Interview de Carrie Kablean, auteur de "What Kitty (Bennet) did next"

Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai découvert avec un très grand plaisir What Kitty did next , une suite d'Orgueil & Préjugés écrite par l'australienne Carrie Kablean et publié chez Red Door. Le roman était en présentation sur une table à Gibert Joseph, après avoir lu la première page je me suis dit qu'il fallait absolument que je l'embarque avec moi et bien m'en a pris parce que je l'ai adoré. Je crois même que cette "austenerie" est devenue ma préférée. Pour lire mon avis plus en détails, vous pouvez vous reporter au topic du livre ici :

J'ai contacté Carrie Kablean en début de semaine pour lui présenter le forum en quelques mots et surtout lui demander si elle accepterait de répondre à quelques unes de mes questions (sur son roman, ses sources d'inspirations et bien sûr son rapport à Jane Austen), ce qu'elle a très gentiment accepté. Elle m'a aussi envoyée une vidéo dans laquelle elle lit un extrait de son roman 

Voici donc son interview en "totale exclu" pour Whoopsy Daisy 




1) When and how did you discover Jane Austen?
Pride and Prejudice was on the curriculum for my end of high school exams. I loved English Literature classes and my love of Jane Austen was born from the first pages of P&P. I would have been 15 or 16, I think. There has been no turning back!

2) What is your favorite novel of her?
That is a difficult one because each novel has its own charm and when I reread them I usually find some new insight or dry witticism. Having said that, I particularly like Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.

3) Have you seen the movie and tv adaptations of her novels? Which are your favorites  and which ones do you like the least ?
I am a great fan of the 1995 BBC-TV series of Pride and Prejudice, with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. The BBC does meticulous research with its settings and costumes, which is particularly useful for a novelist like me! Ang Lee’s Sense and
Sensibility (also 1995), with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman, is also a favourite. I tried to watch Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) but couldn’t finish it. I am too much of purist!



4) What made you want to write a sequel of Pride and Prejudice and especially to choose Kitty as heroine?
It all started when I was telling a friend that I didn’t like the casting of Kitty in the BBC TV Pride and Prejudice. That Kitty wasn’t my idea of Kitty, who I felt should be more delicate (as well as shorter than Lydia, who Jane Austen tells us is the “youngest [but] the tallest”). Also, I always felt a bit sorry for Kitty; she was overlooked and dismissed as silly – but who isn’t a bit silly in their teens? Nobody really paid her any attention (except to tell her to stop coughing!). Jane was everybody’s darling child; Elizabeth was her father’s favourite; Lydia was her mother’s favourite; Mary and Kitty were pretty much ignored. Mary was used as a figure of fun even though she was trying to better herself, but Kitty was just there. Coughing. Or crying! I thought there must be more to her than this; I felt the need to ameliorate her somehow. Give her a second chance.

5) If your novel had to be adapted into a film or a TV series, which actress would you like to see play Kitty?
It would have to be someone who was or looked 18! Lara Robinson is an Australian actress who played a young girl in a series called Upper Middle Bogan. She’d be good. Olivia Cooke (who played Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair) would also be a
contender. In my dreams, of course! 




6) Which Pride and Prejudice characters do you find the most difficult to write about? (I loved your Darcy by the way !! )
I don’t know how to answer that (although thank you for liking “my” Darcy!). I thought about the Bennet family and its dynamics so much that they all became part of my family almost. Especially Kitty. The more I thought about their motivations and desires and anxieties, the more I felt I understood them. When I had finished writing the book, Kitty was still in my head… I would be driving somewhere and wondering what Kitty would be doing that day!

7) I really appreciated that romance is in the background in your novel. It is really Kitty's personal journey and evolution that is at the centre of the story. Was it a wish on your part?
Absolutely. It was such a difficult time to be a woman, and all female ambition was supposed to be towards making an advantageous marriage. Plus, women had no rights! I saw it as a coming for age story. I wanted Kitty to blossom, to find herself and to set her horizons wider, to be seen as more than a wife– although of course I thought she deserved a good and loving husband!




8 ) Besides Jane Austen, who are your favorite authors or books?
My tastes are pretty catholic. The two books I have just finished reading are C J Sansom’s Dissolution, set in Tudor England; and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. Before those, I read Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was indeed wondrous. I like Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies; Truly Madly Guilty) for her small-scale but compelling dramas. I’ve always loved historical novels. Hilary Mantel is just amazing.

9) Do you read a lot of novels inspired by Jane Austen? Do you have some favorites ?
I have read some of the novels that inspired Jane Austen – such as Fanny Burney’s Camilla and Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa – and aim to read more. This was partly research, because I wanted to understand more about Jane Austen’s world. William
Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair was particularly useful, as well as brilliantly funny. Although written after Austen’s death, the action takes place from 1814. Austen has inspired so many authors. As for Austen-inspired novels, not so many
although Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones novels are great fun to read, and also to watch. I particularly like Jo Baker’s Longbourn, which gives us a different perspective of life in early 19 th -century England, the one from the servants’ point of view. Before I started writing Kitty I had no idea how much fan fiction there is out there.

10) Can you tell us more about your projects, or your next book ? 
I have two works in progress. One is another novel set in the same time period as What Kitty Did Next, but with only a scant connection to that novel – the heroine is related to Kitty by marriage. The second is set in the reign of Henry VIII. The Tudor period has Always fascinated me.




Et enfin, voici donc la vidéo dans laquelle elle lit un extrait du roman, à Chawton, la maison de Jane Austen :

Merci à Red Door editions pour l'extrait et bien sûr à Carrie Kablean pour m'avoir accordé un peu de son temps en se prêtant à ce jeu de questions-réponses

Merci pour cet interview très intéressante qui donne évidemment envie de lire le livre (j'ai aussi regardé la vidéo).

Ca m'a bien fait rire quand elle dit qu'elle ne pensais pas qu'il y avait autant d'oeuvres dérivées

J'aime bien sa description des soeurs et c'est vrai que les pauvres Mary et Kitty sont quand même pas mal laissé pour compte !

Oh merci Emjy, et bien sûr merci à Carrie Kablean de s'être prêté au jeu. Ce roman a été un de mes coups de cœur de l'an dernier , c'est donc un grand plaisir de pouvoir lire cette interview

De rien les filles, ça me fait plaisir   

@ Shelbylee : Oui c'est drôle qu'elle ait échappé à cette vague d'austeneries , je trouve ça pas plus mal finalement, ça ne l'aura pas influencé   

C'est vrai que Kitty et Mary sont les deux mal aimées de leur famille. Dans la production éditoriale, on peut dire néanmoins que Mary a nettement plus de chance. Il existe un assez grand nombre de romans dont elle est héroïne et je dois dire que la grande majorité ne me tente pas trop car j'ai l'impression qu'ils gomment totalement son côté ridicule ...

@ Miss Artemis : Oh je ne savais pas que tu l'avais lu et que tu l'avais autant aimé ! J'en suis ravie ! C'est vraiment un roman que j'ai été ravie de découvrir car je trouve qu'on en parle assez peu (merci encore à Gibert de l'avoir mis en valeur  )

Bravo pour ton interview, c'est génial et très interessant !
C'est vrai que je verrais très bien Olivia Cooke en Kitty !

Il faut que je le commande...

Merci pour cette interview
Ça ne m'étonne pas qu'elle ait aimé Longbourn
J'aime son approche par rapport à Kitty et l'envie de lui rendre justice. Contrairement à Mary dont les travers sont difficiles à ignorer, Kitty est une sorte de page blanche dont on sait finalement peu de choses si ce n'est l'opinion que les autres ont d'elle !