From an interview with Natasha Mitchell on ABC Radio National, “Life Matters.”
Hate is Such a Strong Word is the title of the debut novel by freelance writer Sarah Ayoub, and it’s a coming of age story, that I think comes from a very personal place... In it we meet 17 year-old Australian-Lebanese girl Sophie, who like Sarah did, is growing up between cultures, in Sydney’s south-west, and Sarah joins me now, or is it Sophie? I don’t know... Hate is a strong word... this is a strong, wilful title for a debut novel – it packs a punch... She is dramatic, but she’s subtle, she’s got a really It does, and we really struggled a lot with the title, because race and ethnicity and identity play a very big role in the book. My publishers and I struggled with the idea of having “hate” in the title, in case it would turn people off, or just send out the wrong message entirely, but in the end we decided to go with it, because as my agent said, teenagers, children, they use hate, it’s part of their vocab, it’s how they express themselves – they’re very dramatic. She’s not me... I did put a lot of myself in her, little bits of my own family in her family, but there was a point, I think in the second draft, where the agency I was working with said you’ve got to let your characters be who they are, you can’t let them be you... So the story is not autobiographical, I really want to be clear about that, but there is a lot of me in Sophie – the way that she feels, her sentiments, the way that she doesn’t really like confrontation, she’d rich interior life too, 17 year-old Sophie... is she you?