I have fallen madly in love with a book. From its stunning
cover to each magic laden page inside, I’m just absolutely crazy about The School for Good and Evil. It even has the most epic trailer I’ve ever seen for a book!
So how awesome is it that I get to present Soman Chainani,
author extraordinaire, to the Inkpot, and also a chance to win a SIGNED hardcover of THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL! I admit that I’ve been quite shy around
him. Soman is basically a genius. He is a Harvard summa cum laude and a
graduate of the MFA Film Program at Columbia University where he walked away
with the school’s top prize, the FMI Fellowship for Writing and Directing. See
what I mean? He’s totally brilliant and he wrote this marvelous book I adore
and admire so much. Kind of how I feel about J.K. Rowling is also how I feel
about Soman. But how lucky am I that we have the same wonderful editor at
HarperCollins, which meant I got to read an ARC early on and get my own
personal introduction! And what I found was that this brilliant author is also a
really nice, awesome guy. Even in the midst of preparing for his big 11-city
tour and writing the screenplays for the movie adaptations of SGE as well as
finishing up book 2, he still made time to stop by the Inkpot. So please
welcome Soman!
(EO) - Hi Soman! Thanks for stopping by the Inkpot! You know
how much I love your book. I pretty much twitter stalked you obsessively after
reading it. And after reading SGE, I found myself running to the library and
taking out all the Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books again, the ones that came in all
the colors. I felt so nostalgic for them. Did you read those as a child?
(SC) – First off, let me
say that long before we made contact, I’d heard so many wonderful things about
you, as both a writer and a person, that I felt quite honored when you read my
book, let alone enjoyed it. So it’s quite a privilege to be here at Enchanted
Inkpot.
I feel quite ashamed to
say I haven’t read Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books, even though I was deeply obsessed
with fairies as a child. I used to make paper doll fairies out of tissue paper,
slather them with glitter, and enact grand melodramas with them under the bed. My
mother couldn’t understand how I could go through an entire box of tissues a
day, but just learned to put up with it. I think she always did – and continues
to – find me quite mysterious.
Your question brings up
another funny story. When I was in England a few years ago pitching new project
ideas, the studios over there kept demanding I do “something like ‘the Fairy
Books’” because they were apparently a cash cow. I heard it about ten times
before I trekked over to Foyle’s, the massive bookstore in Leicester Square, and
discovered the Rainbow Magic Fairy Books… which look EXACTLY to me like Andrew
Lang’s, now that you mention it. In fact, I can’t quite tell the difference
between them. So like werewolves and vampires, it seems like fairies are
constantly rebooted these days too. However, the fairies at the School for Good
and Evil, as the trailer points out, are much trickier creatures. For one
thing, I wouldn’t get too close to them. And second, I have boy fairies, which
are non-existent in most fairy books. (Ludicrous!)
(EO) – Oh the Rainbow Magic Fairy Books ARE the same thing! Ok so, when I heard that you wrote your thesis at Harvard on
why evil women make such irresistible fairy-tale villains, I
immediately thought, now there’s a thesis that I want to read! So I have to ask
you, who are these irresistible fairy tale villains to you and why?
(SC) - To me, I never understood why Disney used female villains so
sparingly. In the 50 or so animated films they’ve made, only six or seven have
wicked women – but these are the ones we love the most. Ursula, Maleficent,
Cruela, the Wicked Queen… (not to mention the rather effeminate qualities of
Scar and Jafar). What makes female villains so alluring is the fact that they
cannot rely on brute strength. Instead they must deliciously manipulate –
through subterfuge, seduction, and disguise. Only with the females do we really
sense the attraction of Evil and the sheer charisma, cleverness, and force of
personality it requires to vanquish Good.
(EO) – Yes, Malificent was always my favorite villain and really the only reason I liked the Sleeping Beauty film, to be honest. I do think that a great villain can make a story
great. But in SGE, you muddied up your own thesis by playing around with the
idea of good and evil! You have the classic battle of good versus evil, and yet
nothing is as it seems. It’s like you took all our fairy tale notions and said
“OK, let’s have some fun with this!” And then you literally let all hell break
loose. I bow down to your genius, by the way. While the idea of playing with
the fluidity of good and evil is not new, this is seriously fantastically
original stuff. And it’s definitely more Brother’s Grimm than Disney. I love
that! So what came first for you? The plot, the character, the world?
(SC) – It’s funny, I started writing THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND
EVIL about six months before the fairy tale craze started happening in
Hollywood and in publishing – and I remember asking myself the same questions
everyone is asking now. Why do fairy tales matter so much? Why do we respond so
deeply to them in every age? And I think the answer is that they feel like a
Survival Guide to Life, no matter what age you are. They present such a
clear-eyed view of the world, without Disneyfied happy endings or even the
expectation of happy endings. At the end of the Grimms’ stories, kids often end
up baked into pies, losing tongues, or being turned into birds, just for making
poor decisions.
So with THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL, I wanted to start
in that kind of world with true consequences
– and where there is balance between Good or Evil (which is in fact the reality
of our world today. Balance might even be called optimistic.) And I wanted to
deal with the notion that Good has been winning everything… and what did that
mean? Why does Good always win these days in stories? And is that what children
really need to learn?
So just by starting with fundamental questions, I
realized I could actually conceive a school around these principles. And so the
book begins with the quite provocative idea that every child’s soul
fundamentally skews towards Good or Evil, that each child is born the inclined
to create… or to destroy.
(Which seems quite accurate to me, by the way. To play
with this idea, I created the entrance exam to The School for Good and Evil on
the book’s website, which tests what percentage of your soul is Good and what
percentage of your soul is Evil. Over 10,000 people have taken it so far… and
it’s pretty balanced between Evers, or those that skew Good, and Nevers, or
those who skew Evil.)
To take the exam - go here.
(EO) – Speaking about your main characters, I seriously
adore Sophie and Agatha. I think you have accomplished so much in this brilliant
novel, but what I love the most is how you literally had me switching my
allegiance from Sophie to Agatha, back to Sophie, back to Agatha, and then the
absolute best, most satisfying conclusion I could have ever hoped for! Can you
tell us a little about how you came up with your two main characters? Who are
they like? Who did you channel?
(SC) – This
question makes me light up, precisely because one of my biggest goals in the
novel was to keep the ground shifting under your feet. Disney films always open
with the blond princess singing her big ‘I WANT’ song, where she speaks of her
wish for true love, or a new mother, or a different life – and Sophie
practically opens the novel the same way. So subconsciously, readers invest in
her as the protagonist. It’s been fascinating to watch the reactions once
Agatha is introduced and she and Sophie begin their fraught relationship.
Certainly some readers are uncomfortable with shifting allegiances (they want
their Good Good and their Evil Evil) – but I wanted to tell a story where you’re
forced to judge the characters’ actions instead of investing in an abstract
archetype.
As for who they’re like, it’s not a coincidence that the SGE
Playlist that Amazon.com is hosting is littered with Madonna songs and videos.
There’s a lot of Blond Ambition in Sophie. My family, meanwhile, would answer
your question differently. When my brother was reading the book, he called me
up and said “You know this Sophie girl… She’s the real you.” Though it’s a rather uncharitable assessment, I have to
say that writing Sophie is the highlight of my day. She delivers monologues as
if the whole world is listening and I relish the tightrope act of making her at
once ludicrous and alluring. In fact, Sophie was born first – I heard her voice
for weeks, bawdy, cooing, and warm. In time, Agatha’s began to answer her,
throaty, brutish, and cold. I wanted to create the ultimate odd couple – the
idea that they’re at once inverses of each other and yet can’t live without
each other.
(EO) – Also, I want to say off the bat that anyone trying to
make any comparisons to another magical school for children couldn’t be more
wrong! The School of Good and Evil and the fairy tale creatures that inhabit it
is both a dreamland and a nightmare, on both sides! Its more Wonderland than
Hogwarts because everything is so strange and wondrous and also quite terrifying.
I kept wondering, what was Soman thinking when he came up with this?
(SC) – One of the
strangest elements of writing a fantasy novel is that you have to abandon all
control. I can’t even begin to tell you why the world looks like what it does.
It’s just how it surfaces in my imagination as I write – and I try not to doubt
it. But I remember looking at Iacopo Bruno’s mind-blowing full-color map that
opens the hardcover edition – and having this moment where I had to admit to
myself… This world doesn’t exist. It’s all in my head. It was a sad moment,
actually.
I think the biggest
relief so far is that no one has compared this book to Harry Potter at all. And
you hit the nail on the head – I think the reason why is because in
Rowling's series, we know who our protagonist is. We know what Good and Evil is
-- and Hogwarts is a safe place of learning and good intentions, for the most
part.
At the School for Good and Evil, all of that is
destabilized. We have no idea who's Good. We have no idea who's Evil -- and
we're not even sure which one is supposed to win. There's nothing even
remotely safe about this world. You choose to attend Hogwarts. You're kidnapped
to the School for Good and Evil.
(EO) – This next question is a bit of a spoiler so I'm going to change the font very light. If you want to read it, just highlight it. I do want to talk a little about one of my absolute favorite
scenes of the book. Agatha has always thought she was ugly and she undergoes a
makeover, or so she thinks, and believes she is beautiful. But in actuality,
nothing physically had changed, except her confidence. To me, this was a
powerful message. When you are always told you are ugly, you come to believe
it. But when you are self-confident in your worth, than you are beautiful. This is such an important
message and you captured it brilliantly.
(SC) – I remember in my
notes for the outline, I had that she comes out of the Groom Room ‘changed.’ In
my head, I always assumed she’d have a makeover. So when I wrote that scene, I started
envisioning this physical transformation – and felt myself nauseous over it. I
just couldn’t do it. Then I realized why I’d been so vague in the outline. My
subconscious knew all along – this was the story of a girl who had discovered
beauty from the inside out. But would audiences believe it? That was the
difficult part. So I really had to dig in and make Agatha feel so deeply, so
honestly that you put yourself in her shoes.
And honestly, I think
her transformation is far more authentic than a Pygmalian makeover. I always
thought of myself as a bit of an Agatha growing up and despised the way I
looked. But I fought past it, accepted myself… and realized that the world just
mirrors back how you feel about yourself. I had a line that I had to cut, but
I’m sure will show up somewhere else: “Even the boys started smiling back at
Agatha. Like monkeys, they reflected the face you gave them.”
(EO) – I completely agree with you and I thank you. There’s so much I want to talk about, and yet I can’t
because it would be too spoilery. But I just want to tell everyone to please,
please read this book and when you get to the gargoyle scene, you’ll know when
you get there, please come back and comment here. Because it is the scene where
I cried. I think you win the award for best gargoyle use in a fantasy book.
(SC) – That scene was
never in the outline. I was in a hotel in Boston, having just finished this
emotionally grueling tennis tournament and was writing Chapter 8, which just
wasn’t going in the direction I wanted to. I remember fighting and fighting
myself and then being too tired to fight… And the entire rooftop episode came
spilling out: the wish fish, the stampede, the gargoyle… All in one go. I
remember going to sleep that night thinking, “My god. Why am I trying to write
this book consciously? Let go.” It was such an important lesson. Just let go
and let the elves do their work.
One of the things that I
love about Phoebe Yeh, our mutual editor, is that she trusts an author’s
intuition. She knows when I’m doubting myself and won’t have it. What’s so
remarkable about her is that she’s 100% dedicated to making sure the book turns
out the way the author wants it – so
she’s constantly asking questions and probing to make sure each scene achieves
the effect we want. In a way, she’s a bit like that mirror barrier on Halfway
Bridge, constantly testing if we’re staying true to ourselves.
(EO) – Oh yes, I think we are so fortunate to have Phoebe and Jess and the fabulous Harper team! OK, I need to talk a little bit about the conclusion.
There’s so much I want to say about it, and ask about it, but I can’t because
it would spoil the book. But there’s just no words to express how much I loved
it. And I wanted to thank you for the unexpected and yet perfect ending. Did
you know how it would end when you first came up with the idea or did it come
out of writing the whole thing?
(SC) – I did. It was the ending
that made me know I had to write the story. Because no one could possibly
predict it! It just felt like an opportunity to really bring two girls on a
massive journey to a brand new place, both literally and emotionally.
(EO) – And you do a magnificent job! Now I know you are working on the screenplays for the
movie version, which I can’t wait for because this is a book that BEGS to be
made into a film! And you are also working on book 2. Can you tell us a little
of what comes next?
(SC) - You
know, it’s a funny thing, because I’d love to – but Harper will kill me. To
even tell you who’s in the sequel
will spoil the surprises. But let’s just say you can’t possibly predict what’s
going to happen in this one either. It’s an even wilder ride than the first,
with a lot more provocation, mischief, and intensity. It isn’t your classical
Year 2 book, that’s for sure. And the truth is, where writing the first book
was a bit daunting, I’m having a blast with the second one. I’m sure you’ll
agree with this, Ellen -- once you’re done writing the first book, you can
spread your wings and just fly.
(EO) – Oh kill me now! I can't wait. Thank Soman! I don’t know if you set out
to do this, but you have written a wonderful tale of girl friendship, strength
and empowerment. SGE is a wonderful Girl Power book and one I would gladly give
to my daughters and buy copies of to every girl I know. And I, for one,
seriously can’t wait for the next installment!!
(SC)
And I can’t thank you enough for your support and encouragement. For such a
talented writer to help other writers get their work read is a testament to
your character, energy, and passion for good books. Thank you so much for
having me!
My wonderful editorial team at HarperChildren's has very generously provided a SIGNED hardcover copy of THE SCHOOL OF GOOD AND EVIL for one lucky Inkpot winner! All you have to do is leave a comment about what your favorite fairy tale is and why!! One random winner (US only) will be chosen. Enter as many times as you want! The contest will run for two weeks and the winner announced at the following Shameless Saturday post!
