Since November 2009American Saturday Interview: Amanda Howells
Posted on Saturday, July 10th, 2010 by Danielle
Amanda Howells’ book The Summer of Skinny Dipping has a well deserved spot on our Top 10 Summer Reads 2010 list. It was one of those books that stays with you long after you finish it and when I found out about the opportunity to interview Amanda I jumped at it! Take a minute to get to know a little more about Amanda’s debut novel and also some exclusive info about the author you won’t have seen anywhere else! Enjoy!
1. Tell our readers your version of what The Summer of Skinny Dipping is about.
It’s interesting to me that I can answer this question differently every time it’s asked. I guess the book is about several things, one of which is something I have a very hard time with: living in the moment. My main character, Mia, is a very analytical 16-year-old girl who thinks she has everyone and everything figured out in advance. But over the course of a single summer she discovers that life—and love—is rarely predictable, and happiness is fleeting so you must make the most of it and live fully in the present.
2. Mia’s relationships with all the different characters in the book are what make the book so dynamic. How did you create such a diverse setting?
I knew at the outset that I wanted the various characters in the book to shed layers as the story progressed and that even the minor characters needed to evolve in surprising ways. This is in part because a key theme of the story is how appearances can be deceptive. The story is entirely fiction but there are echoes of me in Mia: when I was a teenager I thought I had my parents and everyone else all figured out, but part of growing up is realizing that your perception of people is rarely, if ever, the truth of who they are.
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