By Máire Fisher

In this conversation, as part of #ReadingAfrica Week, South African writer Máire Fisher explores the experience of writing from a young person's perspective, the unexpected ways characters find their voices, and how stories can help readers of all ages understand lives and experiences beyond their own.

Kristina Gashi: What draws you to writing from a child’s point of view, what does this perspective allow you to explore, and how can stories for younger readers build connections across generations and cultures?

Máire Fisher: This is such an interesting question! So many books written about children aren’t necessarily Young Adult books. Mine fall into that category, where I’ve written two books about young people which have been marketed to a broadly adult audience, yet enjoyed by young adult readers too.

I can’t say that I set out to write two young people’s stories in Birdseye and The Enumerations. What happened was that I started writing both stories from completely different characters’ points of view.

In Birdseye, I brought a truly autocratic mother (Ma Bess) to life. I’d written a short story in which a terrible grandmother featured very prominently and wanted to explore her type and influence further. So, there was Ma Bess, living with her daughter, Annie, and along came Annie’s husband-to-be, Orville. I thought the story was going to revolve around these three, but Annie and Orville then proceeded to have a large family, and Bird (the youngest child in a family of six) had a very strong voice! 

Ma Bess, Annie, Orville and Bird’s sisters remained important characters in this story about a family, but Bird is its beating, fluttering, passionate heart.

In The Enumerations, almost exactly the same sort of thing happened. I was writing the story of a woman, Maddie, who worked in a bookshop. She had a brother, Noah, who had severe OCD issues. He was much older than her. I decided to explore his story (because, don’t you know, family members are deeply important and relevant to a character’s life). With that decision, a much younger Noah started to speak; Maddie became his younger sister, and the older version of her is still sitting in that bookshop, waiting for me to finish her story.

I mentioned the other day in a radio interview that when it comes to understanding young characters, it’s interesting to look at them in terms of control.

I don’t have to be a 17-year-old boy, let alone one with OCD, like Noah is. But what I can tap into is what it feels like to be scared, to be frustrated, to be in fear for the lives of my family. From there, I can go one step deeper: into an overpowering dread of their being in danger if I don’t fulfill certain tasks. That is what motivates Noah, why he is compelled to count in fives, to measure, to pace his way through every day, to itemize every small thing from the number of mugs in his room in the right shades of blue to having the correct number of shirts hanging in his wardrobe. Noah is governed by all he has to count and measure because he lives in fear of his family coming under some nebulous but very, very frightening threat from the dark if he doesn’t follow the rules that he has imposed on himself. His rules about counting, measuring, and balancing are one of the few areas where Noah has control. But he doesn’t have control over the aspects of his life which see him being placed in a facility for neurodivergent young people. The adults in charge make decisions that affect him and his future. By the same token, also in The Enumerations, Gabriel is another young boy who is now under the control of a vicious and cruel grandfather who makes his life a living hell. Gabriel is young, and he has no agency whatsoever. He’s extremely worried for his mother and for his little sister. To understand Gabriel, I wondered about, and then wrote into being a young person who has no control over what happens to him.

So does a book like The Enumerations build connections across generations? I like to think it does. Noah’s mother is deeply concerned for him, and I think many parents share similar concerns. Several of the people who read it, both young and old, have experiences with OCD. They appreciated The Enumerations treating OCD as an important issue for a family to deal with, as well as for the prime character—in this case, Noah. One woman whose father was dismissive of her child’s battles with OCD told me that she was giving the book to him and was determined that he read it and so understand her daughter better.

Bird carries the story of her family and her missing twin brothers from when she’s six years old to when she is sixteen. Financial control in Marchbanks, the home Bird grows up in, rests very much in the hands of her domineering grandmother (I seem to specialize in nasty grandparents). Bird can’t control anything in her life. All she wants is for Oscar and Oliver to come home safely, and she is determined to make sure they miss nothing that has happened in their absence. The only way she can do this is by writing to them—a long, extended diary. I’ve never lived with a grandparent, nor do I have sisters—so once again Bird’s kind of life is one I have never experienced. But I do know what it’s like to feel alone, frightened, unsure of the ground that I’m standing on. (I also know what it’s like to have an insatiable sense of curiosity—very much one of Bird’s shining features, which might also lead to her undoing).

I wrote so much about Bird and Noah, some of which didn’t make it into the novels. But the more I wrote to and for them and listened to them, the more I felt I knew them. Knowing them as well as I did made them fully rounded and authentic to me, and I hope to readers. I asked young people as well as older ones to be friendly readers. In Noah’s case, I asked three professionals for advice on what I had right and where I had misrepresented Noah and the young people at Greenhills.

For me, Noah and Bird were (and still are!) alive and breathing, living inside the covers of their books. They each have families, and with those families come all the messy, intricate, wonderful, awful, exciting, embarrassing parts of being alive, “involved in mankind”. I hope by experiencing their lives readers of all ages get a chance to see into worlds that are different from their own, and yet, in so many ways, very similar.

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I love the idea of a woman giving The Enumerations to her father to help him understand his granddaughter. I love that a friend of mine and her daughter shared what it was like to be in a mother/daughter relationship while coping with the challenges of OCD. I love that I was able to dress Willa (also in The Enumerations) as they wanted to be dressed and also find fabulous boots to fit their large feet. I love that another friend sent me a photo of his seventeen-year-old daughter holding a copy of Birdseye, and that the daughter of one of my friends blamed me for keeping her awake until all hours of the night because she had to finish Bird’s story. I love that a reader in America became so invested in Bird’s life and her insatiable curiosity that he wanted to see more of her as a journalist (cue the sequel: Bird on the Wire). I love, too, that Birdseye has been chosen as a setwork in a South African school. I love to think of people of all ages reading and loving my characters as much as I do. Above all, I love knowing that Young Adults and Old Adults are joined by a love of reading.

Máire Fisher is a writer, writing mentor and editor. Her first novel, Birdseye, was published in South Africa in 2014 by Penguin Random House. Her second, The Enumerations, was published in South Africa by Umuzi in August 2018. Máire’s work has been published in several anthologies, including Incredible Journey, Just Keep Breathing: South African Birth Stories; Twist: Short Stories Inspired by Tabloid Headlines, Women Flashing, and Writing the Self. She was born in Zambia, educated in Zimbabwe, and currently resides in South Africa, where she runs several renowned writing workshops.