Click here for If You Live Like Me Book Info, Orders and
Reviews from the Publisher, Lobster Press.
Click here for a Lobster Press blog interview with Lori about If
You Live Like Me.
Click here for an interview with Lori about If You Live Like Me
from Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf. Thanks Lauren!
Reviews from the Publisher, Lobster Press.
Click here for a Lobster Press blog interview with Lori about If
You Live Like Me.
Click here for an interview with Lori about If You Live Like Me
from Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf. Thanks Lauren!
Read what Lori has to say about If You Live Like Me:
My fifth young adult novel is a very special one for me because it is set in
one of my favourite places in the world: Newfoundland.
In 1991 I had the good fortune to move to Newfoundland with my husband
and baby daughter. We had no idea what to expect. My husband had
received a phone call from the English Department at Memorial University
(we were in Nova Scotia, where I did my Master’s Degree, at the time) and
they had kind of offered him a job. This was good news since we were both
without work at the time. The kind of is because they didn’t exactly have a
sure job for him, just a strong maybe. Well, it was enough to make us load
up the U-Haul and head to the ferry in North Sydney. It all seemed like a
great adventure at the time.
I had heard about Newfoundland and how beautiful it was supposed to be.
When I lived in Toronto at the age of nineteen I worked with a woman from
there and she talked about home all the time. I got the sense she really
missed it. She made it seem peaceful and idyllic, a place full of family and
close ties. On the ferry, which is a 14-hour ride, there was a great sense
amongst the Newfoundlanders that they were happy and excited to be on
their way home, like they couldn’t wait for the ship to pull into Argentia. As
the ferry swayed and rocked through the night they chattered, full of
anticipation that we shared.
All this strikes me as meaningful now to my book, because this novel is very
much about someone wanting to go home. The irony, however, is that my
main character, Cheryl, does not call Newfoundland home. It’s just one
other place she is being dragged to by her parents. Her “real” home is
Montreal, the place she had to leave three years ago when her father started
taking his family to strange places to study different cultures affected by
change. That is the home she desperately wants to return to. She’d do
anything to turn the plane around.
I think of myself all those years ago as a young mother with a six-week old
baby in my arms, wondering whether we had made the right decision to
make the crossing to the rocky island where we knew no one, not a soul.
The winds up on deck were so strong I was afraid my daughter would be
ripped from our arms and tossed into the wild waters.
In many ways this book is a tribute to the unexpected, to the idea of taking a
chance and allowing an experience to play itself out – like we did all those
years ago when we said yes to the sketchy job offer.
So often, we wish life were different, that we could be anywhere other than
where we are. When I wrote the book, I wondered about all the things we
would miss, that I might miss, if I lived life with that attitude. In a way, it’s
an attitude the media encourages people to have from an early age.
Advertisements are always telling us to want more, to want change, to make
ourselves different, to never be happy with what he have or who we are.
We ended up staying in St. John’s, Newfoundland, for two years. Luckily,
the maybe job offer turned into a real one. We made many good friends and
fell in love with the beauty and charm of the landscape on “The Rock.”
After our return to Montreal we went back a few times to visit old friends. It
was on a trip six years ago, after an absence of eight years, that my friend
Lori (to whom the book is dedicated) took me up Signal Hill (the hill made
famous by Marconi and his radio signal). It was a gorgeous sunny day. As I
stood at the top of the hill looking down over the rocks and into the water
where whales we playing, I was overcome with emotion. I knew I would
always miss this place. It was then that Cheryl began to speak to me.
Soon after my return, I wrote the opening scene.
My fifth young adult novel is a very special one for me because it is set in
one of my favourite places in the world: Newfoundland.
In 1991 I had the good fortune to move to Newfoundland with my husband
and baby daughter. We had no idea what to expect. My husband had
received a phone call from the English Department at Memorial University
(we were in Nova Scotia, where I did my Master’s Degree, at the time) and
they had kind of offered him a job. This was good news since we were both
without work at the time. The kind of is because they didn’t exactly have a
sure job for him, just a strong maybe. Well, it was enough to make us load
up the U-Haul and head to the ferry in North Sydney. It all seemed like a
great adventure at the time.
I had heard about Newfoundland and how beautiful it was supposed to be.
When I lived in Toronto at the age of nineteen I worked with a woman from
there and she talked about home all the time. I got the sense she really
missed it. She made it seem peaceful and idyllic, a place full of family and
close ties. On the ferry, which is a 14-hour ride, there was a great sense
amongst the Newfoundlanders that they were happy and excited to be on
their way home, like they couldn’t wait for the ship to pull into Argentia. As
the ferry swayed and rocked through the night they chattered, full of
anticipation that we shared.
All this strikes me as meaningful now to my book, because this novel is very
much about someone wanting to go home. The irony, however, is that my
main character, Cheryl, does not call Newfoundland home. It’s just one
other place she is being dragged to by her parents. Her “real” home is
Montreal, the place she had to leave three years ago when her father started
taking his family to strange places to study different cultures affected by
change. That is the home she desperately wants to return to. She’d do
anything to turn the plane around.
I think of myself all those years ago as a young mother with a six-week old
baby in my arms, wondering whether we had made the right decision to
make the crossing to the rocky island where we knew no one, not a soul.
The winds up on deck were so strong I was afraid my daughter would be
ripped from our arms and tossed into the wild waters.
In many ways this book is a tribute to the unexpected, to the idea of taking a
chance and allowing an experience to play itself out – like we did all those
years ago when we said yes to the sketchy job offer.
So often, we wish life were different, that we could be anywhere other than
where we are. When I wrote the book, I wondered about all the things we
would miss, that I might miss, if I lived life with that attitude. In a way, it’s
an attitude the media encourages people to have from an early age.
Advertisements are always telling us to want more, to want change, to make
ourselves different, to never be happy with what he have or who we are.
We ended up staying in St. John’s, Newfoundland, for two years. Luckily,
the maybe job offer turned into a real one. We made many good friends and
fell in love with the beauty and charm of the landscape on “The Rock.”
After our return to Montreal we went back a few times to visit old friends. It
was on a trip six years ago, after an absence of eight years, that my friend
Lori (to whom the book is dedicated) took me up Signal Hill (the hill made
famous by Marconi and his radio signal). It was a gorgeous sunny day. As I
stood at the top of the hill looking down over the rocks and into the water
where whales we playing, I was overcome with emotion. I knew I would
always miss this place. It was then that Cheryl began to speak to me.
Soon after my return, I wrote the opening scene.
