An interview with Aimee Said by Fran Knight
Going to a private school gave Aimee Said first hand experience to
use as background for her first novel, Finding Freia Lockhart.
The circumscribed world of the private school was perfect for Freia,
her friend, Kate and the group Kate aspires to join, the Bs. Their
slavish adherence to fashion, combined with a focus on their
appearance, means a deliberately funny look at girls and their
groups and at the way they treat those outside their group. With
this emphasis, the book is a forum for the captivating main
character, Freia to develop to a point where she can say no to the
influences that beset her. And her latest novel, based in a boarding
school many miles from civilisation and mobile phone coverage gives
Aimee an even stronger sense of dislocation and restriction to work
with. Perfect for a story for young adults full of humour and wry
digs at their current obsessions with body image and fashion.
Aimee Said is one of this year's Fellows of the May Gibbs Children's
Literature Trust and is staying at the May Gibbs studio in Norwood,
South Australia. She had a month of uninterrupted time to work on
her next novel. Uninterrupted that is, except for school visits, a
series of workshops at Seymour College (perhaps another source of
inspiration) and a little spare time for lunches and coffee with
members of the trust, as well as an interview.
This Melbourne based author makes her living from freelance writing,
editing and proofreading work, concentrating on web work. Her website is
testimony to the excellence of her work: it is simple, direct and
easy to navigate, so unlike many other websites I access in my work
as a reviewer. Her target as a freelance web worker is to make the
content of the website easy to understand, creating a smooth road of
communication with the target audience. Happily for young adults,
she also has a passion about communicating with that age group,
writing novels aimed directly at the secondary market, in clear
unequivocal prose, with themes that engage and tempt the reader to
read on.
So it is with Freia, which draws heavily upon her own school
experience. The chapters where Freia is involved with the school
production of My Fair Lady draws on Aimee's school
production, while her knowledge of what happens on the lighting
bridge is from her sister's experience at the same school in a
different production. Pride and Prejudice figures largely in
the narrative as Freia hates the book chosen for her class to read
in English, paralleling Aimee's own experience with the novel. This
gives the novel a firm base of reality, an appealing foundation when
so much YA fiction is base on fantasy and situations far beyond the
normal and everyday.
Wanting to create a home situation for Freia unlike others, Aimee
hit upon the idea of older parents, wanting to do the best for their
child, but unsure of how to go about it. Freia Lockhart's home life
is very funny, as the parents read all the manuals they can find to
raise their children in a modern way. It is telling of Aimee's
talent that she is able to make these people sympathetic as well as
funny, the family never becoming caricatures.
Luckily there is a sequel to the wonderful Freia's life story, and
this along with the novel worked on in Adelaide, will be snatched up
by young adults wanting to see themselves in books, knowing that the
book is based upon the author's own experiences, recognisably
Australian and casting a sympathetic eye on all within their sphere.
What better way to spend an hour or so than with an author, talking
about books and their passion for writing.
Aimee Said has written two books so far,
Finding Freia Lockhart, Walker Books, 2010 (no teacher notes)
and Little sister, Walker Books, 2011 (which has teacher
notes on the website)
Fran Knight