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WORK TITLE: Things We Have in Common
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.tashakavanagh.co.uk/
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tasha-kavanagh-on-her-creepy-debut-novel-things-we-have-in-common-10219257.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nb 98013148
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nb98013148
HEADING: Kavanagh, Tasha
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100 1_ |a Kavanagh, Tasha
370 __ |c England |e Hertfordshire (England) |2 naf
374 __ |a Authors |a Motion picture editors |2 lcsh
375 __ |a female
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400 1_ |w nne |a Pym, Tasha
670 __ |a Harry Fly, 1998: |b t.p. (Tasha Pym)
670 __ |a Things we have in common, c2015: |b t.p. (Tasha Kavanagh) jacket (worked in film editing for ten years, on features including Twelve Monkeys, Seven Years in Tibet, and the Talented Mr. Ripley; published several children’s books under her maiden name, Tasha Pym; lives in Hertfordshire)
953 __ |a xx00
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PERSONAL
Children: Mackenzie.
EDUCATION:University of East Anglia, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and film editor.
WRITINGS
Also author of picture books under the name Tasha Pym.
SIDELIGHTS
After working for several years as a film editor and picture book writer, Tasha Kavanagh authored the 2016 novel Things We Have in Common. A tale of creepy psychological suspense, Things We Have in Common centers on a fifteen-year-old Yasmin, a social outcast who struggles with her weight, social anxiety, and depression. Yasmin can’t seem to connect with anyone, even her own family; her father is dead and her mother is remarried, and Yasmin feels like a stranger in her own home. Left to her own devices, Yasmin nurtures her crush on a popular girl named Alice into an unhealthy obsession. Yasmin never approaches Alice and instead watches her from afar. One day, Yasmin notices a creepy, older man spying on Alice as well, and Yasmin suspects he may be a pedophile with designs on Alice. Yasmin decides to befriend the man, suss out his motives, and then hopefully rescue Alice from him to win her love and attention. Instead, Yasmin learns that Samuel is an isolated loner just like her, and the pair develop a strange and unlikely friendship. When Alice suddenly goes missing, Yasmin can’t tell if her initial suspicions about Samuel were correct, or if some strange coincidence is at work.
As Kavanagh noted in an online AltBlackpool interview with Sandra Mangan, “when I started Things We Have in Common, I had the opening image of Yasmin on the playing field watching the man watching Alice, but I could feel the story. I could feel Yasmin’s sense of connection to this sinister stranger and knew the tone of the story–of the ending. Every writer works differently, but for me, so long as I have a sense of where my characters will end up, I like to discover the route as I go. It’s true that characters take on a life of their own as you spend time with them.”
Yet, in the words of online Bookbag reviewer Sue Magee: “I’m very much in two minds about this book. The portrait of Yasmin is exquisite. Tasha Kavanagh captures her perfectly and produces a complex character . . . On the other hand I’m not convinced by the plot and the idea that Yasmin who has little to do with anyone if she can avoid it would work hard to become friends with a man she believes to be a child abductor and murderer.” Sam Jordison, writing in the Guardian Online, also offered pros and cons, and he advised that “Kavanagh has a good sense of timing no doubt honed in years she spent working as a film editor. But the interactions between Yasmin and this grown man don’t ring so true as those with her peers. There’s also a whiff of tabloid sensationalism and a conclusion that felt inevitable if not entirely convincing. Still, it feels right that Yasmin doesn’t offer perfection. There’s still more than enough quality material to ensure that this novel leaves a lasting and effectively nasty impression.” Offering more strident applause in the Irish Times Online, Sarah Gilmartin announced: “This complex novel has a dark and suspenseful plot that keeps the reader guessing until the final pages.” Gilmartin added: “Yasmin is no ordinary teenager. She is a convincingly fragile and delusional character, going deeper into a world where her obsessive tendencies mushroom. The adult watcher, Samuel, is another believable character, at times kind and considerate, at others aloof and creepy. Kavanagh is skilled at creating multifaceted characters who don’t act in the way we expect. An affecting mother-daughter relationship is well drawn, with Yasmin’s mother caught between her new husband and a daughter she can no longer identify with.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, Biz Hyzy, review of Things We Have in Common.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2016, review of Things We Have in Common.
Library Journal, November 15, 2016, Marianne Fitzgerald, review of Things We Have in Common.
Publishers Weekly, October 31, 2016, review of Things We Have in Common.
ONLINE
AltBlackpool, http://www.altblackpool.co.uk/ (July 10, 2017), Sandra Mangan, author interview.
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (May 1, 2015), Sue Magee, review of Things We Have in Common.
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (September 7, 2015), Sam Jordison, review of Things We Have in Common.
Independent Online, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (July 10, 2017), Katy Guest, author interview.
Irish Times Online, https://www.irishtimes.com/ (May 9, 2015), Sarah Gilmartin, review of Things We Have in Common.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (January 27, 2017), review of Things We Have in Common.
Sydney Morning Herald Online, http://www.smh.com.au/ (August 12, 2015), review of Things We Have in Common.
Tasha Kavanagh Website, http://www.tashakavanagh.co.uk/ (August 7, 2017).*
Tasha Kavanagh’s debut novel Things We Have In Common was released by Canongate in May 2015 to critical acclaim. Tasha has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA and worked in film editing for ten years on features including Twelve Monkeys, Seven Years in Tibet and The Talented Mr Ripley. She lives in South West London with daughter Mackenzie and their three cats and is currently writing her second psychological thriller.
Tasha Kavanagh on her creepy debut novel Things We Have in Common
A tale of loneliness and teenage obsession which could be the next Gone Girl success story
Katy Guest @katyguest36912 Saturday 2 May 2015 11:00 BST0 comments
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The Independent Culture
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Teenage kicks: ‘That’s how I remember being 15,’ says Tasha Kavanagh, ‘extremely intense, powerful, alienating, and full of contradictions. I think it’s those juxtapositions that make for a really exciting story’ David Sandison
Tasha Kavanagh says lots of surprising things as we sit and discuss her debut novel over a cup of tea, but by far the weirdest is when she refers to its “happy ending”.
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Things We Have in Common is a creepy tale of loneliness and teenage obsession, described by its publisher as “Sue Townsend meets Zoë Heller”, with overtones of Emma Donoghue’s Room. It has the most devastating last line you’ll read all year. So, I do a double-take when she says that for that character, at that moment, the ending is happy and right. “Oh yes,” she laughs, “I think for me it was always going there.”
Things We Have in Common is narrated in the second person by Yasmin: 15, overweight, obsessive, a “freak”. Yasmin has latched on to the pretty girl at school – follows her around, even collects her discarded belongings in a special box – and soon she latches on to a man she sees watching Alice. “[If you killed me] it’d actually be a bonus, a double bonus even, because if you did and then got caught because of it, I’d have saved Alice by sacrificing myself...” recounts Yasmin as she becomes ever more wrapped up with “you”, “the man”, convincing herself that he is going to “take Alice”. She even persuades herself that “you” will her friend. And then, Alice goes missing...
Things-we-have-in-common.jpg
Cover of 'Things We Have in Common' by Tasha Kavanagh
The whole plot of the novel, its title and its beginning came to Kavanagh when she started thinking about “using ‘you’ as a way in”, she says. “The moment I wrote the first line I saw her standing in the field, I saw Alice, I saw the man. And from that moment I just saw the connection, this really romantic connection between these two lonely people.” By “lonely people”, she means a 15-year-old fantasist and a man who may turn out was weird.
Kavanagh is already the author of nine picture books for children under her maiden name, Tasha Pym. (Have You Ever Seen a Sneep also has a second-person register, she points out, but that’s where the similarity ends.) She followed an unusual route into writing. She sailed for the British youth team as a child, taking part in her first championship when she was 12, and she remembers training intensely with her Olympian father.
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“After school, in the dark. No words, just my dad’s elbow on top of me ... and I just had this really intensive training in how every millimetre counts and how to sail the boat on a knife edge...” She refers to it again later, when she talks about Yasmin: “She’s just going towards what she needs, never stops, just keeps going, walking towards it. And she just can’t give it up because that’s everything. I think that thing with her holding Alice’s belongings, and the whispering, it’s sort of getting herself into a catatonic state. And I very much felt like that when I was sailing.”
She tried to reproduce that state while she was writing the novel, she says, by spending hours on eBay. “It gets you into a perfect state of catatonia,” she insists, quite seriously. “Dumbs you down till you’re just this kind of drone, and the work would come out of me.” It was one way of convincing herself that she could write a story of more than 300 words, and there was no editing; her first draft was the finished novel.
Tasha-2.jpg
Writer Tasha Kavanagh worked in film editing for 10 years (David Sandison)
After getting into writing during a creative arts degree at Trent Poly, Kavanagh went straight into the University of East Anglia’s prestigious creative writing course, where she was taught by the likes of Malcolm Bradbury, Rose Tremain, and Michèle Roberts. “I was on a course with people who’d come from the other side of the world, and they’d given up a year with their families to be there. And I was like, ‘Oh, right! This is serious!’.” But from there, she went into film-editing, working on big movies such as Twelve Monkeys, Seven Years in Tibet and The Talented Mr Ripley.
“I was immediately drawn to editing, because it’s that same kind of very precise, private, quiet work. And the sense that you could create many stories out of the same material, depending on where you cut.” She apparently had a knack for editing the lip syncs, and I wonder if it gave her an ear for dialogue. Not so much that, she says, as a connection with char-acter. “You’ve almost got to feel the words into the lips. There was that definite feeling of connection with the character and what they’re saying.” It had an added bonus: when she was editing The Talented Mr Ripley she was pregnant with her daughter, who for weeks after her birth could always be put to sleep by Matt Damon’s voice.
It was Yasmin’s voice that first drew me to the novel. A short extract, copied out by a publicist in her best teenage handwriting, and sent out with early review copies, just reeks of teenage insecurities. Kavanagh says that she loves reading about teenagers, and mentions Go Ask Alice and John Fowles’s The Collector as books that subconsciously inspired this novel. It is very much a novel for adults, but teen-agers will love it, I’m sure. “I just think it’s the most powerful time of your life. That’s how I remember being 15: extremely intense, powerful, alienating, and full of contradictions. I think it’s those juxtapositions that make for a really exciting story.”
She adds: “One thing I found interesting [when] writing it is how easy it is for someone to just slip through the net of society and for that to go unnoticed. And, if somebody is quite unappealing... To be honest, if I met Yasmin I don’t think I would want to be her friend. And that’s kind of the point: that my response to her and everybody else’s response to her, from our perspective, is just fleeting, but from her perspective, it’s all she gets ... there’s a responsibility there that I hope the reader will feel.”
Things We Have in Common is the first in a two-book deal for Kavanagh, and I can see it having the word-of-mouth success of a We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, or even a Gone Girl. The next novel comes from a similar place, she says: “dark, psycho-logical”. She adds, almost as an afterthought, “I’m always drawn to the dark.” Fans – and there will soon be many – had better brace themselves for some more chillingly happy endings.
READ MORE
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Book review
Gone Girl: How did the film differ from the book's ending?
147
Q&A WITH TASHA KAVANAGH
Meet our 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize authors in this series of interviews.Kavanagh, Natasha - Things We Have in Common - cover image
We talked to Tasha Kavanagh about her longlisted novel, Things We Have in Common.
‘The first time I saw you, you were standing at the far end of the playing field. You were looking down at your brown straggly dog, but then you looked up, your mouth going slack as your eyes clocked her. Alice Taylor. I was no different. I used to catch myself gazing at the back of her head in class, at her silky fair hair swaying between her shoulder blades. If you’d glanced just once across the field you’d have seen me standing on my own, looking straight at you, and you’d have gone back through the trees to the path quick, tugging your dog after you. You’d have known you’d given yourself away, even if only to me. But you didn’t. You only had eyes for Alice.’
The Desmond Elliott Prize judges said: ‘It should be no surprise to read that the author was an editor for, among other films, The Talented Mr Ripley. Maybe once a pupil at the Patricia Highsmith academy of the dark dramatic arts, surely now a graduate with honours.’
Describe your book in one sentence
Things We Have in Common is a dark coming of age thriller about how far a lonely girl will go to fulfill her need to belong.
How does it feel to be longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize?
I feel immensely thrilled and humbled to be counted amongst such fine writers.
Why do you think a prize for a first novel is important?
Kavanagh, Tasha - Author photo 2 - no creditThere is something very special about first books. They spring from a writer’s subconscious, revealing the writer to himself as much as to others in an epic journey of self-discovery. To be welcomed at the end of such a journey is so heartening. I think the generosity and eager acceptance of new voices is humanity at its best. Celebrating and awarding new fiction is to applaud those that have made the journey and to say ‘Look!’ to writers still making theirs, ‘you can do it, too!’ That’s a wonderful message.
What is your favourite debut novel?
This is ludicrously difficult to answer, but I’ll say The Collector by John Fowles. When I read it at 15, I was captivated by the voice, by the terrible and tragic truth of Frederick Clegg.
What’s the book you are recommending right now?
This is a slight cheat because it’s not out for a few months yet, but Himself by Jess Kidd is stunningly good.
Debut author Tasha shares her dark side
Sandra Mangan
BY SANDRA MANGAN JUNE 29, 2015
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Debut novelist Tasha Kavanagh has been garnering high praise for Things We Have in Common, a dark and twisted coming of age thriller. A former film editor (including Twelve Monkeys and The Talented My Ripley), Tasha cut her writing teeth on children’s books.
Tell me a little about Things We Have in Common?
Things We Have in Common is a dark, literary thriller. When 15 year old Yasmin, an overweight, social outcast, sees a sinister man watching Alice Taylor – the girl she herself obsesses about – from the school fence, she gets it into her head that he’s planning to take her. Believing that she can save Alice and so win her friendship, Yasmin sets about finding out as much as she can about the man… and then she meets him. Does this man pose a genuine threat and if so, can Yasmin save Alice? Or is this just another one of Yasmin’s fantasies and is he really her soulmate?
How long have you been writing?
I always wanted to be a writer – it took me a while to get there, though! I received my MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia when I was 21, but then, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write, I took a detour into film editing where I spent many years working on features including Twelve Monkeys, Seven Years in Tibet and The Talented Mr Ripley. Between films my first children’s book was published. That was 15 years ago. When I retired from the film world to bring up my daughter, I began writing more consistently and in the following years had 10 books for children published. I also worked as a picture book editor for a literary consultancy. Then, two years ago I decided to try to write a novel – something that had always been a dream but that I wasn’t sure I could do since the stories I had written were only 300 words! I started, though, and kept going and the result is Things We Have in Common.
What inspires the ideas for your books?
All sorts of things – music, art, books, things I’ve heard about. Not consciously, though. They sit in my subconscious, then surface as though from thin air when I write. A few months before I started writing Things We Have in Common, a young girl at my daughter’s school said a man tried to grab her when she went back to fetch her coat from the playing field. Only once I’d written the first sentence of the novel did I realise the impact that had had on me. It wasn’t so much the fact of the man; it was that no one knew whether the girl was telling the truth. Then, about half way through the novel, I suddenly remembered The Collector by John Fowles. I’d read it when I was 15 and though consciously I’d forgotten about it, it had obviously been there in my subconscious, influencing me.
How does writing for adults differ from writing for children?
I don’t think the writing itself does differ, other than the amount of it! I never think about the age of the reader when I’m writing – just focus on trying to tell a great story. The main difference, I suppose, when writing for children, is that it’s important to have a subject matter that’s relevant to them. Not many four year olds are going to relate to the desperation of a man made redundant, for example. But because adults have been children, they can relate to all kinds of situations faced by young or older protagonists.
How do you go about plotting a story?
Organically! When I started Things We Have in Common, I had the opening image of Yasmin on the playing field watching the man watching Alice, but I could feel the story. I could feel Yasmin’s sense of connection to this sinister stranger and knew the tone of the story – of the ending. Every writer works differently, but for me, so long as I have a sense of where my characters will end up, I like to discover the route as I go. It’s true that characters take on a life of their own as you spend time with them, and often when writing Things We Have in Common, Yasmin did something I wasn’t expecting her to. It’s one of the things that makes the act of writing so compelling.
Are you a fiction reader? Who are the writers you admire?
I’ve always loved reading, though I’m not very fast! There are so many authors I’m crazy about that write for all different ages. Dr Seuss, Daphne du Maurier (Don’t Look Now is a masterpiece!), Kevin Brooks and Patricia Highsmith come immediately to mind. There are lots other others, though, and many more I’m yet to discover.
Are you a disciplined, nine-to-five writer, or do you prefer to go with the creative flow?
Both. I think it’s important to commit to what you’re doing, but also to be kind to yourself because writing a novel is tough; it’s a bumpy ride of highs and lows and you have to accept that, refuse to give up and just keep trucking!
Do you have any advice for would-be writers?
I’d say make a silent commitment to yourself to write your story and create time to spend with it. Try to feel, as well as to think, your way. Remember that you need to go through the hopeless days to get to the wonderful ones – and that as long as you are spending dedicated time with your idea, you are productively writing, even if at the end of a day you end up with fewer words than you started with!
Have you visited Blackpool before?
I had a dear friend from Blackpool who tragically died in a climbing accident. His mum had a shop along the front and on the two occasions I went to Blackpool we helped out, selling miniature Blackpool Towers.
What’s next for you?
I’m writing my second novel. It’s another dark, character-driven story. I seem to be uncontrollably drawn to people’s interior worlds. Secrets and lies. Those are the things that really get under my skin.
TASHA KAVANAGH is at the Brunswick Room, Blackpool Central Library, July 2 at 12.30pm.
You can book via the website or at the library.
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Sandra Mangan
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Kavanagh, Tasha. Things We Have in Common
Marianne Fitzgerald
Library Journal.
141.19 (Nov. 15, 2016): p78.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Kavanagh, Tasha. Things We Have in Common. Mira: Harlequin. Jan. 2017. 304p. ISBN 9780778326854. $26.99;
ebk. ISBN 9781460396391. F
Fifteen-year-old Yasmin is a major misfit: overweight, depressed, and shunned by her classmates. With her father dead
and her mother remarried, Yasmin is uncomfortable in her own skin and feels like a visitor in her own home. One day
she happens upon a man creepily watching popular girl Alice, the same classmate whom Yasmin has a crush on. She
decides to befriend this stranger in the hopes of keeping him from harming Alice, with Yasmin becoming Alice's hero
and friend as a result. But upon her initial meeting with awkward loner Samuel, Yasmin immediately recognizes a
kindred spirit. This leads to her pursuing a friendship with him, to the point of forgetting her unspoken role as Alice's
protector. Then Alice goes missing. While Kavanagh realistically portrays the misguided thoughts and actions of a
troubled teen, her protagonist is an unreliable, selfish narrator who elicits no sympathy in the reader. VERDICT Touted
as an adult thriller, this slow-moving debut definitely feels more YA. Despite its weaknesses, it is a surprisingly
compulsory, if unpleasant, read. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/16.]--Marianne Fitzgerald, Severna Park H.S., MD
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Fitzgerald, Marianne. "Kavanagh, Tasha. Things We Have in Common." Library Journal, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 78.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470367164&it=r&asid=1ff79f948c56c8fdb5ee85068556d2c9.
Accessed 30 June 2017.
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Kavanagh, Tasha: THINGS WE HAVE IN
COMMON
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Kavanagh, Tasha THINGS WE HAVE IN COMMON Harlequin MIRA (Adult Fiction) $26.99 1, 17 ISBN: 978-0-
7783-2685-4
A teenage outcast imagines what would happen if one of her classmates was abducted only to deal with confusing
consequences when fantasy becomes reality in Kavanagh's debut novel.Catching a glimpse of a man across from her
school one afternoon, Yasmin--lonely and overweight--constructs an imaginative abduction scenario. She assumes that,
if he were indeed a murderer/pedophile, he would have his eyes on Alice, the most beautiful and popular girl in
Yasmin's class. Yasmin herself has a crush on Alice, and she's been keeping a box of souvenirs that represent times that
their paths have inadvertently crossed--a lost sock, a piece of snack wrapper left behind, a heart sketched on a slip of
paper. Over the next several weeks, as she navigates a hostile school environment as well as her mother's and
stepfather's disappointment that she won't keep to her diet, Yasmin begins to follow the man in question and even
makes contact with him, drawn by his kindness toward her in return. When Alice really does go missing one evening,
Yasmin has to decide whether she should go to the police--or has she completely misconstrued the situation? It's hard
to be in Yasmin's head sometimes; she is such a severely unhappy character that it makes for uncomfortable reading in
the first-person. It's even hard to feel too much empathy for her, despite her history of loss, because she seems so bent
on ignoring social cues as well as common sense. But Kavanagh does orchestrate some successful plot twists that are
reminiscent of other psychological thrillers--classics by Ruth Rendell, for example, or more recent hits like Gone Girl.
If you can stick with Yasmin until the end, the twists and turns are worth it.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Kavanagh, Tasha: THINGS WE HAVE IN COMMON." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329189&it=r&asid=c383e9e303e4baaadcd5cc065bc2aea6.
Accessed 30 June 2017.
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Things We Have in Common
Biz Hyzy
Booklist.
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p28.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Things We Have in Common. By Tasha Kavanagh. Jan. 2017. 304p. MIRA, $26.99 (9780778326854).
The kids at school call Yasmin an obese freak, but she knows she shares an unsaid connection with cool-girl Alice.
When Yasmin sees a man leering at Alice, she imagines him abducting her, giving Yasmin the perfect opportunity to
save the girl she so admires! To thwart his plot, Yasmin befriends him, which, surprisingly, satisfies her craving for
camaraderie. But when Alice actually does go missing, Yasmin is in a quandary: Should she report the man she
suspects is responsible or protect the only friend she's ever had? Written in the second person and addressed to the man
obsessed with Alice, Yasmin is an unreliable narrator in the most intriguing way. She lies and can't read social cues,
and her yearning to belong and distorted sense of logic feel genuine. Despite Yasmin's delusions and stalkerish
tendencies, readers will feel sympathy for how Yasmin believes that one person's approval will solve all her other
problems. The dark subject matter, particularly Alice's life-or-death situation, looms on every page, yet Kavanagh's
novel manages to be a quick, thoroughly enjoyable read.--Biz Hyzy
YA/M: Teem will appreciate 15-year-old Yasmin's rich fantasy life and struggle as a social outcast. BH.
Hyzy, Biz
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Hyzy, Biz. "Things We Have in Common." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 28+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142806&it=r&asid=61175829381c4aa099f74243aba9898a.
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Things We Have in Common
Publishers Weekly.
263.44 (Oct. 31, 2016): p48.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Things We Have in Common
Tasha Kavanagh. Mira, $26.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7783-2685-4
Yasmin is an overweight 15-year-old with no friends, missing her dad who died five years ago, stuck living with her
mom and her loser judgmental stepfather, Gary, in a nondescript U.K. suburb, and obsessed with Alice Taylor, one of
the popular girls in her class who barely gives her the time of day. But from the get-go, the wildly clever Kavanagh, in
her spectacular adult-novel debut, launches a new obsession for Yasmin: a strange man standing at the edge of the
school property who appears to be as drawn to Alice as she is. Yasmin is certain he is going to kidnap Alice (she even
Googles "how to spot a pedophile"), and that notion inspires a series of fantasies in which Yasmin heroically saves
Alice and they become best friends forever. The canny Yasmin insinuates herself into the stalker's life so that she can
identify him to the police if he goes through with the horrible deed. Things get complicated when he turns out to be the
first person in her adolescent life who doesn't mock her or treat her with disdain, and they get even more complicated
when Alice actually disappears, and Yasmin's stepfather is a suspect. The ensuing events and the stunning conclusion
underscore the author's searing insight into teenage behavior and the desperation for connection. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Things We Have in Common." Publishers Weekly, 31 Oct. 2016, p. 48+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470462494&it=r&asid=ccf0c25cf81817cb63e7478e178c6a16.
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Things We Have in Common by Tasha Kavanagh review: teenage fixations
This complex novel has a dark and suspenseful plot that keeps the reader guessing until the final pages
Sarah Gilmartin
Sat, May 9, 2015, 01:00
First published:
Sat, May 9, 2015, 01:00
Book Title:
Things We Have in Common
ISBN-13:
978-1782115946
Author:
Tasha Kavanagh
Publisher:
Canongate Books
Guideline Price:
£12.99
‘My name’s not really Doner. It’s Yasmin. It’s just Doner at school.” Doner, as in kebab, is one of the many of nicknames 15-year-old Yasmin Laksaris has heard from her classmates over the years. Half-Turkish and 15 stone, Yasmin has no friends at Ashfield, with teachers and even the principal showing little goodwill towards the insular and moody teenager.
Yasmin’s problems began five years earlier, when her beloved father died. Unable to face her grief, she shut herself off from society and sought solace in food. Chocolate Hobnobs, curry chips, deep crust pizzas and, her favourite, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Turkish Delight. Food is one of the many obsessions of Yasmin, the complex narrator of this engaging novel. With a dark and suspenseful plot that keeps the reader guessing until the final pages, Things We Have in Common is an assured debut narrated by an alarming and original voice.
Yasmin wins our sympathies quickly. Her observations about contemporary teenage life are related with humour and colour. Her situation as a loner misfit at school is compounded by the new marriage her mother has made to Gary, a well-intentioned alpha male who is embarrassed by his stepdaughter’s friendlessness and weight.
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With so little happiness in her life, Yasmin becomes fixated on a popular girl at school. The beautiful and talented Alice Taylor, with her silky fair hair and green eyes, is everything Yasmin wishes she could be. Yasmin keeps a box of treasured mementoes in her bedroom – a drawing of a heart discarded by Alice, a foil wrapper from a snack, a trainer sock: “It didn’t smell of feet, if that’s what you think (even though she’d worn it) – just a soft cottony smell. I got a nice feeling when I looked at her things, when I held them. They made me feel calm.”
From the beginning, Tasha Kavanagh sets up a world of unease, where we understand Yasmin’s plight, and her loneliness, but wonder how far her obsession will go. The infatuation initially appears harmless, with a darkly comic undertone to some of the scenarios. After a successful drama exercise, Yasmin pens a note to Alice, asking her on a playdate: “I wrote in capitals and left off names in case someone got hold of it.” Star Trek references, a fixation with an ornamental dog, China Bea, and solitary bedroom moping all feature.
Shadowing the teenage fixation is a far darker story, alluded to from the outset: “The first time I saw you, you were standing at the far end of the playing field near the bit of fence that’s trampled down.” Yasmin is not the only one watching Alice. A loosely sketched adult is in the wings, unaware that his watching is being watched. This meta storyline, played out slowly, with light and shade, is at the centre of the novel. When Alice goes missing, Yasmin is the only one who knows how to find her.
An ordinary teenager would give straight answers to the police, but Yasmin is no ordinary teenager. She is a convincingly fragile and delusional character, going deeper into a world where her obsessive tendencies mushroom. The adult watcher, Samuel, is another believable character, at times kind and considerate, at others aloof and creepy. Kavanagh is skilled at creating multifaceted characters who don’t act in the way we expect. An affecting mother-daughter relationship is well drawn, with Yasmin’s mother caught between her new husband and a daughter she can no longer identify with.
The author has a background in film editing, counting thrillers such as Twelve Monkeys and The Talented Mr Ripley among her credits. Her knowledge of suspense comes through in Things We Have in Common, which fits the thriller bill but will also likely appeal to a young adult market. Although this is her first novel for adults, Kavanagh, who has a masters in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, has also published several children’s books.
With the hunt for a missing girl forming a major part of the plot, comparisons will be made with Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Things We Have in Common bears a resemblance too, to Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal – although that deals with older female relationships – particularly in its theme of fanatical behaviour prompted by loneliness and a craving for connection, and to Lottie Moggach’s excellent debut, Kiss Me First, with its disenfranchised protagonist obsessing about the life of a beautiful and extrovert woman.
At the heart of all these novels is an exploration of abnormal psychology. It is no wonder then that Yasmin’s favourite poem is Robert Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover. The lines she quotes near the beginning of the book are an indication of the battle she will face to save Alice, and herself: That moment she was mine, mine, fair/ Perfectly pure and good: I found/ A thing to do, and all her hair/ In one long yellow string I wound/ Three times her little throat around,/ And strangled her.
Things We Have in Common by Tasha Kavanagh – the scorch of being 16
First-person narrative that poignantly captures the loneliness of an unlovable teenager who makes even her own mother feel uncomfortable
"My name’s not Yasmin. It’s Doner. Doner, Fatso, Blubber-butt...”
“My name’s not Yasmin. It’s Doner. Doner, Fatso, Blubber-butt ...” Photograph: Leila Cutler/Alamy
Sam Jordison
Monday 7 September 2015 10.35 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 2 May 2017 14.34 EDT
Here’s a new tip for budding novelists. Spend hours on eBay, until you enter a “perfect state of catatonia”. Until you are – in the words of Tasha Kavanagh – dumbed down, “till you’re just this kind of drone”. At this point Kavanagh explains, “the work would come out of me”. Things went so well that her first draft of Things We Have in Common turned out to be the only one she needed, and got her a publishing deal with Canongate.
Most importantly, this unorthodox way of working helped her to capture the strange, unsettling voice of her 16-year-old first-person narrator Yasmin. A voice that can be flat and almost monosyllabic: “I went up to my room when we got home. I wanted to be on my own. I sat on my bed and thought about really trying to make the effort to lose weight this time.” But also a voice capable of acute insight and moments of sharp hilarity. She describes a curry as “like an alien autopsy”. Then explains that her mother is unable to use the word “fat” in relation to her daughter’s all too obvious weight problem: “It is our Voldemort.”
It’s also a voice that fits. Yasmin is a peculiar, obsessive girl. She is forever listing her favourite foods: curry, as mentioned, alongside deep crust pizzas, sweet and salty popcorn, chocolate Hobnobs, chips, Clusters, McChicken sandwiches, and giant slabs of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Turkish Delight. She seems to live in a fantasy world where it’s very hard to know if what she thinks is happening is really happening – and where it’s all too obvious that she is not telling the truth. She isn’t someone you’d like to know – or even sit next to on a bus. It’s easy to understand why she is shunned by her classmates at school, why her stepfather resents her, and why she makes even her own mother feel uncomfortable.
But Kavanagh’s achievement is to also help us understand how Yasmin feels to be so disliked. To also make us feel sorry for this lonely, lost girl, who so desperately needs human warmth and yet who makes it impossible for anyone to get close to her.
There are moments of real poignancy. On one of the few occasions someone her own age makes the effort to speak to her, she is confused by the fact that he approaches by calling her Yasmin. “I told myself I had no idea who he was, that he must want someone else because my name’s not Yasmin. It’s Doner. Doner, Fatso, Blubber-butt ...”
Hurtfully, it turns out this boy has only come up to her to warn her to stay away from a girl in her class called Alice. “Leave her alone, yeah?” he says. “You’re really creepin’ her out.”
Even worse, he has a point. Yasmin has been obsessing over Alice, who is her competent, artistic, sporty, pretty diametric opposite. She’s even got a box full of Alice mementoes; a discarded drawing of a heart, a foil wrapper from a snack, a gym sock. Don’t worry, she tells us, it doesn’t smell of feet, just soft cotton. She adds: “I got a nice feeling when I looked at her things, when I held them. They made me feel calm.” Okay ...
This relationship is as sad as it is strange. Kavanagh expertly brings out the pathos when one of Alice’s friends spits on Yasmin – and goes on to compound the sadness when Alice offers Yasmin a hand-drawn picture by way of apology before spurning her again. In such scenes Kavanagh gets right into that teenage feeling where such social interactions are all-consuming, burning, mortifying.
Slightly less impressive is the main plot, concerning a man Yasmin thinks may be a paedophile and might be just as obsessed with Alice as she is. There’s a healthy dose of suspense and it all moves along at a good clip. Kavanagh has a good sense of timing no doubt honed in years she spent working as a film editor. But the interactions between Yasmin and this grown man don’t ring so true as those with her peers. There’s also a whiff of tabloid sensationalism and a conclusion that felt inevitable if not entirely convincing. Still, it feels right that Yasmin doesn’t offer perfection. There’s still more than enough quality material to ensure that this novel leaves a lasting and effectively nasty impression.
Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh
Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh
Category: General Fiction
Rating: 4/5
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Reviewed by Sue Magee
Summary: Kavanagh's debut novel will divide people. The writing is brilliant, but the plot is a little less convincing - and we won't even start on the ending! An author to watch.
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 272 Date: May 2015
Publisher: Canongate
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-1782115946
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Shortlisted: Costa First Novel Award 2015
Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2016
Yasmin is fifteen and seriously overweight - her capacity for consuming food will amaze and sicken. She's bullied at school and even her own mother finds her just a little bit weird: let's not go into what her stepfather thinks about her. Her father died a while ago, but Yasmin has never really come to terms with his death and still has the feeling that everything would be OK if only Terry was still around. There's a girl in Yasmin's class called Alice and Yasmin is so in awe of her that she stalks her. One day, in the school playground, she spots a man watching Alice as carefully as she does and becomes obsessed by the idea that the man is going to abduct Alice.
I'm very much in two minds about this book. The portrait of Yasmin is exquisite. Tasha Kavanagh captures her perfectly and produces a complex character, who lies easily, makes ready excuses for her behaviour, even to herself and whose weight (about fifteen stone and rising) is completely out of control. But you have sympathy for her too: her mother is of little help, giving her Maltesers as a treat on the basis that they're very light and one treat won't hurt. There's love there but little in the way of positive support. Yasmin has no friends - in fact her classmates almost vie with each other as to who can be the most cruel. One day someone calls her name and she almost doesn't respond, being far more used to more insulting names being used casually. Yasmin is deeply unsettling, but you can't help wishing that things could work out well for her.
On the other hand I'm not convinced by the plot and the idea that Yasmin who has little to do with anyone if she can avoid it would work hard to become friends with a man she believes to be a child abductor and murderer. I find it hard to accept that someone who lives in a fantasy world, as Yasmin does for most of the time, would take what she obviously sees as a risk (she's obviously aware of the risks of being too close to someone who might be a murderer), particularly when that person is considerably older than she is. In every other relationship Yasmin makes it difficult for people to get close to her, so why would she reach out in this one instance? But - suspend disbelief and it's a good story.
The ending will divide people. No - I'm not going to tell you: you'll have to read the book for yourself. Some people will find it utterly depressing. Others will feel that Yasmin has got what she deserves - and I'm not even going to explain whether I mean that in a good or a bad sense.
Kavanagh's writing is impressive: her well-deserved place on the Costa shortlist confirms that and she'll definitely be someone to watch in the future.
I listened to an audio download narrated by Katy Sobey and it was first class. All the different voices were well distinguished and I was never in any doubt about who was speaking. Particularly impressive was the way that Yasmin's first-person narrative was distinguished from her speaking voice - a nice touch. Sobey also captures the teenage self pity in Yasmin's voice without allowing it to go over the edge into caricature. This is the point at which I usually thank the publishers for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag, but I bought the download and thought it money well spent.
Things We Have In Common is on one of the 2015 Costa shortlists. For more from that list and available in audio we can recommend The Green Road by Anne Enright and A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson.
Buy Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh at Amazon You could get a free audio download of Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh with a 30-day Audible free trial at Amazon.co.uk.
Buy Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh at Amazon.co.uk.
Buy Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh at Amazon.com.
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Categories: Tasha KavanaghReviewed by Sue Magee4 Star ReviewsGeneral FictionMay 2015ReviewsKaty Sobey
THINGS WE HAVE IN COMMON
By Tasha Kavanagh
288 pp. Mira, $26.99.
Photo
The protagonist of this perfectly orchestrated girl-who-cried-wolf thriller is an obese 15-year-old “Star Trek” fan named Yasmin, ostracized by her peers and obsessed with a pretty classmate named Alice, whose sweat socks and throwaway snack wrappings she hoards in a box. Like her mother, who earns a living catching supermarket workers sloughing off on the job, Yasmin doesn’t miss a trick. After observing an older man taking suspicious interest in Alice, she convinces herself that he’s plotting to kidnap the object of her infatuation. Playing out her rescue fantasies, she resolves to stalk the stalker, wreaking havoc in the process.
Kavanagh’s second-person narration gives voice to Yasmin’s tumultuous inner life. The beauty of this confessional technique is the way it reveals the very thin line that separates garden-variety teenage agita from dangerous delusion. While the author gives us plenty of reasons to sympathize with the persecuted Yasmin, the artfulness with which she deceives and manipulates is so downright creepy that one periodically finds oneself in the discomfiting posture of cheering on the bullies and the mean girls.
Things We Have In Common
By Tasha Kavanagh. Canongate. $27.99
British writer Tasha Kavanagh's debut novel is a story of loneliness and teenage obsession. Yasmin is fifteen, seriously overweight, bullied at school and obsessed with her classmate, Alice. When she sees a man watching Alice, she decides to discover his identity, so that when he "takes" Alice, she will be the heroine who rescues her. Then Alice goes missing. Told in the first person, Yasmin's voice is convincingly creepy, as she fantasises about friendship with Alice and then a relationship with the mysterious "you", the man she suspects has murdered her classmate. The ending will both surprise and shock.
RT Rating:
Genre:
Mystery
Published:
January 31 2017
Publisher:
MIRA
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THINGS WE HAVE IN COMMON
Author(s): Tasha Kavanagh
Kavanagh weaves an intriguing tale that starts with a lonely girl looking to make friends with the popular crowd and takes a strange turn by having her befriend a suspicious man. However, there is much in this story that becomes confusing and hard to understand, and readers may wonder about the direction of the plot.
Fifteen-year-old Yasmin Doner is an outsider. She is overweight and picked on by her classmates. Things aren’t much better at home. After her father dies, her mother remarries a man who picks on Yasmin about her weight. All she wants is to be friends with popular girl Alice Taylor. During breaks at school, she watches Alice and her friends … and one day notices a strange man doing the same. Yasmin has a feeling that this is her chance to finally become friends with Alice by protecting her from this man. She manages to befriend him and, just as she starts to think that maybe she was wrong about him, Alice disappears. (MIRA, Jan., 304 pp., $26.99)
Reviewed by:
Jennifer Wilson