Savita Kalhan Talks To Bookbag About The Long Weekend – The Unused Quote

Savita Kalhan Talks To Bookbag About The Long Weekend – The Unused Quote

Summary: We were impressed by The Long Weekend and Savita had an interesting story for us when she popped into Bookbag Towers.

Date: 2 November 2012

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The Long Weekend - The Unused Quote

Evil men and women have littered children's fiction from time immemorial, in fairy tales and fables, in comics, and in films. Hansel and Gretel get away from the evil clutches of the witch, Batman always gets the better of the Joker, as does Dorothy of the Wicked Witch of the West. Good usually overcomes evil, and in children's and teen fiction, that is almost always the case.

There was a film that I watched when I was probably too young to watch it. I saw it again when I was much older, and it still had the same chilling effect on me. After I finished writing The Long Weekend, I realised that both The Long Weekend and the film shared a similar theme. In both, children were trying to escape the clutches of a remorseless predator hell-bent on killing them. In the film, Robert Mitchum plays the role of the predator. The film was The Night of the Hunter.

There was one particular line spoken by one of the characters that I knew would be perfect to open The Long Weekend with:

When you're little, you have more endurance than God is ever to grant you again.

Rachel Cooper - Night of the Hunter: with Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters, 1955.

I found the book, The Night of the Hunter, and this is the original scene with Rachel Cooper:-

When morning shot its golden shafts into the mists of the trees in the yard Rachel stole softly into the kitchen to the stairway for a moment and stared in at the children on the steps, filled suddenly with the wonder that each of us must feel at least once in his life: the knowing that children are man at his strongest, that they are possessed, in those few short seasons of the little years, of more strength and endurance than God is ever to grant them again.

Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb, first published 1953

The words strike such a chord with me because I think they have been true for me, and probably for many other children. A child's innocence may be destroyed, but a child is not so easily destroyed. Ultimately The Long Weekend is a story not just of our times. It's an ongoing story in which only the circumstances change from century to century, continent to continent. Yes, there are evil men and women who exist in books and films, and in real life, but we don't have to let them win...

I really wanted the quote to be the opening of the book, but sadly my editor could not get permission to use it before the book went to print. The Long Weekend has been reprinted, but by then my editor had changed, and the quote was forgotten. I'm really hoping that if/when this print run of The Long Weekend gets sold out that the publishers will organise the permission for using the quote before the next print run.I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

Savita Kalhan is the author of The Long Weekend, which we consider to be one of the most important children's or YA books of the last few years. You can find her on Twitter and on Facebook.

This guest post was kindly given to us by the ever-generous Ya Yeah Yeah.

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