Vahini Naidoo’s moody and dark Fall to Pieces is a startling debut by a young author, dealing with issues such as memory, death, loss and redemption. A conversation with the teen author follows.
YOUNG ADULT: What made you decide to start writing?
VAHINI NAIDOO: I’m not really sure. It’s something I’ve been doing ever since I can remember, but I’m sure there was a particular book when I was young that inspired me. It’s a shame I can’t remember what it is, because I’m sure it was awesome!
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work.
VN: Quite simply, Fall to Pieces is about a girl who commits suicide by jumping off the roof at a party and dies in a tangle of weeds in front of a garden gnome, and the effect that it has on her best friends.
YA: What are some of the qualities in your latest work that set it/you apart from what’s currently out there on the young adult market?
VN: Hmm, tough question. There’s so much out there on the Young Adult market, it’s hard to think of a quality that isn’t satisfied in some work or another. I think perhaps Fall to Pieces has an intensity and a rawness that isn’t seen too often.
YA: Can you describe the path to getting this work published? What were the challenges? What was easy about it?
VN: The actual drafting of Fall to Pieces was a cinch — I wrote it to procrastinate from studying during an exam period and it took me all of three weeks. Revisions with my agent took several months and were somewhat more difficult, and revisions with my editor were longer still and also quite difficult. Probably the greatest challenge for me in terms of getting this work published was keeping sane during the submission process, which took several months.
YA: What were your specific influences for this book? Films, literature, other stories?
VN: I don’t think I had any specific influences for this book. Fight Club perhaps, and Palahniuk’s work in general, may have influenced certain things about the work.
If you could cast the Dream Film Adaptation of your work, who would you cast?
VN: There are a lot of great actresses out there, but a girl I saw once at McDonald’s looked exactly like my main character and had similar mannerisms, too. So in a perfect world, I’d be able to somehow track that girl down again and cast her.
If you hadn’t become an author, what path would your career have perhaps taken?
VN: Well, I’m still quite young so I feel like my career could still take many paths — nearly any path. However, academia does particularly appeal to me.
