KBR is delighted to welcome award-winning author Anna Fienberg, as she tells us the story behind her novel Horrendo's Curse, which has now been given new life as a graphic novel.
The novel Horrendo’s
Curse was a joy to write. Creating pirates with dreadful manners and rude
ways meant I had to become one of them, and so I felt strangely free (as well
as a bit shocked at myself). ‘How
far will we go?’ I often asked Squid or Dogfish, as they lay about the deck
picking their teeth or squabbling with each other.
Sometimes I laughed out loud
at one of their particularly cunning insults. My dog Figaro, who liked to sleep
on my feet as I wrote, probably didn’t enjoy the process as much as I did. He
was forever leaping up in fright and bumping his head on the desk as I tried
out a pirate curse or a new sword-fighting move.
I had a lot of
fun with this book, but the origins of the story were far from funny. One night
I watched a documentary about a small rural village where thirteen and fourteen-year-old girls
were regularly stolen from their homes. Young men from a distant village came riding
by on horses, picking up the girls they fancied. They slung them on the saddle
behind, and then made the long ride back to their own village. There they ‘married’
the girls, who became mothers to their children. The girls were treated as domestic
slaves, and most never saw their own families ever again.
On the screen, the misery of the girls was striking. And yet
the girls’ own families seemed to accept this tradition as the way of the
world, an unchangeable law that was even respected. In fact, when one of the
girls escaped, she was found and punished by her own family for her ‘sins’.
After I switched off the TV that night, I couldn’t get to
sleep. I was too angry and upset. I felt so keenly for those girls who had no
choice in their destiny. But what continued to nag me well into the next day
and the next, was the mystery of how those young men could live side by side
with the women they’d stolen and not feel their misery. How could they? Where was their human
empathy? How had they become so unfeeling?
Mostly, when an
idea comes for a story, it arises out of an experience that is intense and
deeply moving. You think about it constantly, wrestling with the emotions and
thoughts … until eventually — enough! — you realise you have to write about it. And this is what happened to me after
seeing this documentary.
I wanted to explore
how and why people became uncaring, and have no feeling for the humanity of
others. I wanted to try to make sense of things. But I knew I couldn’t write
about this particular village — I didn’t know or understand the culture. And I
wanted to take the subject further, to universalise it. And so I decided to
write a story. Fantasy can explore aspects of human behaviour in a way that
becomes even truer than real life.
What would happen, I wondered, if a huge dollop of pure
kindness were cast into a brutal world? A continuous, unchanging, irritating
itch of kindness? A boy called Horrendo, cursed by a charming spell …
The novel Horrendo’s
Curse was published in 2001 and won an Honour award from the Children’s
Book Council of Australia. The pencil illustrations scattered throughout by Kim
Gamble (illustrator of the Tashi
books) are loved for both their tenderness and cheeky scallywag quality. And
now the book has become a graphic novel. Alison Koostra, who adapted the novel
into this gorgeous comic book, consulted me on the development, and it was
great fun! We laughed a lot together and swapped new and outrageous piratical insults.
I also learnt a lot along the way. It was a little like seeing how how a screenplay
might be written — all thoughts and description are translated into dialogue
and action, and the exciting pictures by Remy Simard tell the story. In a way,
the pictures become the narrator, and it all moves along at a fabulous pace.
I’m so happy
that the story of Horrendo has come alive again in this different way. Maybe it
will reach a new audience, who will perhaps enjoy the jokes as well as think a
little about human kindness and what a real treasure that is in this world.
Horrendo’s Curse is published by Allen & Unwin and is available now at all good bookshops and online; $14.99 RRP.