Suzy Zail is the author of the new young adult novel Inkflower. Her other books include I Am Change. She lives in Australia.
Q: You’ve said that Inkflower was based on your family's experiences--can you say more about that?
A: Inkflower is the story of a 16-year-old girl - Lisa - who finds out her father has six months to live and a secret he hasn’t told her about his time in Auschwitz.
Lisa is me. When I was 32, my father was diagnosed with ALS and given six months to live. Until then, he’d kept his Holocaust story from us, finally telling us the story after he was diagnosed, a story I’ve stayed true to.
Everything that happens to Lisa’s father in Inkflower mirrors events in my father’s life, from his childhood in a small village in Czechoslovakia to being torn from his mother at the gates of Auschwitz.
Where I blended truth and imagination was in the chapters told from Lisa’s point of view. I didn’t go to Glenrock Secondary. I wasn’t 17 when my father died. I didn’t go through all the teenage dramas that consume Lisa … mostly why does her father have to go and die, and why tell her this huge sad secret now? I was 37 with a child of my own.
Q: How did you create Lisa?
A: I always start with a character prompt-sheet, a place where I put down everything I know about the character before I begin writing – their eye colour, favourite food, what frightens them, their level of education, the name of their best friend, their prejudices, fears, and goals. What do they most want? And what’s stopping them from getting it?
I don’t use all of this in my books, but the time I spend here lets me get to know my characters and guess at how they might react to situations.
I had a head start writing Lisa. I’d lived in her house, listened to the same music, and had the same 1980s boy band posters tacked to my bedroom wall. I knew what it felt like to want to fit in, to avoid the spotlight, to be the child of a survivor who’d kept his past secret. I knew what it felt like to watch my father die.
All I had to do was recall those feelings and blow them up. I made Lisa more angsty and more secretive about her faith and her father’s growing disability than I was so she could grow alongside her father, as both learn important truths about acceptance and how to be vulnerable.
Q: The School Library Journal review of the book says, “Equally heartbreaking and uplifting, this recommended book reminds readers that a forgotten past is irreplaceable, and the present is a gift.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love that quote. Inkflower is both heartbreaking and life-affirming. I don’t shy away from making my readers feel deeply, but I’m careful to protect them.
And so I didn’t recount my father’s story exactly as it was told to me. Or relay everything I’d read and seen while researching the Holocaust. I held back on the graphic detail and braided moments of light through the dark.
My stories are never unrelentingly sad. Hope is a huge thing in YA literature and all my books are infused with it.
In the Holocaust chapters, there are kind guards and brave neighbours who perform small acts of kindness. And there’s the camaraderie of the prisoners, and the rebuilding of lives after liberation.
In Lisa’s world, there are friendships, make out sessions with her boyfriend, 1980s hair, Duran Duran, and so many lessons from her father about how to live a meaningful life.
It’s a delicate balancing act. I know Inkflower might make my readers sad at times, but reading about the Holocaust might also teach them something about history and hatred, so that next time they see prejudice they might be moved to act.
Q: Can you say more about what you hope readers take away from the book?
A: There are so many things I learned in the last years of my father’s life that I wanted readers to learn too, lessons like “celebrate today” and “sharing your fears shrinks them.” Also, “being different is okay; being different should be celebrated.”
But if I have to pick one, it’s probably “small acts of kindness can be hugely powerful.” During the war, my dad had been saved by the kindness of strangers, time and again.
Sometimes it feels overwhelming to try and build a better world. It’s easy to give up trying. After all, what can one person do? I like to think of it another way. Imagine if millions of people did just one small thing each?
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on the final draft of a new novel for teens, so hopefully it won’t be too long before my next YA novel is on shelves.
Like my others, this one is about a teenager grappling to hold on to the person she was, before an unexpected event shatters her perfect life. In this case a diagnosis.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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