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RICH AND MADQ&A by William Nicholson
Your books for young readers have so far all been set infantasy worlds. What made you decide to write ‘Rich and Mad’? 
I’ve long wanted to write a love story for teenagers: something thatreflects the reality of love - the self-doubt, the insecurity, theintense longings, the mistakes, the misunderstandings, the hurt,the pain, and of course the passion and the joy. I wanted to tell thestory from both sides, so that girls would get some idea what it’slike to be a boy, and vice versa. I wanted it to show the process of two young people discovering love for the first time. And I wantedto make it as true as possible.
Why did you decide to write explicitly about sex? 
If you’re telling the truth about a love affair, you can’t leave outsex. It’s the source of so much nervousness, ignorance and fear, aswell as of passionate longing and intense emotion. And if you’rewriting about sex, how do you do it without describing it? You canwrite about sexual feelings without using explicit terms, but notabout sexual acts. So I made the decision not to censor myself, butat the same time to show the sex from the point of view of thecharacters, with all the accompanying emotional colouring. Theexact opposite of pornography, which is impersonal anddehumanised.
 Are you worried that readers will be shocked or offended? 
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I certainly don’t want to give offence. I hope that the information onthe book’s cover will warn readers about the nature of the content.My guess is that parents and guardians may be more concernedthan teenage readers. All surveys reveal that teenagers havemassive exposure to internet pornography. I very much doubt if anything in my book will come as a shock to most of them. As far asI can tell, we more thoughtful writers, in our attempts to beresponsible, have left the field of sex to the pornographers. I regretthat. I’m trying with this book to reunite sex with real people, realemotions, and real joy.
 Aren’t you afraid that your book will encourage young people to have sex before they’re ready for it? 
Young people are having sex before they’re ready for it as a matterof routine; much of it unplanned, while drunk, and subsequentlyregretted. Current surveys show that almost 90% of both girls andboys aged 13-17 have experienced relationships that include somedegree of physical intimacy. Sex is not now, if it ever has been, aclosed book to teenagers. They’re growing up in a world saturatedwith sexual images. What they lack is a context for these images.Sex has become identified with its most superficial aspects - bodyimage, celebrity, glamour. How are teenagers ever to know that sextakes place most of all in the heart and mind? So my hope andbelief is that my book will encourage young people to seek love insex, rather than loveless sex.
Part of your plot hints at a sado-masochistic sexual relationship. Why did you include that? 
Most people have no idea how big an issue this is. A recent NSPCCsurvey shows that one in three teenage girls has experienced
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