WELCOME TO GIRLFRIEND FICTION
Penni Russon
Grew up in Hobart, roaming around on a small mountain and making up stories about imaginary lost pets with her best friend. She used to write poetry until she discovered novels were more forgiving. She's the author of the Undine Series and writes a blog called Eglantine's Cake.
Are the characters in The Indigo Girls based on real people you know?
'Tilly and Zara are both definitely fictional, though I kind of had a hodgepodge of real people in mind as I was making up their physical characteristics. I could relate to both of them, there's quite a bit of me in both Tilly and Zara. Tilly probably more so, I was pretty brainy at school and for a few years at the beginning of school boys definitely weren't interested in me! And I definitely didn't relate to my peers, I wore the wrong clothes, listened to the wrong music.
'But when I was 16-17 my life changed quite a lot. Suddenly boys were asking me out and I ended up with a longterm boyfriend who went to uni and drove a car - the height of coolness at 16. But with these changes came some dark stuff too, like not always negotiating other people's feelings (or my own) very well. I had some pretty nasty rumours spread around about me too - it's all pretty silly now, thinking back, but at the time it was very serious and a bit scary. I felt like I was very quickly hurtled into a world I didn't understand, that I went from being a nobody to being a somebody without getting an instruction manual.
'So I started off a Tilly and became more of a Zara.'
Embarassing high school moment?
'Unfortunately there are quite a few. Once at the end of grade ten we were on a school bus trip, an excursion to the beach. I was sitting next to my first boyfriend. He was about to unpeel an orange and he noticed it was mouldy, so he reached up and dropped it out of one of those high sliding windows on the bus (maybe buses don't have those anymore?). But the orange hit the car driving along behind and broke its windscreen! (No one was hurt, but it must have been terrifying.)
'The bus stopped and we were all told in no uncertain terms that someone was in Big Trouble and they'd better own up right now. BF didn't own up and I didn't want to dob him in, so we didn't tell. But it was excruciating - you know how it's always worse watching someone else get into trouble or get hurt? Well, I was mortified on his behalf. The teachers were all furious, and threatened all sorts of things.
'Even worse the toughest, meanest guy at school came up to us after we finally were allowed off the bus - he'd seen! I don't think BF ever confessed, and the other guy never told. High school ended a week or two later.'
Life at school
'I didn't really like high school (the people, the culture), but I loved Year 11 & 12 (which is separate in Tassie). I loved the new freedom, I loved the lessons and I loved being able to reinvent myself (like Tilly and Zara that summer).
'My favourite subjects were English and History. I also did Drama outside of school. I would hate to have to go to high school now! I think it's the sheer social intensity of it - there's a reason why I like to stay home and write books! '
What did you like reading when you were a teenager?
'I collected old children's books - particularly Lewis Carroll, but I have a lovely first edition of Maurice Sendak's little Nutshell boxed set that I bought as a teenager. At 16-18 I had eclectic tastes. I was really into poetry (Rupert Brookes, Roger McGough, Sylvia Plath, T. S. Eliot), Australian literature (Beverley Farmer, Amy Witting), children's fiction (Robert Westall, Rumer Godden) and picture books (Jeannie Baker, Bob Graham and Robert Ingpen).
'But I loved trashy teen romances too. I read 'The Sweet Valley High' books way longer than was probably socially acceptable … I tell ya, I would sit down and read them all right this second if they landed in my lap!'
Find out more about Penni at www.pennirusson.com
