The writing’s On the Wall
Anne Fine has long history as a storyteller, and here she speaks to Jake Hope about the changes she has seen in the publishing world, and the effects it has on creativity in writing for children. She also discusses her new novel, and reflects on her time as the first novelist to be chosen as the Children’s Laureate.
FROM picturebooks through to adult novels, Anne Fine has written a celebrated collection of novels and short stories for readers of all ages. In doing so, she has built loyal and appreciative audiences.
“I always know more or less what age I’m pitching at from the very start. I think I’ve always had the knack of writing for the reader inside myself – myself at five, myself at twelve, myself as an adult.” Anne believes that although childhood has changed enormously over the years since she began writing, that children’s emotional and intellectual ranges have stayed much the same. This notion has been pivotal throughout her body of work. “Naturally there’ll be wide differences between readers, and between what any of them feels like reading at different times. But you can still make sensible assumptions about levels of experience and understanding.” Reflecting on changes in childhood leads to consideration about what changes have occurred in publishing across her, more than forty years as a writer. Anne describes the most obvious change as the loss and influence of numerous experienced editors in major publishing houses. “The marketing side appears to control acquisitions, with a resulting preponderance of ‘committee decisions’, in which many young editors seem somewhat ideologically blinkered. For example, books of mine like Goggle Eyes, Flour Babies, and Madame Doubtfire, dealt
Autumn-Winter 2024
largely with adults and their relationships with children, and vice versa. Now, it seems that, in a horrible narrowing of one important aspect of diversity, everything has to be focused solely on the child’s point of view. It’s mostly first-person fiction now. The omniscient narrator is becoming a rarity.” Anne worries that current editorial decisions
don’t always widen readers horizons. She harbours concerns around trends for simplification and restricted word usage. “This sort of thing waters all writing down and doesn’t help anyone turn into a passionate reader. I now see this coming, sigh, and tend to dumb myself down since, like many frustrated authors, I know the text will end up that way in the end.”
The love affair with reading began and burgeoned in the library for Anne. The early roots of this relationship have grown and flourished throughout her life and she remains a champion and advocate for libraries and all they offer. Anne describes how her parents, like almost everyone’s, couldn’t have found the money or time necessary to keep her in books. “I was totally dependent on the library. In Fareham, I went alone from the age of seven, one of those children about whom librarians find themselves saying, ‘It’s her again! Wasn’t she here this morning?’. In Northampton, I snaffled my best friend’s tickets so I could join both the town and county libraries. In Edinburgh, with a small child, I owed my sanity to
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