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A Girl Called Tennyson
No rest for the witted
As a biographer of Katherine Anne Porter and Mazo de la Roche, Joan Givner left behind academia in 1995 in favour of early retirement on Vancouver Island-and has recently produced her fifth young adult novel in six years, A Girl Called Tennyson (Thistledown $12.95).
A fantasy quest in the British tradition, A Girl Called Tennyson has an overtly literary heroine whose middle name is Tennyson. Like Givner in her own girlhood, she loves poetry, stories and rhyme. Transported during a ferry ride to the fantasy land of Greensward, "Tenn"; must rescue her friend Una from evil forces-and uses her knowledge of great writers to do so.
"If I have to explain the source of it,"; says Givner, "I'm tempted to invoke my early years as a lonely only child growing up during the war in a small Lancashire village amid black-outs, gas-masks, and air-raid shelters. The movie theaters were closed, of course, and this was before television.
"That situation was more likely than most childhoods to cause flight into a world of make-believe-dressing up, play-acting, and hours of absorption in books. And I've enjoyed dressing up ever since.";
Before she sets out on her dangerous mission, Tenn is trained by the wise woman, Bethan. She discovers that there are many other children who must also be saved and returned to Greensward.
"However, I must come clean,"; says Givner. "I must admit that my late-in-life turn to fantasy was inspired less by early habits of fantasizing than by incompetence. I am ill equipped to reproduce the idiom of today's youth, or to depict their high tech games and skills. Creating a fictional world of my own from whole cloth allowed me to circumvent these difficulties. And it was wonderful to escape the confines of realism.";
Givner believes anyone who writes fiction for young people must reconnect with their own childhoods. With A Girl Called Tennyson, she is reconnecting to a pastoral world that was disrupted by World War II.
"I have peopled the story with characters from my village, even recalling long-forgotten place-names-Eastlea, Cross Hillock, Gin Pits. These I yoked on to my present life on Vancouver Island-the deep dark forests, the mushroom hunts of the fall, the Mill Bay-Brentwood ferry, and the magical geodesic dome, the home of a friend.
"It was so much fun to write that I don't wonder why I produced a fantasy novel, but what took me so long to do it. 978-1-897235-83-6
As a biographer of Katherine Anne Porter and Mazo de la Roche, Joan Givner left behind academia in 1995 in favour of early retirement on Vancouver Island-and has recently produced her fifth young adult novel in six years, A Girl Called Tennyson (Thistledown $12.95).
A fantasy quest in the British tradition, A Girl Called Tennyson has an overtly literary heroine whose middle name is Tennyson. Like Givner in her own girlhood, she loves poetry, stories and rhyme. Transported during a ferry ride to the fantasy land of Greensward, "Tenn"; must rescue her friend Una from evil forces-and uses her knowledge of great writers to do so.
"If I have to explain the source of it,"; says Givner, "I'm tempted to invoke my early years as a lonely only child growing up during the war in a small Lancashire village amid black-outs, gas-masks, and air-raid shelters. The movie theaters were closed, of course, and this was before television.
"That situation was more likely than most childhoods to cause flight into a world of make-believe-dressing up, play-acting, and hours of absorption in books. And I've enjoyed dressing up ever since.";
Before she sets out on her dangerous mission, Tenn is trained by the wise woman, Bethan. She discovers that there are many other children who must also be saved and returned to Greensward.
"However, I must come clean,"; says Givner. "I must admit that my late-in-life turn to fantasy was inspired less by early habits of fantasizing than by incompetence. I am ill equipped to reproduce the idiom of today's youth, or to depict their high tech games and skills. Creating a fictional world of my own from whole cloth allowed me to circumvent these difficulties. And it was wonderful to escape the confines of realism.";
Givner believes anyone who writes fiction for young people must reconnect with their own childhoods. With A Girl Called Tennyson, she is reconnecting to a pastoral world that was disrupted by World War II.
"I have peopled the story with characters from my village, even recalling long-forgotten place-names-Eastlea, Cross Hillock, Gin Pits. These I yoked on to my present life on Vancouver Island-the deep dark forests, the mushroom hunts of the fall, the Mill Bay-Brentwood ferry, and the magical geodesic dome, the home of a friend.
"It was so much fun to write that I don't wonder why I produced a fantasy novel, but what took me so long to do it. 978-1-897235-83-6
Submitted on September 11, 2010 in By David.
