ReadWonder: An Inside Look #263 (Author INTERVIEW)

An Inside Look with Anne Ursu

(Author of Not Quite a Ghost)

*Season #ONE (June of 2016 to March of 2017)

*Season #TWO (Summer of 2017)

*Season #THREE (School Year 2017/2018)

*Season #FOUR (Summer/fall of 2018)

*Season #FIVE (School Year 2018/2019)

*Season #SIX (Summer 2019)

*Season #SEVEN (Fall 2019)

*Season #EIGHT (Winter/Spring 2020)

*Season #NINE (Fall 2020)

*Season #TEN (Winter/Spring 2021)

*Season #ELEVEN (Fall 2021)

*Season #TWELVE (Winter/Spring 2022)

*Season #THIRTEEN (Summer 2022)

*Season #FOURTEEN (Fall 2022)

*Season #FIFTEEN (Winter/Spring 2023)

*Season #SIXTEEN (Fall 2023)

*I'm excited to present season #SEVENTEEN with brand new interviews/authors.

*It has been such an honor to connect with authors and "chat" about their novel, characters, and thoughts about the story.

*This is the SECOND interview in which I'm calling Season #SEVENTEEN

*Thank you to Anne for being the Two Hundred Sixty-Third author I've had the pleasure of interviewing. I truly appreciate it.

Not Quite a Ghost

by Anne Ursu

(January 16, 2023)

How did you come to know Violet?
Violet is an eleven-year-old girl from Minneapolis who is having a lot of upheaval in her life. As Not Quite a Ghost begins, she’s moving into a new house where she gets stuck with the creepy attic bedroom, and has just started sixth grade—where her best friends are eager to expand their friend group. It’s difficult for her; she doesn’t love change, but she also very much wants everyone around her to be happy so she does her best to roll with it.

But everything gets derailed when she comes down with a disabling postviral illness that no one can diagnose, and she has to spend more and more time in that attic bedroom—and is that something moving in the wallpaper?

Violet’s experiences with illness are much like my own. In college, I was diagnosed with what is known as chronic fatigue syndrome, after having cycles of debilitating fatigue, dizziness, and brain fog. Invisible chronic illness has been so much a part of my life that I always felt like I should write about it, but it wasn’t until I started reading more middle grade horror that I found a way in.

What do you think Violet can offer to other children that are experiencing similar situations to what she went through?
Postviral syndromes are considered invisible illnesses—while the term is used for any illness or disorder that isn’t necessarily apparent, it’s particularly apt for illnesses that seem invisible to both the medical world and to society. I hope Violet might help kids who have invisible chronic illness like ME/CFS or Long COVID to find ways to communicate what they’re experiencing, and, even more, to know that they’re not alone.

What was the hardest scene to write about her?

Violet and her mom go into her pediatrician’s office and the emergency room expecting to get help; after all, they believe, it’s how medicine is supposed to work. But both doctors dismiss her entirely, and it’s so demoralizing for her. It’s bad enough to be so sick, but when doctors don’t believe you that you’re sick, it robs you of dignity and hope. Unfortunately, not being taken seriously is part of having ME/ CFS, and essential to making the haunting metaphor work—but it wasn’t fun to put her through that! The ghost was hard enough.

Who do you think was her biggest supporter and why?

It was really important to me that Violet have people in her life who believed her, even though many young people with CFS don’t have that. Violet’s family knows she is severely physically ill and are working just as hard as she is to find ways to help. They do not, however, know anything about the thing in her wallpaper—for that, she has to rely on the cat.

ABOUT THE BOOK...

The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn’t fit among them. For Violet Hart — whose family is about to move into the house on Katydid Street — very little felt like it fit anymore. Like their old home, suddenly too small since her mother remarried and the new baby arrived. Or Violet’s group of friends, which, since they started middle school, isn’t enough for Violet’s best friend, Paige. Everything seemed to be changing at once. But sometimes, Violet tells herself, change is okay.

That is, until Violet sees her new room. The attic bedroom in their new house is shadowy, creaky, and wrapped in old yellow wallpaper covered with a faded tangle of twisting vines and sickl y flowers. And then, after moving in, Violet falls ill — and does not get better. As days turn into weeks without any improvement, her family growing more confused and her friends wondering if she’s really sick at all, she finds herself spending more time alone in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the shadows moving in the corners, wrapping themselves around her at night.

And soon, Violet starts to suspect that she might not be alone in the room at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR...

Anne Ursu is the author of acclaimed novels The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, The Lost Girl, Breadcrumbs, and The Real Boy, among others. Her work has been selected as a National Book Award nominee, a Kirkus Prize finalist, and as a best book of the year by Parents Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and School Library Journal. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an unruly herd of cats. Find Anne online at anneursu.com.

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Monday, January 22, 2024

An Inside Look #263 (Author INTERVIEW)

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