-Our next guest tonight is a very talented author
whose beautiful debut novel "Golden Child" is available now.
Please welcome to the show, Claire Adam, everyone.
[ Cheers and applause ]
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♪♪
Hi, Claire! Welcome!
-Oh, thank you so much for having me.
-This book is -- it's beautiful.
It is -- There are parts of it that are very exciting.
It is haunting.
It takes place in Trinidad. You are from there.
-Yes.
-I've heard you say that it is inspired a bit by,
obviously, your upbringing there. How so?
-Yeah, I mean, it sort of overlaps just a little bit
with my family stories.
So, I was born in Trinidad.
And I lived there until I was 18.
I was the youngest of four kids.
And so, when I was growing up there,
it was sort of during the '80s and '90s.
And we were having a recession in Trinidad at the time.
So a lot of people were trying to emigrate.
So, amongst my family, we were all quite smart, quite academic.
So, like, I guess my parents sort of had this idea for us
that we would all go to universities in North America.
And so, yeah, we just had to work very hard and study
and get into these great schools and hopefully get scholarships.
-Education does serve as sort of the escape
for these children in this book. -Yeah.
-And it also is a sort of oppressive idea of, like,
having to succeed enough to achieve that escape.
How did your -- your mother is Irish?
-That's right.
-And your father is from Trinidad.
How did they meet?
-Yeah, so, they were both doctors.
My mom had come from Ireland and my dad from Trinidad.
And they were both working in a hospital together.
I think it was in Nottingham.
And so, in the doctors mess room, they were playing cards.
Like, I don't know if they're looking after patients or what.
So, I think romance happens in these places.
-How do they feel about having --
two doctors having a writer for a daughter?
-Yeah, I think they're quite excited.
Like, we all kind of did science.
So, I did science originally. I did physics.
And my siblings all did science as well.
Yeah, so, I did the physics at college and then, you know,
physics was very hard.
And I had always sort of had this idea of writing as well.
So, after I finished college,
you know, I thought, "Okay, I think now is my time."
-And your siblings -- is it true your siblings were nervous
when they heard you were writing a book?
-Well, a little bit, because they knew it was set in Trinidad
and they knew it was about these, you know,
kids who have to work very hard and they're sort of looking for
their ticket out and the scholarship,
and each of them were like, "Is it about me?"
And I was like, "No, no. It's gonna be okay."
And they were like, "Oh, my gosh."
And so actually, I didn't let them read it
until I was kind of -- until I sort of had the --
-It was too late. -Exactly.
[ Laughter ]
You're like, "Sorry, it already came back from the printer.
What are you gonna do?"
-Yeah, that's right.
-And you ended up going to Brown.
And you said you were the youngest.
And your parents were a little over the idea
of moving their kids into dorms?
-Yeah, well, so it was -- I mean, I was the youngest.
You know, my mom went with my brother and dropped him off
at college, and this is, like, a flight from Trinidad,
so it's a whole big deal, and then she went with my sister
and then she went with my other sister.
And then when it came time for me, she was like,
"Just go. You can handle it." [ Laughter ]
So, yeah. Actually, one of my older sisters took me along
and kind of dropped me -- "Okay, there's where you kind of
go to the bank and that's where you put in some paperwork.
Okay, see ya."
-Coming from Trinidad to Rhode Island,
I imagine first time you saw snow?
-That's right, yeah.
You know, in Trinidad, obviously,
we're a tropical island.
You know, our temperatures are like 30 degrees Celsius,
whatever that is in Fahrenheit.
So you know, I had never seen snow before.
And, so, yeah, that was one of the really exciting things.
I think it was -- I suppose it would've been
November or December the time it first happened.
But yeah, I made friends with a couple of people
from the tropics and when it first started to snow,
we all went out in our pajamas and did, like, our snow day.
We're, like, taking pictures. [ Laughter ]
So, yeah. So it was good fun.
-I'm sure most of the people in Providence, Rhode Island,
was like, "Who are these lunatics?"
-I know. [ Laughter ]
But for us it was exciting.
-Sarah Jessica Parker has been on the show
talking about she has her own imprint with Hogarth,
which is the publisher,
and you guys had been doing a lot of press together.
And I heard that the part that makes me nervous
is not being around her.
What's the worst part?
-Well, she is just so warm and lovely.
-Yes. The best. -She is lovely.
But, you know, she is a very stylish and fashionable lady.
And you know, us writers, we don't get out very much.
[ Laughter ]
I wear, like, my pajamas. Coffee stains.
I'm like, "Oh, my God."
So, you know, I sort of did quite a lot of shopping
before I came on this trip.
I mean, this is my best effort, guys.
[ Laughter and applause ]
-There's a real balance in this book.
Reading it, there was part of me that wanted to go to Trinidad.
You obviously write about how beautiful it is.
But it also -- you know, as you mentioned,
this takes place in a really fraught time.
There is this threat of violence that hangs over the book.
Is that a thing that is hard to balance when you're writing?
Or does it just come naturally because you were there?
-Yeah. I mean, you know, when I --
I had a perfectly easygoing childhood.
We kept our doors unlocked and like, you know,
people moved around very freely.
But it is one of the features of life in Trinidad.
I mean, people work
and they go to school and they do everything normally.
But yet there is this sort of, you know, quite violent crime
that sort of happens side by side with everyday life.
So, yes.
I mean, I guess when I was writing,
I was trying hard not to sort of sensationalize it.
I didn't want it to be like, this is some kind of war zone.
It's not a war zone.
You know, it's one of these things
that people have to deal with in their everyday lives.
-I'm always interested about this part of the process
because this is a book that as it races to its conclusion,
as a reader, I was very much, you know,
turning each page wondering what was going to happen.
Did you -- when you set out,
did you know what was going to happen?
Did you know how your book was gonna conclude?
-I mean, I did know some of the big brush strokes.
Like, I sort of new the big ending.
But lots of things I had to work out along the way.
Like, I knew the father, Clyde, very well.
I had a very clear picture of him.
But all the other characters
I had to sort of write to discover.
Like Paul -- So, there's twin boys.
There's Peter and Paul, and Paul is the one
who is less sort of recognized by his father
and, you know, perhaps not his father's favorite.
And so Clyde sort of overlooks him.
And I think I kind of overlooked him too when I was writing.
So he was the one who kind of came last when I was writing.
-Well, I'm happy to say, you definitely figured it out.
And I really enjoyed the book.
And thank you so much for being here. Such a pleasure.
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