while siting in intensive care. Her mother died the day the book came out. “I thought that was it,” she says. “I moved to Brighton and got a proper job. It was my agent, Claire Wilson, who was adamant that I would find my way back.” Slowly, she realised she wanted
to write a book about death and grief (“I had to write my way through it,” she says) but then realised the story was becoming about life and second chances. “A lot of people, when they lose someone close to them, think, ‘If I could have one more day with that person, what would I do?’ It’s essentially tragic what happens to these two young girls, but they get an ending to their story. A lot of people don’t get that.” As Byrne says, the story is
The ending might not be a traditionally happy one, but it gives the reader hope that things will be OK
could be the same age as the mother, so imagined herself in that position, too. The second part of the book was easier to write, even though certain scenes, like one where a young homeless girl who has died asks to go home, still make the author well up. Teenagers deserve honest, even when you are writing about a subject like death, she says. “The ending might not be a traditionally happy one, but it gives the reader hope that things will be OK.”
teeming with life and the small things that make life living—a bright lipstick, a fluffy coat from Primark, Ash’s Dad’s special bolognese sauce—and Brighton, with its sights and smells, is almost a third character in itself. Byrne’s love for the cit, which she says almost “saved” her, is palpable on the page. “When I moved here I was in a really bad way because I’d lost my mum and I had just come out. [Brighton] was my port in a storm. I wouldn’t have been able to write this book if I hadn’t come here.”
A two-way street Ash is, like Byrne, of Guyanese descent. She lives in a small flat with her parents and sister, and has a happy life before the accident, with a family that loves her and a great best friend. Byrne wanted to write a book about a working-class girl who has a happy life; one who can bring as much to Poppy’s life as Poppy brings to Ash’s. Poppy is from a wealthy background but her life is lacking in love: she is sent to boarding school in Brighton, despite her parents living in the cit, and she has to sneak into her own home. In fact the novel as a whole is rich with female charac-
ters. Most of the important people in Ash’s life are female, as are the team of reapers she finds herself working with in the second part of the book. That wasn’t deliberate, says Byrne, she just finds the dynamic between women really interesting. She also wanted to explore the concept of ‘found families’. In one way Poppy is Ash’s found family, as are the reapers in the second part of the book, she says. In the book Ash’s grandparents had experienced racism when they came to the UK, which makes Ash’s mother worry about her daughter’s sexualit, even though she does accept it. “It’s not that her mum doesn’t approve of Ash being gay because she is a Catholic, it’s more that she doesn’t want her to go through what her parents went through. Even though homophobia is different from racism, it’s still another form of discrimination.” Unlike Ash, Byrne didn’t come out to her mother before she died. “That scene where Ash comes out to her mum, that’s a conversation I oſten wondered if I was going to have with my mum.” She also realised she now
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A two-way street Byrne began writing several years ago aſter a career in radio with the BBC. Writing was something she “always did” but she didn’t consider turning professional until a teacher on a creative writing course took her to one side to say her writing was of a qualit that was rarely seen. Once she had a draſt of her first book, Heart-Shaped Bruise, things moved really quickly: she finished the manuscript in October, signed with Wilson a week later, and sold the book to Headline in November. The book came out the following May. She then published Follow Me Down and For Holly, and also contributed to Litle Tiger’s anthology A Change is Gonna Come and the collaborative novel Floored, writen with Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Non Prat, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson and Eleanor Wood. Her adult festive romance Someday at Christmas, published using the pen name Lizzie Byron, was released last October. Aſterlove is, however, to be her first book to be turned
into a TV show. Two Rivers Media has acquired the rights and Byrne is now in the process of turning the story into a script with Emma Reeves, whose TV credits include “The Story of Tracy Beaker” and “Belonging”. “I’ve not writen a script before, so she’s helping me with that,” she says. “I’m really excited. They really want my input, which is one of the reasons I went with [Two Rivers]. This is something that’s been in my head for so long, I would hate to see it diluted in any way.”
Metadata
Imprint Hodder Children’s Books Publication 22.07.21 Format PB (£7.99), EB (£7.99) ISBN 9781444955958/ 9781444955965 Editor Polly Lyall-Grant Agent Claire Wilson, RCW
In the future there will be more Lizzie Byron books, and Byrne is thinking about doing something inspired by the fallout of Covid and what happens when teenag- ers, who, aſter having virtual relationships for so long, have to get out into the real world again. For now, however, she hopes her book about death will offer solace to readers who need it. It took three years to write because she wanted to articulate it in a way that was hopeful, she says. “I hope the ending makes people feel there is more to death than ‘the end’. They will be OK… I hope I was able to make people feel less alone. “I hope the reader is leſt with some hope that Ash and Poppy will find one another and be together again.”
Byrne’s top three
Heart-Shaped Bruise Headline, £7.99, 978 0755393053 A compelling, brutal and heartbreaking story about identity, infamy and revenge; shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger in 2012. 8,079 units sold
Follow Me Down Headline, £9.99, 9780755393091 When Adamma Okomma has to leave her glossy high school in New York for a dusty English boarding school, she thinks it’s the end of the world— or the end of her social life, at least... 2,224 units sold
For Holly Headline, £7.99, 9781472214386 Lola hates her step- mother, and can’t get through to her father. If he won’t listen, she’ll show him the truth about his new wife, and then her life can go back to normal. 569 units sold
Data: Nielsen UK 33
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