Q&A with Eoin McNamee
Q: THE NAVIGATOR is your first children's novel after a relatively long list of politically charged adult novels. What compelled you to write a children's novel?
A: I actually think it was driven by the landscape-the Workhouse and river bank were the places where I went almost every day when I was young. In the last few years I've spent some time in the area where I grew up, and I found myself pulling the car up on the bridge over the river and sitting on the parapet looking up the river. It was a great place for a child to play-full of hidden paths and hideouts, and of course the river. It had a melancholy side as well-the Workhouse really was a Workhouse for the poor and there is an overgrown graveyard on the bank of the river with small stone grave markers with no names on them buried in the long grass. It was inevitable that it would be written about at one stage, and because my own childhood was involved, a children's novel seemed inevitable.
Q: Do you have any children of your own?
A: Owen, aged six, and Kathleen aged nine. You can see where the names came from.....
Q: How did your son and daughter influence the way you wrote THE NAVIGATOR?
A: Not so much a direct influence-more that you as an adult are exposed to the perceptions and rhythms of a child's world, or reminded of them rather. You're also exposed to the things they are reading and watching on TV, and picking up on the narratives that they are drawn to. It wouldn't be impossible to write for children when you aren't around children, but I think it would be much more difficult.
Q: You grew up in Ireland and have become one of nation's most respected fiction writers of today. Who were some of your major influences?
A: In terms of adult fiction, there are of course plenty of towering influences in Ireland-Beckett, Joyce.... But my main stylistic influences would be American-from noir writers like James M Cain and Horace McCoy through to writers like Thomas McGuane and Don deLillo. In children's books I read a lot when I was younger, everything from Dickens and Mark Twain to Mary Norton and Henry Treece.
Q: What book did you most relate to as a child?
A: It would have to be the Narnia books. A strange thing. I knew that CS Lewis was brought up about forty miles from where I was reared. But I didn't know that he walked in the mountains behind my house and when he was asked what picture he had in his head when he thought of Narnia, he said that he imagined himself standing on the shore at Rostrevor looking across Carlingford lough at the Cooley mountains, which is very near to where I come from. It struck me as strange and wonderful that I grew up in Narnia without even knowing it.
Q: Who are some of your favorite authors today?
A: In children's books I find myself going back to the classics, I think in an attempt to get my children to read books like the Wind In The Willows. I like JK Rowling, and any other author who can create a world.
Q: Did you always want to be a writer, or did you dabble in other careers before getting published?
A: I studied law at college but never practiced. I realised that the point of a law education is to make you think in a particular way. First of all you think that way about law, then you start to think that way about everything. I realised that I didn't want to train my mind that way.
Q: Your book is targeted towards a middle-grade (8 to 11-year-old) audience, but it deals with a number of dark themes. What was your biggest challenge in writing a book for children with a "doomsday, post-apocalyptic" feel?
A: There was something niggling at me when I was writing the book and it took a while to work out what it was. Then I realised that it is almost a fantasy convention that people always seem to speak in a false medieval way. Tolkienesque I suppose (who was always a favourite, although I hated the movies). I went through the dialogue and took anything that sounded like that out. It worked, I think.
Q: It's interesting that your name is Eoin and the main character's name is Owen. Though their spellings might be different, in what ways are you and Owen the same?
A: There is a story to that. When I was thirteen or fourteen I changed the spelling of my name to Eoin from Owen because I thought it sounded more Irish (whatever that means). I didn't realise that there had been an Owen in each generation of my father's family going back many generations-my relatives were too polite to tell me. So when my son was born, I returned to tradition.
Q: Cati is a very strong female character in your book. Is she modeled after anyone you know?
A: Cati is named after Kathleen, my daughter, although they're not terribly alike. So no, she isn't really modeled after someone. Sometimes a character just happens along-the minute she came scrambling down the scree at the side of the Workhouse on page twenty-one, I knew who she was going to be.
Q: The relationship between the Harsh and the Resisters seems like it might be a political allegory for what's happening in today's world. Were you trying to make any social commentary, or was it coincidence?
A: No. There is no overt intention to draw parallels with current events. I'm not particularly keen on books with a message or a moral. I think that if the writing is good enough the morality is knitted into it.
Q: It came as such an interesting surprise that you would have your villains listen to opera. Where did this idea stem from? Was it because you're an opera enthusiast, or because you have an aversion to it?
A: I just thought it suited Johnston and his cronies-there is an overblown pantomime aspect to opera which suited them. The Nazis were opera aficionados-well, Wagner anyway. And of course they liked Strauss. Johnston's crew like Perry Como as well....
Q: THE NAVIGATOR is the first book in a saga. Had you set out to write several books, or did the story develop a life of its own?
A: I always intended to create a world where many stories could take place, both in parallel and in sequence. Which kind of brings us to the subject of time in the book. You can imagine Doctor Diamond trying to figure out whether the books go backwards or forwards in time, and whether the next book would in fact be a prequel rather than a sequel. Rather like Owen, my head hurts when I think about it.
Q: What message do you want children to walk away with when they finish THE NAVIGATOR?
A: If I thought that they were saving the last couple of pages because they didn't want it to end, then I would be thrilled. Or, to put it another way, if they resolved like this writer, to be a writer when he grew up, because he had come to the end of the Narnia series, and couldn't bear the thought of a world without more Narnia tales.
Reviews
The Navigator
Eoin McNamee
Owen is a normal boy trying to avoid the strange looks he gets as the son of a man who supposedly killed himself, and a mother who is slowly being lost to what seems to be depression. Then one day a strange incident occurs, sending him to the Workhouse, an island in time. There he learns that time has started to flow backwards, making it as though the entire world and everything he has ever known, including his mother, have never existed. The Harsh are the ones making time go the wrong way; it is up to the new people Owen has met, the Resisters, to set time back to rights. But some of the Resisters distrust Owen because of something his father did, and now Owen has to find a way to fix time--both to clear his father's name and to get back in time to his mother. In this wonderful story, McNamee brings his skill to writing for a younger audience in a novel that not only bends but alters and rearranges time. This is a story not to be missed by fans of Kate Thompson's The New Policeman or Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. 2007, Wendy Lamb Books/Random House, $15.95. Ages 8 to 12. Reviewer: Kathleen Foucart (Children's Literature).
ISBN: 978-0-375-83910-8
ISBN: 0-375-83910-0
Added 05/22/07
To stay up to date on new books by this author, consider subscribing to The Children's Literature Comprehensive Database. For your free trial, click here.
If you’re interested in reviewing children's and young adult books, then send a resume and writing sample to marilyn@childrenslit.com.