- You write for both children and teenagers, that is, for a number of different age groups. How does your approach to these books differ? Do you always know at the beginning who you are writing for?

Most of the time, I do know. More and more. When I wrote my first « children’s » novel, I had no idea ; I only knew that I was writing for children. These days when I tackle a subject, I imagine my potential reader to have a particular level of maturity and above all to have the ability and the will to hear – or not to hear – about a topic. The story itself as well as its narrative form build gradually, taking their shape from what they can bear or convey of meaning – and vice versa : the basic material (the meaning) finds its place, its capacity for development, through the development of what was often, at first, no more than an anecdote.

Of course, I don’t have all these developments planned in detail when I start to write; I only know that these will be the tools of my trade – strange tools that likewise don’t exist in the beginning but form as they are used.

- Do you think that children’s literature is mostly too naive, over-cautious and sugary ? That we need to break some taboos (as when, for example, Lili says « Dear parents, how hard it is not to love you any more. »)?

I don’t think that that’s where the problem lies. Naivety can be charming and may lead to great books. Breaking taboos is not in itself always an interesting aim. It all depends on which taboo and on how one breaks it. Children’s books have everything ; among other things many who claim to break taboos, many « naughty » books which are in fact terribly conventional and conformist.

I didn’t plan to write the line you quote. It followed logically as part of Lili’s evolution as a character (what’s more she contradicts herself, word for word, so the reader raises an eyebrow straight away and steps back, and then, carried through by the context, the statement can suggest a number of different interpretations).

- Your writing comes across as simultaneously modest and violent. If the action of the novel isn’t exactly « violent », the experience of reading it certainly is. What effects do your books generally have on your readers ?

Violent – yes, I accept the word. Violence is not always destructive. I take care, when I’m tackling serious subjects, that it should, on the contrary, be constructive. We can also say that everything which is not normal « violates », and this may be the case when a reader has chosen an unfamiliar book, a book that represents a certain degree of risk…

As for my books’ effects on their readers, to generalise about this would be to deal in banalities. Not to mention that it’s up to each reader to say what it’s about, not me.
(That said, not all my novels are « violent ». When I’m writing for readers of eight years and thereabouts, they can be as cuddly as a cat…)

- That’s life, Lili is built around a series of narrative frames. How do you construct your novels ? Do you establish the form at the outset or does the writing impose its own form as it progresses ? 

This is similar territory to that of your first question. The tale, then, is shaped as it goes along ; nothing is forced upon it (which would spoil it) ; prejudices fall away and crumble (although their presence has had a purpose, as the temporary, preliminary means of construction). That’s life, Lili grew movement by movement, and became more and more interesting for me as it became sutbler, more profound and more ambitious. The novel was better in its final form than it promised to be at the start. Things should generally work like this, but not through repeating the same forms, which would then become clichés, dead and empty.

- Your novel is a meditation on language, among other things. Is it that in order to grow up, to become adult, we have to talk like adults and renounce our dreams ?

It seems to me that you’re asking several things with this question, and I’m not quite sure of the point that links them. Talk like adults ? Are we fooling around at this stage, childishly aping others, even clowning ? We come to « talk like adults » as we grow up and our language is refined ; it’s a result, not a prerequisite. Renounce our dreams ? That’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes, thinking to appropriate dreams and to construct our personalities through them, we even glorify as dreams those fancies borrowed from the fashions and from the social and cultural mores of our milieu. It would take pages and pages to discuss this properly : it’s too vast, too complex. In short, I’m sorry, I can’t answer this one here !

- That’s life, Lili seems to me to be for parents too, in the sense that it forces them to confront their own shortcomings. What do you think?

I’m tempted to reply, facilely, that a good children’s book is often good for adults too. An adult who reads That’s life, Lili need not only look to identify with the adult characters, but may find elements of themselves in Lili too. Even as an adult they may find themselves more in sympathy with her, since it is her turmoil, her intimacy and her thoughts that the novel conveys. And everyone has been a child ; we have all known the joys and the pains of growing up…

London, Nov 2006