{"id":1038,"date":"2012-02-17T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1038"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:35:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:35:16","slug":"edge-in-fiction-or-why-safe-books-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1038","title":{"rendered":"The Edge in Fiction, or: Why Safe Books Are Dead Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Welcome to our humble stop on the blog tour for Ashley Hope P\u00e9rez’s latest novel, The Knife and the Butterfly<\/i>, out now from Carolrhoda Books. We posted an in-depth review on Monday<\/a> and on Wednesday a follow-up chat on the overarching ideas Ashley is covering during her blog tour<\/a>. Today we’ve got some thoughts from the author herself on what it means to write a book with an edge–and what it doesn’t mean. <\/p>\n

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A brief bio to begin: Ashley Hope P\u00e9rez is the author of two young adult novels, WHAT CAN’T WAIT and THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY. She also is a passionate teacher and student working on her PhD in comparative literature. At the moment, she lives in Paris with her husband and son where they enjoy culture, croissants, and cramped living quarters.<\/p>\n

With no further ado, here’s Ashley:<\/p>\n

The term \u201cedgy\u201d is flying around in talk about The Knife and the Butterfly<\/i> and the voice in which it\u2019s told. And trust me, I\u2019m thrilled that I (cautious rule-follower to the max in all other areas) have pulled off writing in the voice of a 15-year-old boy who happens to be homeless, in trouble with the law, and caught up in a gang. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s the one thing that would make me happier? If I could give \u201cedgy\u201d the particular edge it has for me.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The thing is, the edge that interests me most has little to do with sex or gangs or profanity. These are, in my view, simply accidents of my characters\u2019 world (think: inner-city, no safety nets). Sometimes when I\u2019m talking about this aspect of The Knife and the Butterfly<\/i>, I feel like a woman giving a tour of a house she\u2019s renting: \u201cI know, I know, I wish the wallpaper in here were nicer, but this is what I\u2019ve got to work with.\u201d <\/p>\n

The world of The Knife and the Butterfly<\/i> is, indeed, a world on loan. It\u2019s borrowed from the news (the gang fight that opens the novel was inspired by an actual event in Houston). It\u2019s borrowed from the alleys and taquer\u00edas and run-down parks that I scoped out while writing. It\u2019s borrowed from interviews with Houston teens and MS-13 members that I read. <\/p>\n

Now, this is where I could say, \u201cthe book has to be rough because the world it\u2019s about is rough.\u201d There\u2019s plenty of truth to that, but it\u2019s not the truth I want to take up right now. And my novel, like all fiction, is far from a facsimile of the actual world. The cussing is scaled WAY back from reality (for a teen like Azael), and most of the violence and sexual stuff in The Knife and the Butterfly<\/i> is thematic, not explicit or graphic.<\/p>\n

What if we think about the \u201cedge\u201d in a new way? What if it\u2019s not so much about the themes and material in the book but rather about how that book and a real reader relate?<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s the edge that really matters in YA (and in all fiction): the way something a book can take the reader by surprise, almost violently. Not in a \u201cI can\u2019t believe the butler did it\u201d way, but in a \u201cnothing could have prepared me for how X would affect me\u201d way. <\/p>\n

In that previous sentence, X stands for the edge. It might be the beauty of language (or its deliberate plainness), a character, or even a turn in the plot. The important thing is that a truly edgy book doesn\u2019t leave us intact; it makes us vulnerable to something\u2014an emotion, a thought, a realization, a fear, a discovery, a way of seeing\u2014and it forces us to reckon with it. Certainly this edge is different for different readers, even when they are reading the same book, but we all need it to evolve our reading lives.<\/p>\n

I doubt that I need to remind anyone of the whole debate sparked by Meghan Cox Gurdon\u2019s Wall Street Journal article, \u201cDarkness Too Visible.\u201d (If you have no idea what I\u2019m talking about or want to know my take, look at this<\/a> or this<\/a>.) The only thing that I want to bring back from that piece was the longing\u2014false nostalgia, even\u2014for safety in books. As a parent, I understand this feeling. Really, I do. But I am more than just a parent. I am a reader, a writer, and a student of literature, and in those roles, I have come to believe that safe books are inert books, dead books.
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If we feel 100% safe with what we\u2019re reading, if we meticulously avoid the chance of encountering the edge, we\u2019re very unlikely to be deeply affected by our reading. There has to be an element of risk and exposure in the reading relationship if anything very profound is going to occur. A great book is not a safe place for the reader.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t misunderstand me. An edgy book needn\u2019t be dark or peppered with profanity. But there must be something about the book that takes the reader to a place she could not have said, in advance, that she wanted to go. <\/p>\n

That something is the edge I hope readers will find in my writing. The rest\u2026 it\u2019s just wallpaper.<\/p>\n

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Thanks so much, Ashley, for stopping by and sharing your writerly thoughts! And, for readers of this post, you can visit Ashley’s blog<\/a>, follow her on twitter @ashleyhopeperez<\/a>, or find her on facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Watch for more insights into the writing of the novel throughout Ashley’s The Knife and the Butterfly<\/i> blog tour. See the full tour schedule here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

You can buy The Knife and the Butterfly<\/i> from your favorite local bookseller<\/a> or order it online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to our humble stop on the blog tour for Ashley Hope P\u00e9rez’s latest novel, The Knife and the Butterfly, out now from Carolrhoda…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,60,18,9],"class_list":["post-1038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-book-news","tag-happenings","tag-soapbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6970,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions\/6970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}