Author Interview: Biffy James chats to Youth Ambassador, Celine

Biffy James: Completely Normal (and Other Lies) 

Interview with Celine Lindeque

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Book Synopsis: 

Love has rules. So does grief. And Stella Wilde's about to break them all.

Stella Wilde is secretly in love with the hottest guy in school, Isaac Calder. He seems to love her back, but there’s a problem — he already has a girlfriend, the gorgeous Grace Reyes. 

When Isaac is killed in a car accident, the entire school is turned upside down with grief. And while Grace can mourn publicly, Stella has to hide her feelings to stop people from finding out about her and Isaac being more than friends. 

But how long can Stella keep lying — to herself and everyone else? And when the truth finally comes out, how will it affect her newfound friendship with Grace?

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Celine: First question: How would you describe the book, and who did you write it for? 

Biffy: I think I wrote it for me at 16. I've always thought that tragedy and comedy; they’re the same thing. You can't have one without the other. It's why I always tell my students anything can be made fun of. Anything. You just need to have two things: a good delivery and the right audience. 

So, the book is about death and depression, but I like to think it’s also funny, because those two things are so absurd. Death is absurd. Depression and mental illness too — it's absurd. And the fact they’re both still so stigmatised. I mean, the fact people say “passing away” or “oh, I lost someone.” I'm like, what? You lost him? Where? In the couch cushion? No, he died. And let's not be scared of that word. “Oh, I'm having a bit of a hard time.” No, you have depression! You have a mental illness. And it's okay to say that because so many people do. 

The book is also about teen feelings and teen love, and friendships and toxic friendships, but also beautiful female friendship. It really annoys me, for example, when you see amazing female friendships get depicted on screen and people try to find a lesbian subtext in it. Not everything has to be romantic. We've got our gay films and we’ve got our gay loves. And that’s amazing. But can’t we also celebrate the beautiful thing that is platonic friendship as well? And that's not only between two women; it's between a man and a woman, or two men. Male platonic relationships are celebrated all the time. Like buddy cop movies. No one's looking for some gay subtext in there! They can just be mates. So yeah, can we just celebrate platonic friendship between two women, or two girls, or a girl and a boy, which I think Stella and Mickey do really well [in the book]. They’re mates. Will they end up together? Probably. But in the mean time, they're just mates and that's awesome. 

Celine: You wrote half of Completely Normal (and Other Lies) about the relationship between Stella and Isaac, and then kill him off. Stella is then metaphorically haunted by wondering what she was to him, who he was to others, and by the actions he did and didn’t take. What did you want to explore through their relationship and the character of Isaac? 

Biffy: A very good friend of mine died very suddenly 10 years ago. And death is weird. Like Diane (Stella’s therapist) says in the book: grief is weird. It makes no sense. I remember asking myself what our friendship meant to him after he died, and realising there’s almost this hierarchy of grief. Especially with young death. All these people come out of the woodwork saying “oh I knew him”, which I explore through Reena in the book. People say “everyone processes grief in different ways, blah blah blah” and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. But, as Stella muses throughout the book, and as I do, I’m like, actually there is. 

I still remember trying to find an outfit for my mates memorial service and people telling me “no ones gonna care.” I’m like, yeah, but I care. I’m not rocking up in, like, jeans and a bra. I need to be respectful, but also me, but also honour him. And then at the wake I’m bawling my eyes out, my makeup is everywhere, and I remember being really worried thinking, “I look awful.” And people were like, “it’s okay, no one's going to be judging you.” I was like, I know that, but I’m trying to do this correctly. I’m trying to grieve correctly. But then, as with Stella, how do you grieve someone when no one knows you love them? How do you do that without looking like Reena going “oh, I’m so sad” who is doing it for attention. How can you be sad in public, especially as a teenager, without someone thinking something about you from that? 

Celine: The book contains many different friendship and relationship dynamics. Firstly, I wanted to talk about Stella and her long term “friends” who belittle and insult her through backhanded compliments. This leads to Stella closing herself up and ignoring them the best she can, because, as she says, “you can’t just break up with friends like you can a boyfriend.” Talk to me about this friendship dynamic and why Stella can’t just break up with them? 

Biffy: So, I went to an all girls school when I started year seven. And you know, you find a friendship group, right? But from the ages of like 12 to 16 the amount of growth and change you go through is huge and you're finding yourself and your identity and all that.  

I reached 15/16 and I hit my rebellious phase. This was also the late 90s and early 2000s, so I’ve got a nose ring and I’m wearing so much eyeliner. I also had nothing to rebel against, but I was 16 and feeling really rebellious. And my parents had the gall to be awesome and supportive. And then my friendship groups that I found in year seven were all playing netball and hockey and getting elected school captains. And it was just so far removed from where I was that of course there was going to be conflicts. And it was a relationship that had no actual conflicts. That was the problem. We just all grew to be incredibly different people.  

When that happens in any other relationship, whether it's a work relationship, or a romantic relationship, you know, you can sit down and say, “you know what, this isn't the right fit for me anymore, so I'm going to move on.” You cannot sit down with friends, especially in high school, and say, “hey, look, we had a really good run, but we’ve just run apart. I wish you all the best, but we're just not a good fit anymore.” You can do that with a boyfriend. You can do that with work. But I think friendship groups are literally one of the only relationships that for some reason, that doesn't happen. 

The only way it does happen is when it gets to such a toxic point, it all falls apart in a huge fight. Especially with women and girls because it's supposed to be the whole ride or die thing. And yeah, that’s awesome when it's working. But if it's not working, you need to be able to sit down with a mate and be like, hey, we're done. But it doesn't exist in teenage friendship, particularly with girls. There is no precedent. Can you can even think of any example where a 16-year-old girl can sit down with a bunch of other 16-year-old girls and say, “hey, this isn't working for me” and come out of that situation unscathed? 

Celine: Yeah no, it doesn’t happen. 

Yeah! So I found that fascinating, that you know, you can break up with any relationship in the world, except a friendship group in high school. 

And it’s no one's fault. It's just that when you're 11, and then when you're 16, you're a completely different person. And the friends that you made when you were 11 probably won't match you anymore. And that's okay, it just means there has been growth. Like, yay, that's what we want! It's just we grew in different directions. But then some people are just like absolute b****** like Reena. We all know a Reena. 

Celine: This experience Stella has with her terrible “friends” is then contrasted with her newfound friendship with Grace (Isaac’s “widowed-girlfriend”). While unhealthy for other reasons, their friendship is a far better representation of a healthy female friendship. What do you think makes their relationship so much better?  

Biffy: Stella can be Stella with Grace. Like, even though she's lying to Grace, the lie isn't about who Stella is as a person. She's completely herself with Grace. In the same way that she was completely herself with Isaac and then is with Mickey. I think that's why their friendship endures. Also, I think Grace is one of those incredibly rare human beings who knows how to forgive and how to see the big picture. She could be like, “oh this b****, blah blah blah.” But she understood what she'd lose from that. I think Grace is just perfect in every way, let's be fair.  

Celine: Let’s talk more about Grace. She’s the most popular girl in school, and is universally deemed to be the prettiest and kindest. She’s self-confident in all aspects of her life, not just her body as a plus-size girl. People wrongly assume she shouldn’t have the confidence she does because of her size. But, as Grace says, she “isn’t like [another character], who can’t look in the mirror without seeing something she hates about herself.”  

I feel like we don’t get enough female characters like her in YA — female characters who don’t hate their bodies, and in fact actively love themselves. Why did you decide to write Grace in this way? 

Biffy: I wrote my thesis on the movie Heathers and I remember watching the first episode of the TV series. They cast this amazing actress, and she's a plus-size actress and everyone is still terrified of Heather Chandler [like in the movie], but no one wants to be with her. And I remember watching it going, “why couldn’t you still make her hot?” You ticked a box like, “look, we’ve cast a plus-sized actress, go us! We’re so amazing.” And that’s great. Awesome. But you took away her sex appeal. And she's a stunning girl! Yeah she's fat, and yes I'm saying the F word. I don't think it should be a dirty word. Like, why is fat offensive when skinny isn’t? And that was my motivation. I went: I want a hot girl who is fat. I can't call Grace that, but Grace can call herself that. So, I was very careful to describe her in a way that makes her obviously plus-size. But Grace is the only one who uses the “F word” about herself. And yeah, Grace absolutely came about because of watching that episode thinking “you have just cast the most stunning plus-sized actress and then you’ve gone and said she's popular because she's scary, not because she's hot.” You've taken away her sex appeal. I'm not saying that's the only thing girls should have. But I think in this current day and age, if you cast a fat character and then take away her attractiveness — that's just a dog move. So yes, it was very deliberate to make Grace plus size and hot and awesome.  

Celine: Final question: What’s next for you? Please tell me you’re writing more books. 

Biffy: I am definitely writing a second book. It is in the works at the moment. It's a bit darker. It’s a bit more crime-y. Crime-y, is that a word? It’s called Revenge on a Small Town. It’s about two sisters who arrive in a small town, 15 years apart, and about what happens to them when they're there. It’s The Dressmaker slash The Crucible as a young adult novel.  

Celine: That sounds amazing! I can’t wait to read it. 

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Biffy James will be discussing Completely Normal (and Other Lies) at Love YA on June 1st. She will be joined by Megan Williams, author of Let’s Never Speak of This Again, in a session moderated by Jane Sullivan. Tickets are free, so get in quick — click below to book now!