Anne Fine's Blog

Seven years in America because of my husband's job just about finished me. I was horribly homesick, and writers are so often happier on their home ground. But he loved living in the States. We tried to keep the marriage together, but in the end it fell apart. (I have a theory that the wedding vows should add another proviso to 'for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health' and that should be 'at home and abroad'. That's harder than anyone admits.)

After we split up I wrote Taking the Devil's Advice. I see it now as a comedic howl of pain against the horrific difficulties of separating where there is a basic incompatibility of choices in life, but no true dislike or hate to spur the parting or make it easier. It's been called the funniest book about divorce ever written and I am proud of that. The plot's pure fiction, but the psychology is as accurate as I can make it, and I'm not surprised that it is many of my adult readers' favourite. It's certainly mine.


Taking the Devil's Advice

When my daughter was four, we went off to America for seven years because of my husband's job. By the time we came back, our stable, almost unchanging babysitting cooperative of other families with young children had been turned upside down. Divorces, remarriages, chaos. I became fascinated in the nature of passion - how people could suddenly choose to risk all the stability they'd created around themselves and those they loved, simply in order to feel fully emotionally alive again. Up until then, I'd been perfectly happy writing novels for older children, but this was clearly a subject to be explored at an adult level.

The book become darker and darker in the writing. I didn't realise how dark until the first review came in: 'a horror story which rings absolutely true'. But that is passion for you. It's dangerous in every way.

The Killjoy

Writing for adults differs enormously from writing for children. Bright as young readers may be, the author must bear in mind that they lack a good deal of knowledge and experience of the world. Also, to some extent they need protecting from a too vivid exposition of its horrors. So though the good children's writer must stay emotionally truthful, they do, as Jill Paton Walsh has aptly said, tend to 'cut at a different angle and depth'.

It's deliciously different with adult audiences. That sense of responsibility is thrown overboard. The author's free to depict the world, and people's inner lives, exactly as he or she perceives them. We all know that thoughts and feelings - even in close and caring families - will often get strained and ugly. If you're the sort of reader who prefers a cotton-wool view of the world, you might not find my adult works either amusing or perspicacious. If you're a realist, like myself, you'll respond very differently.