How To Fall In Love With a Man Who Lives In a Bush is based on the true story of how you met your husband. Which aspects of the book diverge most greatly from your real-life experience? Which ones are closest?
Just like Julia, I lived in Vienna for many years and worked for Berlitz teaching English while dreaming of becoming a writer. Elfriede Jelinek wasn’t my neighbour (though she did live only one block away from me) but I have always felt like we should be really good friends because we share the same birthday (that, and the fact that I am almost a Nobel Prize winner). Julia is an extreme version of me – I would like to think that I am much more easy-going than she is – even though I also do love paying bills and colour-coordinating my books, just like she does.
But I have also changed some details to give the story a better flow. Vic and I initially met in Amsterdam, actually. I was there for work when he sat down on the bench next to me, and then when I had to return to Vienna a week later, I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again. Vic had my mobile phone number but he didn’t have a mobile phone or email address (and the Dutch postal services would probably not have accepted any letters to ‘The gorgeous guy who lives in a bush in Vondelpark, Amsterdam, The Netherlands’). But two weeks after I returned to Vienna I got a phone call and it was Vic saying: ‘I’m here now.’ He had followed me to Vienna and we have been together ever since.
One of the other big divergences from real life is that Vic never disappeared to Canada like Ben did (he would never behave like that!). Although Vic did end up going back to Canada for a few months, it was planned and I even came to visit him there. But writing about how ‘Julia and Ben went to Canada together and ate lots of nice food in Vancouver’ just wouldn’t have been as exciting. Oh, and I would NEVER jump off a fifteen-metre high bridge in real life. I’m not crazy.
What are the challenges for you of writing of an adult novel after a career spent writing for young adults? What are the most exciting parts?
The most exciting parts are being able to write about things like sex, masturbation, alcohol and how mind-numbingly dull work can be. But I never really see my books as ‘YA’ or ‘adult’ and there is no difference in how I write them, only the subjects that I write about. A story should always be told as well and as entertainingly as possible no matter how old the readers are.
Julia is a frustrated writer who can only find inspiration in stories that already exist. Which writers have inspired you the most?
My life changed the first time I read Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide To Hunting and Fishing in my early twenties. It was the first time I read about a female protagonist who was both intelligent and funny. There are quite a few books with strong women but they always lack a sense of humor (yes, I am looking at you, Katniss and Hermione over there in the YA section). And if a female character is funny then she is usually a fat, ugly or bitter secondary character. I found Bank’s book wonderfully inspiring, and I always try to make my female protagonists both funny and smart just like she did. There is great power in humor and it is a fantastic tool with dealing with life’s more difficult situations. I also love that Bank’s book deals with loneliness so well.
Many of the characters in this novel are expats or immigrants. What do you see as the benefits of living in another country? What are the drawbacks?
I think everyone should live abroad for a while. You always feel like you are on vacation and get to see that there are many ways you can live your life. I also firmly believe that you can become who you really are abroad: no one knows your past or remembers that embarrassing thing you did in high school. It’s a wonderful way to reinvent yourself and become who you want to be.
The drawbacks are loneliness, not being able to make friends with people other than other expats and being expected to eat confusingly small breakfasts – like a small dry biscuit or something similar – when you are in Italy.
What are you working on next?
My next novel for adults will be coming out in Sweden this year. It’s about a female stand-up comedian who gets committed to a mental hospital for depression. The book combines my obsession with female stand-up comedians with my own experience of depression and getting committed to a mental hospital. It’s a crazily funny book! Or funnily crazy book? And I also finally get to confess my secret love for Phil Collins in it. Now I am already busy writing my third book for adults and have also sold a film script I wrote in just seventeen days. Life is good.