David Hill on Evolving in Young Adult Fiction

By Dominique Wong, March 14, 2016

This is part of our series of interviews with some of the speakers at the 2016 Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival and the 2016 M Mini March Literary Festival in Shanghai.

David Hill made me cry. It happened over a decade ago in a small-town classroom during a reading of his young adult novel See Ya, Simon. I wasn’t the only one; even the teacher was in tears.

See Ya, Simon, published in 1992, was New Zealand author David Hill’s first foray into writing young adult fiction (YAF). The book concerns a young boy coming to grips with the impending death of his best friend, the titular Simon, who suffers from muscular dystrophy.

Hill deftly paints the subject matter with shades of light and serious undertones. All the typical hallmarks of youth are present: the schoolyard bully and girl-next-door crush, family drama and… suffering.

And yet, See Ya, Simon is ultimately a moving portrayal of friendship, which, over the years, has become somewhat compulsory reading for all young New Zealanders. The Catcher in the Rye of Kiwi classrooms, if you will.

But, as Hill explains over Skype from New Zealand, See Ya, Simon is also a deeply personal book.

“It is the novel most closely connected to somebody in my family,” he explains. “Simon [real name Nick] was one of my daughter’s best friends, and his death left her distraught and fearful. I’ve never written another novel so raw.”

Altogether Hill has published 28 YAF novels and four collections of short fiction for adults. After graduating with a degree in English literature and teaching high school students for 14 years, it seems Hill’s transition to becoming a full-time writer occurred naturally.

“Reading other writers made me think ‘wow, I’d love to be able to try and write stories’ plus things that happened to a lot of my students made me feel like I wanted to write about [these issues].

“Writing for young adults is brilliant,” Hill continues. “Teenagers are quite sophisticated in some ways because they understand all sorts of narrative techniques, but at the same time, they’re wonderfully naïve and innocent in some ways.”

David Hill

From running away and a hiking trip gone wrong, to selfharm and competitive sport, Hill’s fiction covers all the bases of the (supposedly) ‘best days of our lives.’

But his novels have recently turned toward the past. Three of his latest novels, for example, are set during World War I, the Korean War and the Pacific nuclear tests of the 1970s. Plus, during our Skype, Hill shows me the cover (an illustration of bullet casings) of his about-to-be-released novel, Enemy Camp, which is set during World War II.

So, do Hill’s readers enjoy the added bonus of a history lesson?

“It’s only one of the secondary concerns. The story matters more, especially for young readers. You can’t bluff teenagers, so there’s no use lecturing them. What I try to do is write a reasonably interesting story, and the historical details come into that.”

My Brother’s War, published in 2012 and set during WWI, is a great example of Hill’s eye for narrative. He uses simple language and technique to show conflicting ideologies between two brothers during wartime: one a soldier, the other a conscientious objector. The trench descriptions feel particularly vivid and ghastly.

But I can’t help but wonder, at 70-something years of age, does Hill feel as if he’s getting a little bit over the, well, hill?

“I have to be careful now because I know how out of touch I am with contemporary teenagers; I mean, it’s inevitable,” he admits. “So, I just have to write about it respectfully. It’s probably been a factor in my writing more and more books with historical settings.

“One thing I do with anything I write [that is] set in contemporary times is to get it checked by a teenager of the appropriate age. I pay them to make sure they read it properly.”

Despite his propensity to make small children and adults cry, Hill is incredibly generous and self-deprecating. He jokes: “If Eleanor [Catton; author of The Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Luminaries] is the champagne of New Zealand wine, I’ll be the cooking sherry.”

My Brother's War was published by Aurora Metro Press and is available on Amazon or through The Bookworm.

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