The Bookseller – Author Interviews – Holly Bourne

How would you describe your book to someone who hasn’t read it?

A book for anyone who has ever hated secondary school and hid in the library.

What inspired The Yearbook?

I was visiting my home town and I was in Café Nero, when one of the popular girls from my school came in. She’d been a terrible bully and actually hijacked our Year 11 yearbook to say horrible things about other students. I watched her push her designer pram in, wearing designer clothes, laughing and smiling with friends and felt this deep anger at her thriving as an adult when she had ruined so many students’ teenage years. It was so unfair and so I decided to write a story of what should’ve happened to her, examining the legacy of school bullying.

Which character in the book is your favourite, and why?

I wrote the character Aunty “Polly” — who has cats named after Keanu Reeves characters as a joke for my editor (as I’m obsessed with cats and Keanu Reeves). But we ended up loving her so much she stayed in the manuscript.

What’s your favourite scene in The Yearbook, and why?

I love the scene where Paige and Elijah go to a second-hand bookshop and look for marginalia in the books. I loved using this book to explore what the reading experience means to people and how you can interact with a text and challenge the storyteller.