that title?
I wanted to express how very odd was this thing happening to Pen, at various and uncontrollable times, mainly when she least expects it. The word aberration's roots mean to go astray, to wander. As when we daydream. We wander from what is toward what was or could be. In Pen’s case, going astray is involuntary, it's imposed on her by an unknown influence. As she strays into the waking nightmare of Yuli, she thinks she’s losing at least part of herself. Yet he evokes from her traits and abilities of which she was unaware.
Other YA authors take us away from school. Why did you keep your story there?
That’s part of the reason. Take Twilight – Bella could care less about homework or grades. In an AP English class until she moves to too-small-for-APs Forks, and there she loses all academic ambition? That’s a hugely negative message.
The Hunger Games (which I enjoyed) plunks teenagers into a dystopia where survival depends on luck and skill and cooperation. Great, but how about formal education? That’s what teenagers have to focus on here. So I created a girl with lots of good things in her life – kind parents, high intelligence, intense work ethic – and set her in a private school more liberal than its prototype. Everything's going right. Yet Pen must deal with a massive threat to her well-being, one that comes not from outside, but from within. And she's the only one facing that type of threat.
Why doesn’t Pen tell her parents?
Who does? Do you tell yours about unusual thoughts, feelings, bullying? Maybe if you cannot read a whiteboard, for example, you’ll say, “Hey, Mom, I think I need to get my eyes checked”. How much do any of us tell our parents? Very little, usually. Partly, that's out of misplaced protection. Parents are stressed, their kids don't want to add to the weight. And some parents don't want to deal. Here, though, Pen is frightened of the fallout. What if her parents cannot handle the truth of Yuli? What if they reject Pen, toss her out? So many people fear their parents’ reactions. I admire J. K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy partly because she displays this dynamic in adults who are ditzy or abusive or consumed with their own lives – and their children don’t confide. They don’t trust. Yet it's essential to search out a person to entrust with the truth, especially when you're in pain or confused. A parent, counselor, trusted relative, teacher. There IS someone. You just have to find her or him.
But Yuli isn’t a problem per se.
Really?
It’s not like Pen has cancer.
No. With cancer, she has a chance at a cure and elimination, a clean slate. Getting rid of Yuli? She’s got no clue. And it’s easier to talk to parents about disease than anything else. Disease is perceived as not our fault. We try to annihilate it, we can be rescued from it, and we’re generally regarded as unfortunate. A parasitic boy inside? Not so much. Sounds like crazy talk, and the US is not good with mental health.
Is Yuli a metaphor?
Sure. He's also a character. We invest in characters. We imbue them with our own feelings out of our individual experience. The writer Elizabeth Bowen said, “At any age, the reader must come across” – picture flinging yourself across a narrow stream to reach the writer’s land – and that's as true of characters as of described landscapes. So what one reader finds in Yuli will be distinct from what others discover.
And of course Yuli is also a metaphor for what is hidden. Buried impulses, histories, as well as what happens to us that no one else knows. How we struggle with those things, how we persevere despite them. How we learn to reduce negative messages. Pen’s struggles with Yuli mirror those. There is so much we hide from others. Often, it's what most harms us. Important to self-reveal.
Will they ever get along?
As besties? Unlikely. Rather, collaboration, despite their very different takes on the world. How they grudgingly progress – or fail to, to some extent – is what I plan for two post-Aberration books.
Why that title?
I wanted to express how very odd was this thing happening to Pen, at various and uncontrollable times, mainly when she least expects it. The word aberration's roots mean to go astray, to wander. As when we daydream. We wander from what is toward what was or could be. In Pen’s case, going astray is involuntary, it's imposed on her by an unknown influence. As she strays into the waking nightmare of Yuli, she thinks she’s losing at least part of herself. Yet he evokes from her traits and abilities of which she was unaware.
Other YA authors take us away from school. Why did you keep your story there?
That’s part of the reason. Take Twilight – Bella could care less about homework or grades. In an AP English class until she moves to too-small-for-APs Forks, and there she loses all academic ambition? That’s a hugely negative message.
The Hunger Games (which I enjoyed) plunks teenagers into a dystopia where survival depends on luck and skill and cooperation. Great, but how about formal education? That’s what teenagers have to focus on here. So I created a girl with lots of good things in her life – kind parents, high intelligence, intense work ethic – and set her in a private school more liberal than its prototype. Everything's going right. Yet Pen must deal with a massive threat to her well-being, one that comes not from outside, but from within. And she's the only one facing that type of threat.
Why doesn’t Pen tell her parents?
Who does? Do you tell yours about unusual thoughts, feelings, bullying? Maybe if you cannot read a whiteboard, for example, you’ll say, “Hey, Mom, I think I need to get my eyes checked”. How much do any of us tell our parents? Very little, usually. Partly, that's out of misplaced protection. Parents are stressed, their kids don't want to add to the weight. And some parents don't want to deal. Here, though, Pen is frightened of the fallout. What if her parents cannot handle the truth of Yuli? What if they reject Pen, toss her out? So many people fear their parents’ reactions. I admire J. K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy partly because she displays this dynamic in adults who are ditzy or abusive or consumed with their own lives – and their children don’t confide. They don’t trust. Yet it's essential to search out a person to entrust with the truth, especially when you're in pain or confused. A parent, counselor, trusted relative, teacher. There IS someone. You just have to find her or him.
But Yuli isn’t a problem per se.
Really?
It’s not like Pen has cancer.
No. With cancer, she has a chance at a cure and elimination, a clean slate. Getting rid of Yuli? She’s got no clue. And it’s easier to talk to parents about disease than anything else. Disease is perceived as not our fault. We try to annihilate it, we can be rescued from it, and we’re generally regarded as unfortunate. A parasitic boy inside? Not so much. Sounds like crazy talk, and the US is not good with mental health.
Is Yuli a metaphor?
Sure. He's also a character. We invest in characters. We imbue them with our own feelings out of our individual experience. The writer Elizabeth Bowen said, “At any age, the reader must come across” – picture flinging yourself across a narrow stream to reach the writer’s land – and that's as true of characters as of described landscapes. So what one reader finds in Yuli will be distinct from what others discover.
And of course Yuli is also a metaphor for what is hidden. Buried impulses, histories, as well as what happens to us that no one else knows. How we struggle with those things, how we persevere despite them. How we learn to reduce negative messages. Pen’s struggles with Yuli mirror those. There is so much we hide from others. Often, it's what most harms us. Important to self-reveal.
Will they ever get along?
As besties? Unlikely. Rather, collaboration, despite their very different takes on the world. How they grudgingly progress – or fail to, to some extent – is what I plan for two post-Aberration books.