Under the Cover #9 with Kelly McCaughrain – author of Little Bang

Hello my bookish friends, it’s been a while since I did an ‘Under the Cover’ post and I’m really excited for this one. I read this author’s book in January and it made me sob so much. I was an emotional wreck – but what a book so I had to ask her some questions. I’m really excited to welcoming Kelly McCaughrain author of Little Bang to my blog.

Under the Cover is where I interview some of favourite authors and authors I’ve recently read and discovered. I’m trying to refresh my blog and I love interviewing authors and getting an insight into their storytelling, hence Under the Cover was born.

INTERVIEW WITH KELLY McCAUGHRAIN

Can you pick a quote to summarise your debut book Little Bang?

Thanks for having me on the blog! I think the quote that sums up my science-nerd protagonist is this one:

“I used to love theories. They seemed full of possibility. Now I know they’re just glorified unanswerable questions. And not even the important questions. Not the really difficult ones. Someday there’ll be a unified theory of the entire universe, but there will never be a unified theory of what I should do with this pregnancy.”

It’s a classic question, but one I love to ask debut authors, what started your love for writing?

I’ve been obsessed with stories all my life. As a tiny kid I remember noticing how The Little Mermaid was the only fairy tale with a sad ending and yet it was still the ‘right’ ending for the story and I wouldn’t have wanted it to end any other way, and wondering how and why that worked. Reading was always my favourite thing to do, and daydreaming stories has always been my escape. I can’t imagine not writing. 

Little Bang  is a really important YA novel, what made you want to write this book? 

It grew out of my realisation that I knew so little about abortion that I wouldn’t have felt comfortable voting in the Irish abortion referendum in 2018. It seemed crazy to me that I’d never been educated about something that, as a young woman, could potentially have had a life-altering impact on my future. And then I realised that sex-ed in schools hasn’t improved much since I was young, certainly in Northern Ireland, and I really wanted a book like this to exist for young people today. I started researching the subject just to work out my own feelings about it, but the more I read the angrier I got about how little I’d known, how vulnerable I’d been as a teen, and I really wanted to write about it. 

With hard hitting topics and themes including abortion in Ireland, freedom of choice – how did you approach the subject sensitively within your storytelling? 

I think you just have to present the people on both sides of the argument as what they are – normal, flawed human beings who care about something and have good intentions and are just doing their best. I really believe that people aren’t ‘bad’ just because they disagree with you, they’re just coming from very different life experiences. We’re all just products of our backgrounds. But I think that balance came about quite naturally in the story because writing the book was basically the process of me discovering and processing these issues for myself and I had to think about every angle in order to come to my own conclusions. So the reader gets to come on that same journey and then draw their own conclusions at the end. And I think getting inside the characters’ heads, even the ones you disagree with, and seeing why they are the way they are, makes it much harder to just dismiss them as ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ and I think that can only be a good thing in terms of how we communicate about these issues and we’re more likely to have healthy, productive conversations about it. 

I’ve never been interested in telling anyone what to believe, I just think it’s important that we make ourselves aware of all sides of the argument before we come to our conclusions, whatever they may be. I was never really encouraged to do that with regards to abortion because no one ever talked to me about it or told me anything about it, but it didn’t stop me having opinions which were largely based on myths and misinformation, and I think that’s probably the case for lots of people.

What message do you hope for readers to take away from your book?

I think the super power of any book is its ability to let a reader observe someone else’s life and see things from their perspective and I hope Little Bang does that too. I think it’s quite common for people to hold strong opinions about things like abortion that are based purely on their own situation or the people in their own lives. But when you say to them, ‘yeah, but what about women with abusive partners/financial insecurity/mental or physical health problems/caring responsibilities?’ etc etc etc, they quickly realise that one law does not fit all, unless it’s a law that allows everyone to make these choices for themselves because you are the only person who can know and judge your circumstances and what’s right for you. Mel spends a lot of time in the book trying to work out what the ‘right’ answer is and trying to get everyone to agree, before realising that getting everyone to agree isn’t the point. She just has to decide what’s right for her.

Mel and Sid are very special characters to me. I felt for them so much as you know, I admired their true feelings, their flaws and also their strengths. What was your favourite characteristic you enjoyed writing about these characters? 

I loved how their differences each filled a gap for other. Bad-boy Sid gives Mel the courage to rebel against her good-girl image, and it kind of has disastrous results but at the same time it’s exactly what she needs in order to stand up to all the adults in her life and make her own decisions. And Mel makes Sid wonder if there might be more to him than being the waster everyone expects him to be. They’re total opposites but they need each other. I also loved writing dialogue between them because it reminded me so much of hanging out with my friends and boyfriend at 16 and just talking bollocks for hours about everything and anything, back before life got so serious! (actually my boyfriend is now my husband and we still talk bollocks for hours). 

Did you come across any challenges when writing Little Bang? 

I was honestly a little bit worried about how people would react to it. With a subject that no one really talks about, it’s hard to know what even your friends and family think about it and I genuinely didn’t know how mine would react. Which seemed crazy, and made me think about how tough it must be for someone in Mel’s position. Who do you go to for help if you have no idea what your mum/sister/best friend thinks about this issue? How do you bring it up in conversation? But actually, what I’ve found is that as soon as I tell people about the book, they often start telling me their story of abortion/unplanned pregnancy/fertility issues/miscarriage/adoption/being denied an abortion etc. Because everyone has a story or knows someone who has one and I think they want to tell those stories, but these are things that just never come up in normal conversation. It’s like they’re sick of the silence and are just waiting for the opportunity to share their experience. I’ve been really touched by the things people have told me, and how many people have said they wish there’d been a book like this when they were young. I think the silence around these issues is really damaging and actually people want to be able to talk about it and not have to worry they’re going to be judged or stigmatised. 

As you know this book made me cry, it was the relationships in the book, which relationship or pair of characters did you enjoy writing the most?

Characters and relationships are everything to me and I think the plot always comes from those relationships so I’m so glad you enjoyed them! For me the relationship between Mel and Sid was the most important, but I actually enjoyed writing the relationship between Sid and his mum, Lucille, the most! They’re both headstrong, outspoken, stubborn characters and I think they are actually devoted to each other but they express it by yelling a lot! As Mel notices, they do nothing but argue, but there’s also nothing they won’t argue about, which means they actually communicate about really important subjects, in contrast to her family who are very polite to each other but avoid discussing anything emotional or troubling. 

Their relationship was also a really interesting insight into the realities of parenting, which I think is another thing no one really discusses with young people. Lucille loves her son, but she’s not a natural nurturer and parenting would not have been her first choice in life. She’s determined to have her own life, she’s not one of those helicopter parents who are at their kids’ beck and call, which I find totally relatable! Sid is determined that he’ll be a ‘better’ parent than her, but he quickly starts to see the realities of having to put yourself last and not being the centre of your own life, and I think by the end of the book he understands Lucille and the sacrifices she’s made a lot better. 

What’s next? I can’t wait for more, do you have another book in the works and if so can you describe it in 3 words?

Speculative fiction romance. I think. It’s written and I’m about to start editing it so everything could still change!

Finally, if you could recommend 3 books to read, what would it be? 

I’m going to recommend children’s and YA books because I think adults who don’t read them are missing out! If you think children’s books are less important than adult books, think about the books that have meant the most to you in your life, that have shaped you, stayed with you, left you grieving or joyful. I bet lots of them are children’s books. If you think children’s books are less well written than adult books, try holding the attention of a child for 300 pages! So: