JENNIFER HUBBARD: UNTIL IT HURTS TO STOP

     I met Jennifer Hubbard at an SCBWI conference this past June, and in August I interviewed her for this blog.  There, I noted that Hubbard's third published YA novel, UNTIL IT HURTS TO STOP, was due to be published by Viking in September 2013, and that I couldn't wait to meet Maggie, its protagonist, when that happened.  I must confess that it's taken me until the end of November to meet Maggie (my fault, not hers!), and the pleasure it brought me exceeded all my expectations.  In fact, this book was not only a gripping read; it dealt with the topic of bullying in such a deep and powerful way that I think it should be on the required reading list at every high school in the country.
     Seventeen-year-old Maggie Cameron was bullied mercilessly in junior high school by Raleigh and her posse, apparently targeted for no better reason than that Raleigh had sniffed out her vulnerability.  All through seventh and eighth grade, Maggie lived her school days in a constant state of terror, never knowing when or how the next attack would strike.  Her intensely vivid flashbacks illustrate that for her, she had survived the equivalent of two years in a war zone.
     Maggie's reprieve arrived in the form of Raleigh's family's relocation to Italy after her eighth-grade graduation.  In the years since, Maggie has been able to relax her constant vigil - but only to a degree.  She is not about to win any popularity contests, but she's managed to form two close friendships: with Sylvie, to whom she can talk about almost anything, and with Nick, whose stepfather has taught him and Maggie hiking and mountaineering skills.  Over the past few months, Nick's stepfather has dropped out of their increasingly ambitious hikes, due to problems with his knees, and Nick and Maggie's solo outdoor ventures have brought her a kind of joy she's never felt before.  Now, she's tentatively beginning to try to sort out how much of the joy stems from the sense of accomplishment and power that climbing a mountain can bring, and how much stems from being with Nick.  But what good does it do to try to decipher how she feels about Nick when no boy could possibly ever be attracted to her?  Because if there was one thing Raleigh and Company made crystal clear to Maggie, it was that she was permanently, incurably unlovable.
     And then.. Maggie's worst nightmares comes true.  Raleigh is suddenly here, back from Italy, attending Maggie's high school, and Maggie's fragile new sense of safety and security is swept away like a mountain climber halfway to the summit being overpowered and swept to his death by a deadly gust of wind.
     Every word of dialogue in this book rings true, from the kindness and compassion Nick and Maggie show each other, to the cruelty Raleigh once inflicted on her hapless victim, to everything in between.  Because Hubbard gives us plenty of nuanced and conflicted secondary characters: Adriana, who used to be Raleigh's sidekick back in the dark days, but who now seems to want to be something different; Vanessa, who's girly and popular but whom Maggie would probably like anyway, if she weren't much too interested in Nick; and Sylvie, who pulls back from Maggie just when Maggie needs her most.  And, because it's actually not all about Maggie, we learn that Nick has his own personal Raleigh - one even harder to fight back against, because it's his emotionally abusive father, no longer a part of Nick's household but still very much a part of Nick's psyche.
     Hubbard told me in her interview that she wanted this book to explore, not so much bullying itself, but its aftermath, and that's indeed what it does.  No one is spared.  I've heard it said that when people become addicted to drugs or alcohol, they stop growing emotionally, so they remain arrested at the age at which their addiction began.  In a similar way, Hubbard suggests, victims of abuse become so traumatized that their development is arrested too.  Perhaps because Maggie has loving and supportive parents, she doesn't respond to her victimization by identifying with her tormenter and becoming one herself.  She does, however, discover to her horror that because of the trauma she's experienced, she seems not to have developed a normal level of empathy.  Her damaged view of the world is polarized between Me - the one everything is wrong with - and Not-Me - the people for whom life is smooth and easy, and whose inner lives therefore don't require much attention.  It's only when Maggie unwittingly jeopardizes both her friendship with Sylvie, and the possibility of having something more than friendship with Nick, that she must face the fact that no one goes through life without having to deal with fear, loss, and insecurity, and that from time to time everyone needs a helping hand.
    I plan to get in touch with my local school board to recommend adding UNTIL IT HURTS TO STOP to its high-school curriculum.  It not only conveys truths about relationships and power that would benefit all teens; its characters are utterly believable, its story line is memorable, and the writing is so good that it's almost invisible.  This is Hubbard's best book yet, and the most wonderful part of it all is that I feel absolutely certain that there are even better ones still to come.  Maggie finds her power in this book, and so does Jennifer Hubbard.

INTERVIEW: Y.A. AUTHOR JENNIFER HUBBARD

                                                 

 

 

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Jennifer Hubbard in June at the New Jersey SCBWI Conference

when one of my volunteer assignments was to be her "faculty liaison." I didn't know what this meant,

but fortunately, neither did she, so I was able to fake it. I had signed up to attend both of the work-shops she co-presented with Kit Grindstaff, and as soon as they ended I proceeded straight to the Conference book sale, where I bought Jennifer's first two published YA novels, THE SECRET YEAR and TRY NOT TO BREATHE. Jennifer describes her work as "minimalistic contemporary realism" (see below), and that's a genre I feel is underrepresented these days in YA. At the book signing, Jennifer graciously agreed to let me interview her for this blog. Fortunately, I'm able to post our interview before the Sept. 12th anticipated release date of her third published YA, UNTIL IT HURTS TO STOP (Viking Press). What this means is that you now have time to pre-order!

 

 

 

   
   1. In each of your first two novels, SECRET YEAR and TRY NOT TO BREATHE, the

protagonist has suffered a loss and now feels an impulse to embark on new relationships, but

finds that a longing for something from his past is holding him back. For Colt in SECRET

YEAR, it’s memories of a girl who has died; for Ryan in TRY NOT TO BREATHE, it’s a girl

who has now made it clear that she wants their relationship to stay platonic. Did you

consciously choose to leave both boys in unsettled emotional states as their stories ended? If so,

why?

 

     In both cases, I felt that a “Hurray, all my problems are solved!” ending would be unrealistic. But

 I also view these endings as the points where each boy has achieved a measure of peace and hope.

 They both are forever changed by what they’ve gone through, but they also have plenty to look

forward to.

 

   2. SECRET YEAR puts a lot of its focus on class distinctions between the teens who live in

The Flats and those who live on The Hill. Colt makes a point of assuring the reader that his and

 Julia’s story is not Romeo and Juliet’s, because if they had taken their relationship public, no

blood would have been spilled. But is Julia’s name really a coincidence rather than a reference?

 Is it your impression that caste systems still operate as overtly and intensely in American small

 towns as they do in this novel?

 

  Julia’s name is a semi-coincidence. I originally chose her name just because I like it and thought it

suited her ... but when I realized the connection with Juliet, I was happy to get that additional layer of

meaning from it.

  I do think that divisions in our culture, whether based on income, politics, education, race, religion,

 or ethnic background, do operate this intensely—and often even more intensely. They can be overt,

or subtle and insidious.

  Colt and Julia mostly use the economic division between them as an excuse for secrecy; it’s a self-

imposed limit, an aphrodisiac, an important tool in the particular game they play. Yet as much as they

 mock this division, it affects them in more subtle ways that they don’t fully understand. Where you

live, what kind of future you can expect, who you’ll meet, are all at least partly determined by

 income.

 

   3. TRY NOT TO BREATHE has a teen protagonist who was hospitalized following a suicide

attempt and is trying to readjust to ordinary life. Who is the reader you saw in your mind’s eye

as you were writing about Ryan and his struggles? What aspects of Ryan surprised you by

appearing unplanned on the page while you were writing the novel?

 

   I didn’t have a specific ideal reader in mind. I just wanted the book to feel true—not that there is

only one truth, but that it would reflect a believable scenario.

   One thing that pleasantly surprised me was Ryan’s loyalty. I knew his bond with Jake and Val was

strong, but I also knew the distance between them was causing problems, and I didn’t realize until

late in the book just how strong their underlying bond was. Ryan would go anywhere or do anything

for them—and they would for him—even if they don’t see each other much anymore.

The fact that he wanted to go sky-diving also surprised me!

 

   4. Your newest YA novel, UNTIL IT HURTS TO STOP, will release on September 12^th. Is

there anything about its plot and/or characters that you’d like to share here? How did it feel to

get into the head of a female protagonist after having male narrators in your first two books?

In what ways was it easier for you to write your third novel than your first? In what ways was

it harder?

 

   The short version of this book is: In junior high, Maggie was an outcast, bullied by her classmates.

Then her chief tormentor moved away, and high school proved to be less brutal, although Maggie has

 never truly let her guard down. She only finds peace when hiking in the mountains—with a friend

who may be turning into more. But just when Maggie thinks she can move beyond her fears and her

sense of worthlessness, her old enemy returns to town.

   When I wrote short fiction, I had both male and female narrators, about fifty-fifty. I have written

 both male and female narrators for novels, too, but it just happens that the first two novels that sold

 had male narrators!

   This book was very hard to write, harder than the first two. Not because of the female narrator, but

because I was balancing the hiking, romance, and bullying plotlines, and finding the balance among

them took a while.

 

   5. You’re a member of YA OUTSIDE THE LINES, a group of YA author/bloggers whose

motto is “YA Novelists Pushing the Boundaries of the Genre and Writing From the Heart.”

What has that membership meant to you, both personally and professionally? In what ways do

you feel you push the boundaries of the genre?  Are there any ways in which you would like to

do so more?

 

     I love blogging—I have my own blog, too. A group blog is fun because I only write one post a month, but I get to see all these other bloggers’ variations on the monthly topic. Sometimes the posts are heartrending, full of raw emotion; other times they’re light and funny. I was a regular reader of the blog before they invited me to join.

     As far as boundary pushing, I’m a little unusual in writing minimalistic contemporary realism at a time when long, description-rich paranormal and fantasy books are more dominant.

     I’ve experimented with form and format and unusual point-of-view, but haven’t yet produced a publishable novel from those experiments. I keep trying, though. Try Not to Breathe actually started out as a verse novel.

     I do try to take slightly unusual angles on my stories. Many books about suicide end with the character’s decision to die or not, or they begin after a suicide has occurred. In Try Not to Breathe, I wanted to explore what happens after an attempt; where does the character go then? In Until It Hurts to Stop, I wanted to look at the aftermath of bullying, the way it affects people even after the abuse stops. 

 

 

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I want to thank Jennifer so much for taking the time to answer my questions to close to the

release date of UNTIL IT HURTS TO STOP, when I'm sure she has quite a few other things she

could be doing instead. In addition to her monthly blog posts at YA Outside the Lines, Jennifer does indeed have her own personal blog at http://jenniferrhubbard.blogspot.com (note the middle initial R!) She can be found on Twitter at @JennRHubbard, and her website is www.jenniferhubbard.com, where all her other contact and social media information can be found. Jennifer is represented by Ginger Knowlton at Curtis Brown. Thank you for stopping by, and please don't forget to pre-order your copy of UNTIL IT HURTS TO STOP! I, for one, can't wait to meet Maggie in September!