Interview with Beverley Brenna

This is the third novel to explore the life of Taylor Jane Simon. What is it about this character and her life that has prompted this series of stories?

As a writer, I want to fill in gaps where available literature seems to be missing something or someone. This way I think I can make a difference to readers. When I first wrote about Taylor in Wild Orchid, I wanted to tell a story from the perspective of someone whose voice I hadn't heard published before: the voice of a young woman with Asperger's Syndrome.

In the first novel of the series, I think Taylor presents a fairly universal growing-up picture of a girl hoping for a boyfriend. I recognized that at the end of Wild Orchid, her journey toward adult independence wasn't finished, and so I wrote the next book in the series, Waiting for No One. In that story, Taylor strives to explore post secondary education and the world of work, in order to continue her journey towards maturity.

In The White Bicycle, the final book in the series, I wanted Taylor to look inward instead of outward as part of her growing-up journey, and I see her here as taking a giant step into adulthood.

When I started, I didn't intend to write three books about Taylor—I thought I'd be lucky to finish just one! I'm glad Taylor was able to sustain her story through three books. This gave me the opportunity to get to know her deeply, and to learn more about Asperger's Syndrome.

As she reaches out for independence, Taylor displays a capacity to look back as well as to dream of what her life could be like in the future. This strikes me as an unusual aspect of the story, since most young people of her age don't spend a lot of time contemplating their past. Do you think Asperger's Syndrome prompts this sort of self-awareness, or is it specific to Taylor?

I think Taylor has learned to be particularly reflective due to her struggle with social communication. She doesn't make predictions very easily and she uses information from past experiences to navigate through present situations as best she can. The more experiences she has, the better she can chart her course, and so the older she gets, the more she is able to search for a past pattern on which to act. Essentially, Taylor combs through her past looking for information that will help her understand the present.

For example, she has learned how to use "social scripts" to have conversations. She knows from experience that if she repeats part of what a person says to her in conversation, she can keep the conversation going. People who don't have Asperger's Syndrome might do this automatically, without thinking about it, but Taylor needs to concentrate on learned strategies because conversations aren't easy for her. I think of Taylor as a kind of historian, and the history she most needs to concentrate on is her own!

This story has a strong sense of place. You yourself have been to the Lourmarin area. Was that why you decided to send Taylor there? What appealed to you about Taylor's finding the impetus for her declaration of independence somewhere far from her home?

When I was thinking about continuing Taylor's life story, I knew that I wanted her to experience a sustained period of long-distance travel—because I have noticed that characters in books who are "differently abled," like Taylor, rarely travel. Taylor travels a few hundred kilometers in Wild Orchid, and ventures even further in Waiting for No One. But I wanted to close her story with a truly international travel experience. This is an example of what other published books seem to be missing and I hope my writing will fill the gap.

For this final coming-of-age instalment, I also wanted to include the theme of existential philosophy—basically, ideas about the meaning of life. So I looked to the writing of Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the founders of existentialism, to help me think about this. I knew that Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris, so at first I thought Taylor might go to Paris. Then I looked into the placement of French art schools, and since I found a great number of them in the south of France I decided that the landscape of the Lourmarin area might work to frame the story.

I'm especially glad I chose the south of France because my husband and I spent some time there on our honeymoon twenty-five years ago. Writing this book allowed me to revisit those happy times! All that wonderful food! I gained ten pounds in two weeks. My most favorite meals involved duck roasted in honey and garlic, and crème brulee—a rich combination of cream and sugar with a burnt sugar topping. And I adored the chocolate-filled croissants, just as the characters in the story do.

Taylor has an intense, though brief, relationship with Adelaide—a vivid and compelling character. It almost feels as if she is drawn from a person you have known—is that true?

While writing The White Bicycle, I thought a lot about my mother as I developed the character of Adelaide. At 95 years old, my mom had managed to hold onto a sense of meaning and importance that I think is often lost when people enter their senior years. Although Adelaide does not at all encapsulate my mother as a person, several of my mother's experiences—the story about the potato elephant, for example, and the visit to Regina to meet King George vi— have been adapted into Adelaide's repertoire. In addition, Adelaide has my mother's sense of joie de vivre—the joy of life—which Mom demonstrated until the day she died.

My mother was also an incredible storyteller, and I think that much of my writing contains brief anecdotes that are shaped by the way my mom might have collected them— just because she loved meeting new people and drawing out details about their lives.

As with the first two books, this story is told in the first person. This allows the reader to gain insight into Taylor's thought processes. There is a distinctive rhythm to the narrative. How did you arrive at the voice we hear in the story?

In my work with people who have Asperger's Syndrome, I have noticed many differences in their prosody: pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm. I have a background in theater, so I'm pretty good at picking up on speech patterns and copying them—although you can ask my university students about my laughable fake French accent! In addition to my attempts to copy speech patterns from real life, I think some forms of theater seem to reproduce the speech patterns of people with autism, and this has been a resource for me. The plays of Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, for example, contain characters who speak with similar differences in prosody. I've never heard anyone else talk about this, but to my ear, some of the characters in Pinter's and Beckett's work appear to see the world through an autistic perspective as well as use what I think are recognizably unique language patterns. Both Pinter's The Birthday Party and Beckett's Waiting for Godot are plays mentioned by Taylor in my books, and she even names her gerbils after these famous writers. Quite possibly the re-reading of dialogue within these plays gave me a stronger ear for Taylor's voice and perspective than I might otherwise have had.

Some people might think of Asperger's as an illness, but you obviously see it as a way of life, with its own richness as well as its challenges.

I like how Dr. Tony Attwood, a clinical psychologist (see http://www.tonyattwood.com.au) confirms what I have noticed in the students with whom I've worked—that having Asperger's means seeing the world in a different way, not in a defective way. He particularly emphasizes the fact that having Asperger's brings gifts as well as challenges. It seems to me that in our world today, we need creative thinking to solve all kinds of problems—thinking that's different from the kind that created those problems in the first place. Perhaps different types of brains can help in this regard. I hope so!

One thing about people with Asperger's is that they often have amazing visual memories. Taylor certainly does, and this helps her in many aspects of her life—as a biology student, a tourist, and an artist.

We are fortunate to have an original painting by Taylor Crowe for the cover of The White Bicycle. Could you tell us how this came about?

I met Taylor Crowe in Miami in January 2012. I was there to attend the awards ceremony at a conference sponsored by the Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities, where I was honored as the first Canadian recipient of a Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award—that was for Waiting for No One. I was totally pumped. Who wouldn't want a trip to Miami in January, when the temperature in Saskatchewan was -40c?

Taylor Crowe was one of the keynote speakers at the conference, and I was tremendously impressed by his speech about his own personal journey with autism. I was also struck by his work as a visual artist—he's a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts. I suddenly knew he would do a fabulous job of designing the cover of my next book. Luckily my publisher at Red Deer Press agreed! For more about this brilliant young man and his art, check out http:// taylorcrowe.com.

Thank you, Bev.