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My Name is Mina

Mina was the most interesting character in my novel Skellig, published in 1998. My Name is Mina tells the story of her childhood. It develops and deepens the personality, attitudes and opinions that were such a powerful element of the earlier book. It is formally experimental, being written as Mina’s journal/notebook, comprising a collection of her stories, poems, songs, dreams and speculations. It contains empty pages, stories without words, pages of apparent nonsense. It encourages readers to experiment and to play with words, to be writers themselves. It invites them to take part in linguistic/philosophical/educational activities. It includes critiques of current educational practice, especially its concentration on testing, and shows that some commonly used methods of teaching of writing are seriously misguided. It draws on a long tradition of ‘experimental’ novels (eg Tristram Shandy with its pages bearing no text, Finnegan’s Wake with its nonsensical constructions). It draws on the poetry and philosophies of William Blake. It makes specific references to the art and thought of Paul Klee and Picasso, and draws on the philosophies of Zen Buddhism and the work and speculations of the composer John Cage. It draws on ancient mythology, specifically the tales of Orpheus, Persephone and Icarus. It is a book for children which, like Skellig, is widely read by adults, and as such, it has been reviewed seriously in the broadsheets. It has been published in many languages and is used widely in schools. It has helped to confirm the fact that writing for children can be of the highest literary standard, and that children’s literature is a place in which the writer has great freedom to explore literary form.