AUTHOR CHAT GAYLE FORMAN
YA sensation Forman, whose 2009 novel If I Stay became a big-screen drama starring Chloë Grace Moretz, returns with another emotional yarn about friendship and finding our voice. In I Have Lost My Way (Simon & Schuster, $19.99)— told over the course of a day from three perspectives—the Brooklyn-based author explores the transformative power of music, alongside themes of mystery, tragedy and romance, as she tells WHO’S Karina Machado.
What inspired your new book?
I wrote my last YA novel in 2011 (it was published in 2015) and I spent a good chunk of years, trying, and failing, to write something new. I began, and then abandoned, seven different projects. I hated everything I was producing. It all seemed trite, wooden, inauthentic. I began to wonder if I could write anymore. I have told myself stories since before I could write—it was how I made sense of the world, how I kept myself company—and now I couldn’t. I kept thinking, “I have lost my way.” And then after a few months of this, the [protagonist] character of Freya was saying it, too. That was the spark of the book.
Themes of loss and fate are prominent in your work. What drives your exploration of these big ideas?
I am interested in finding meaning in pain, not why it happened, but what can happen as a result of it. Sometimes the hardest experiences are the most clarifying. Loss or trauma, once we get over the initial jolt, can redirect lives.
Music plays a big part in this novel—how important is music in your life?
Huge. It’s been in four of my six YA novels. Music is an emotional language. Sometimes you hear a song and it elicits such a pure reaction unlike anything else. There’s also just something about a young person committing to a life of creativity ... My oldest daughter is entering high school and she really wanted to go to a performing arts school. On the day I dropped her off at her audition there were hundreds of young people streaming into the building—holding instruments, wearing dance gear, clutching art portfolios. All that youth and art and hope and possibility. I was incredibly moved.
How are you navigating the teenage years you explore in your books?
I have two girls, ages 10 and 13. My younger one is too little to read the books, but she’s sweetly supportive. My 13-year-old is actually kind of helpful. I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I like how it connects and informs, but dislike how it makes me frame experiences as something for broadcast. My daughter loves that. She’s come of age with it. It made me understand Freya a little bit more.
What memory most stands out to you from your own teen years?
After I graduated high school, I bought a one-way ticket and a backpack and took off travelling through Europe. The first stop was Amsterdam and my friend and I got hopelessly lost finding our youth hostel. I remember how out of place I felt. How young and stupid. And how a few months later, I returned to Amsterdam, as a seasoned traveller, comfortable in a world that had seemed so foreign. I’ve never stopped relishing the moment when the unfamiliar and intimidating become known.
Is there a film in the works for this book?
We are only just now sending it out to the Hollywood folks. But I have a really strong vision of how this should be and I’m excited to get going on it.
Were you pleased with the film of
If I Stay? Oh, yes. A lot of fans told me how much they loved the movie and how it wasn’t different from the book at all. It was quite different in fact. You have to make changes and choices when you adapt a book. But the fact that fans felt this way means that the emotional experience of the film reflected the emotional experience of the book, and that to me is a sign of a successful adaptation.
What’s next? Are you brewing a new story?
I have so many different projects in the works. I seem to have come out of that creative slump with a new energy. I’m interested in different ways to tell stories about different characters. So I’m very excited about what the next few years will bring.