world solitaire challenge 30 25 june 2017

I stand by the belief that writing SOLITAIRE saved me. There was The Catcher in the Rye, and there was The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I couldn’t find one about a British girl like me. I couldn’t find any books about a sad teenage girl. It was something that allowed me to get all of my sad out and put it somewhere, as if writing it down was putting it into a specific drawer, then closing the drawer, and not thinking about it anymore. To say that it ‘saved me’ feels like an overstatement, but that’s pretty much what it did. I’ve written posts before about what writing my book was like. I just call it what it actually is – an emotion. I believe that ‘teenage angst’ is a pathetic and patronising way of phrasing feelings that millions of teenagers (and, let’s be honest, adults too) experience. I properly and utterly hated myself, for a whole array of reasons.Īdults call this ‘teenage angst’. I was angry about everything, I didn’t have very many friends, I hated school with an absolute rage, I listened to sad music on the bus. At fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I understood myself to have very much the average sort of ‘sad’. I have never been diagnosed with depression. I wrote SOLITAIRE because I was a very sad teenage girl. She has been diagnosed with severe depression, has been pronounced mentally ill, and I have been lauded for my portrayal of depression in young adults. She has been called an overdramatic, silly teenage girl. Since SOLITAIRE was published, Tori Spring has been called many things.

When I was seventeen, I wrote a book called SOLITAIRE, a coming-of-age story about a pessimistic sixteen-year-old named Tori Spring. In case you don’t know who I am, my name is Alice Oseman. Today, Alice Oseman, author of Solitaire, shares the inspiration for her debut novel, and how writing her book saved her.Īlice Oseman: I Wrote a Book about a Sad Girl

This week, authors Cynthia Hand, Michelle Falkoff, and Jasmine Warga have discussed why YA books that delve into mental health issues are so important.

World solitaire challenge 30 25 june 2017