YA novelist Jennifer Niven makes fans cry

By Camille Anne M. Arcilla

WHEN YOUNG ADULT novelist Jennifer Niven went to the Philippines, she cried as much as her Filipino fans did when they finally met.

“It’s so moving. It’s so sweet because when they started crying, I started crying, too. There’s much crying and it warms my heart as it means more than what I could say,” she said.

What really made her fans shed tears was her novel, All The Bright Places, which, according to Ms. Niven, was her first forray to the young adult genre.

All The Bright Places is a heart-wrenching tale about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die. Theodore is fascinated with the idea of death, while Violet is living for the future, counting the days until graduation. When the two meet at the ledge of the school’s bell tower, they find comfort in each other and there lies the question in the story: Who saves whom?

The book was named the Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, NPR, the Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, YALSA, and Buzzfeed. It also bagged the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction in 2015.

Ms. Niven was in Manila and Cebu on May 28 and 29 for a book-signing tour with National Book Store.

“When I meet readers from wherever and they say ‘I’m nervous,’ and they start shaking or crying, I tell them ‘It’s okay, let’s take a breath and it will be fine. We’ll just go through this together,’” the New York Times best-selling author said in an interview with BusinessWorld.

Ms. Niven, who started out writing non-fiction books and adult novels such as Velva Jean Learns to Drive, Becoming Clementine, and American Blonde, and a high school memoir, The Aqua Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town, said writing for such a different audience was a challenge especially when sensitive issues are dealt with.

“I feel that young adult readers are really discerning in terms of being an audience because they don’t put up with what seems fake or manipulated, and I really appreciate that because I’m like that when I read,” she said.

Ms. Niven admitted she was intimidated at first, as she kept on reminding herself that she was writing for young adults — which made her more conscious in telling the story. But as it progressed, she made it a point to write the story as honestly as possible, which she felt she owed to her readers.

“It’s important to tell it as honestly and to tell it as I have known; that’s why it doesn’t have a neatly-tied up happy ending. I wanted them to have some hope, too. I don’t want them to be left out or crushed completely,” she added.

She said, being an author who was “all over the place,” there are details that linked all her books — loss, survival, and hope.

“With every loss, you find out more and more of what you are made of. I am a really positive person by nature, but I think what’s interesting is to have that hope and survive that loss. You do what you can and move forward. That has been at the forefront in my mind and in my experience, so I’ve written out of my part in that way,” she said.

Ms. Niven also revealed a secret her readers do not know about All The Bright Places: Violet was originally planned to be an only child.

“I’d written a good chunk of the book without Violet having survived the car accident with her sister Eleanor…. But I didn’t have reasons why she was shot down. I realized the further I went through the story, I needed something like that. I got some of the loss I’ve experienced and gave some to Violet, and so Eleanor was born,” she said.

The author said she felt like things clicked into place when she made the revision.

Theodore, on the other hand, was inspired by one of the author’s boyfriends.

“I had a boyfriend who was very much like him and dealt the same issues like his. I felt really close to the character first hand… in what was it like for him,” she said.

Ms. Niven said that writing certain scenes and emotions that were a bit heavy was difficult but necessary.

“But I had to [write it], otherwise [the readers] wouldn’t understand. In doing that, I accessed a lot of feelings that I didn’t want to access, but it was all right,” she said.

Ms. Niven is looking forward to the book’s movie adaptation which is expected to come out in 2017. She said Elle Fanning, who will play Violet, has become attached to book.

The search for the right actor to play Finch is ongoing.

Ms. Niven will also release her next book, Holding Up the Universe, in October.

“It’s a lighter book so it’s not as devastating [as the first one]. People are actually asking me how many Kleenex boxes they need for this one, given that they need a lot for All The Bright Places, so I said about half as many — but you will still need some,” she quipped.