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Tahereh Mafi Talks With Greg Baldino About Shatter Me

Published Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:30:13 -0500

Greg Baldino writes for Bleeding Cool;

Life is not kind to Juliette.

She's held prisoner in a filthy cell, somewhere in a decrepit insane asylum. She's been turned in by those closest to her, there's no one for her to trust. Outside the walls there's a world driven to the brink of collapse by an insane conspiratorial government– and even if there was a better world outside, it wouldn't be for her. Not her, a girl whose touch brings pain, death, and destruction. Then one day the door opens and she finds herself with a cellmate.

From that point on, everything gets turned upside down.

Not to be found on your local comic book store shelf, Juliette's story will turn up in your local book book store in November. The debut novel, Shatter Me, in a new YA series by Tahereh Mafi, it sets up a whole world with a backdrop where anything might happen, because who can you trust to tell you what really is and isn't?

Mafi was kind enough to spare some time to talk about her new book.

Which came first, the idea for Shatter Me or the desire to write a book? How did it come together for you that this was to be a prose novel, as opposed to say a comic or a screenplay?

It definitely began with the desire to write a book.

I started writing shortly after graduating from a liberal arts college where my focus, for four years, was in the humanities. I'd been buried in dense works of literature and philosophy, spending so much time reading for class that I never had time to read for fun. After graduation I started working full-time, and I should've been grateful for all the free hours I now had to fill. But I wasn't used to it. I felt like I had too much time on my hands after work; I had no texts to analyze, no papers to write or research, and I was… bored. I missed the feel of a book in my hands. So I started reading for fun again. It was amazing how quickly I fell back in love with words and imaginary worlds — and suddenly I knew I wanted to try it out for myself. So I gave it a shot. The idea for SHATTER ME evolved from there.

Juliette's voice, and the way you portray it on the page, is so distinctive. What made you decide to use that style of first-person narrative to convey her thoughts and emotions?

It wasn't a conscious decision, actually; it was just how her voice sounded in my head. The immediacy and intimacy of the first-person present narrative seemed to suit Juliette's mind and her place in the world. She didn't know whether or not she would be killed on the next page. I didn't either.

The use of strikethrough text in Juliette's internal thoughts added an extra layer to Shatter Me. Now that Juliette is out of the asylum and interacting with people more, will you still be using that as an effect?

It all depends on the stability of her mind. I'll definitely be using it if she's ever struggling to be honest with herself.

As a YA villain, Warner is quite unique in that he's not just a "bad person" wishing harm upon the hero, but seems to have a lot of complex depths. (I still wonder about where he got that toddler he put in the spiked chamber.) How did Warner develop for you?

I have always been so absolutely fascinated by the human character. We have so much potential to be extraordinarily good, selfless, endlessly patient and kind. But we also have the capacity for tremendous amounts of cruelty, violence, unwarranted hatred and bigotry. These two sides of ourselves are always, always tangled together. In fact, often we're our own worst oppressors; we'll persist down a 'bad' path simply because we're unable to forgive ourselves for what we've done — because we don't think we're worthy of redemption, don't think we deserve a second chance. And I've always wondered about that. Even the worst of us has a story, a backstory, a shred of humanity. So how good do you have to be in order to be considered a 'good person'? How horrible do you have to be in order to be considered a lost cause in the eyes of society?

Warner is tortured, I think, in much the same way most villains are: he's human. He has a heart and some semblance of a conscience. A heartless villain is too easy to hate, too easy to destroy, I think. But a villain you can sympathize with is the most difficult to defeat.

Shatter Me definitely fits in the realm of stories about people with extraordinary abilities, easily fitting in with mythology, fantasy, and superheroes. What stories like that were influences on you?

Outside of Harry Potter, I actually never read much fantasy growing up. I have four older brothers, so superheroes were always an integral part of my childhood, but I've always had a greater interest in the concept of a dystopian society than I have with the paranormal/supernatural. I love the idea of a fantastical escape, but my biggest inspirations came from reading books that made mequestion where we were headed as a society. Books like Lois Lowry's The Giver, for example — that book blew my mind in seventh grade — or George Orwell's 1984; Yevgeny Zamyatin's We; movies like Soylent Green and Lost in Space. I'm always curious about where we're going — where we we'll end up and what we might do to get there.

The recurring theme running through Shatter Me seems to be the question of "Who Can You Trust?" Almost every character in the book is keeping something from someone, and frankly I'm still not certain how much I trust anyone in it myself! How did that develop for you in the crafting of the story?

It's not realistic, I don't think, to portray anyone as inherently good or inherently evil. There's potential for both in all of us. We are who we are as a result of what we've experienced and how we reacted to those experiences. Sometimes we're only nice as long as our lives are easy. Sometimes we only care about compassion as long as we're poor. You can't ever be certain, absolutely, that the person you know and love today will always stay the same. You can't know what event or incident might become that person's breaking point. Because really, we're all villains sometimes. Most of us are just really good at hiding it.

Lastly, what are you reading now that's exciting you? Are there any authors you see yourself following in the direction of?

I don't think I'd endeavor to assume I'd ever be able to follow in the direction of any great authors. In fact, the more I write, the more I learn, and the more I'm humbled by exactly how much I don't know. I need to read a lot. And write a lot. And do that over and over and over again. And maybe one day I won't be half-bad. But for now I just try to get my hands on everything. I read young adult, literary fiction, genre fiction, poetry, philosophy, romance novels, memoirs. I read just about anything, because there's always something to learn from everything. My current TBR pile includes books like Danzy Senna's Caucasia, Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, and an Advance Reader Copy of Nathan Bransford's middle-grade novel, Jacob Wonderbar for President of the Universe. I think if they ever baked books into cakes, I'd eat read those, too.

Shatter Me will be available in hardcover (17.99) and digital formats from Harper Collins on November 15th, 2011

Greg Baldino lives and writes in Chicago, and has to actually work pretty hard to bring pain, death, and destruction. So he guesses he'll just continue writing about books and culture in the meantime instead.

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