PEARL Reporter Lorna Nickson-Brown (UK) interviewed Daria Snadowsky via e-mail about her debut novel, Anatomy of a Boyfriend

How far is Anatomy of a Boyfriend based on your own teenage experiences/relationships?

Although the page-to-page plot of Anatomy of a Boyfriend is fiction, I've personally experienced every emotional high and low Dom endures throughout the course of her relationship with Wes, and I don't think I could have written a word of the book had I not "been there" myself. When you're in a relationship with someone you care for and it's going great, there's nothing better. And when someone you care for stops caring for you, there's not much worse.

When I was a teen, I do remember that sometimes I'd sacrifice spending time with my friends and family in order to devote more time to my boyfriends. It wasn't out of spite or anger, it's just what naturally happens. The scary thing about love, especially first love, is that it can throw all your priorities out of order, and it feels so good you just let it happen. I tried to put all those feelings in the book.

How similar/different are you to Dom?

When I was in high school, I was very serious about my grades and had a decent relationship with my parents, like Dom. Unlike her, though, I'm not very science-y or nearly as logical as she is. Also, Dom didn't have her first major crush until she was seventeen, and I remember being heartbroken as early as Kindergarten!

In your novel, the theme of sexual knowledge is prominent. Do you think that having sexual understanding is important for teenagers today?

Yes. Sex education is a lot less dangerous to teens than its absence. I remember back when I was a teenager, I was naturally very curious about "making out." What happens when? What will I feel? What will he feel? What will I be thinking? How do you do everything? Is it instinctual or is it learned? For better or for worse, so many books "fade to black" after the first kiss, so we never see what happens. Or if they don't, the intimacy is often described in very melodramatic, romanticized or euphemistic terms. And that's just not reality. So in this book, I wanted to demystify in an unabashedly honest, non-threatening and sometimes humorous way what occurs, physically and emotionally, during "hooking up." Judy Blume's Forever (1975) serves that purpose to a large extent, but I wanted to get even more detailed and graphic in Anatomy of a Boyfriend. Most importantly, I concentrated not just on the physical elements of intimacy but also on the emotional elements, the latter of which are often left out of sex ed classes in school. You can never separate the two out.

This type of literature is valuable for teens because it presents much-needed unromanticized accounts of the highs and lows of love and sex. When we grow up on fairytales like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, it's perfectly natural for us to expect that our first loves will last forever and that we'll know exactly what to do when the lights dim. Youn adult books like Forever demonstrate to young adults that that's not necessarily the case, and they show all the humiliation and disappointment and awkwardness (as well as the magic and wonder and peace) that's part and parcel of falling in love and being intimate. This is a subject that is often embarrassing for young adults to talk about with their parents and even with each other, so it's important they have access to books that explain love's emotional and physical roller coaster in a frank and nonjudgmental way.

After her traumatic break-up, Dom eventually finds peace and learns from her experiences. How far do you believe that Dom's relationship with Wes helped her in her long-term emotional/physical discovery?

Emotionally, I think Dom's relationship with Wes made her a more compassionate person. Prior to Wes, Dom never had a major crush before, and she probably looked down on girls who went gaga over boys because they behaved so illogically. Now that Dom has been through the wringer herself and knows firsthand how insidiously easy it is to let a boy overtake your life and to let your emotions flush out your intellect, Dom can more easily relate to others. Before her heartbreak, I bet Dom would have hated books like Gone with the Wind and Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina because she would have thought Scarlett, Madame Bovary and Anna were obsessive dopes. Now Dom has the life experience to find herself in those characters as well as a host of other books, movies and songs. It's cliché but true—pain makes us grow.
Physically, Dom's relationship with Wes helped her explore facets of herself she might not have otherwise. Prior to Wes, Dom's body was merely a vessel for her brain, and now, Dom's learned that her body can also be an instrument of her own pleasure.

In your novel, Dom states, 'How is it that mankind can engineer condoms to prevent pregnancy and STDs but not be able to invent some sort of emotional safeguard? Is it even possible to abstain from falling in love?' How far do you agree with Dom?

That's probably the most important line in the book because it reveals the bitter truth that we cannot control our emotions. Although sex carries tons of physical risks, if we're careful, odds are we can avoid them. But there is nothing we can do to ensure we won't fall in love or be heartbroken.

What inspired you to write Anatomy of a Boyfriend?

I remember my first hall meeting during freshman year of university—we were introducing ourselves and discovering that almost half of us had boyfriends from high school. Then by the following semester, almost everyone had dumped or been dumped by her high school sweetheart. So I wanted to focus on that part of a girl's life—the last semester of high school and the first semester of college--when she's simultaneously excited for and scared of how college will change things. In the book, Dominique, the protagonist, says, "I used to think of college acceptance letters as emancipation proclamations. Now they're like divorce papers."

I also wanted to do a straightforward, non-judgemental treatment of the emotional roller coaster of love. I resent that all of the words associated with romantic love are so pejorative. We're often called "nuts," "obsessed," "head over heels," "infatuated," and "addicted." Why is love saddled with such negative words considering that any one of us, no matter how brainy, sane, or logical, can feel this way? Anatomy of a Boyfriend concerns a girl whose intelligence is above average but still longs uncontrollably for Wes to be her boyfriend. Her behaviours may seem crazy, but in truth what she's experiencing couldn't be more natural and human.

Judy Blume's Forever (1975) was also a major inspiration behind Anatomy of a Boyfriend. When writing Anatomy, I tried to be as honest and informative as Forever is with regard to the issues of love and sex. And by making the main character, Dominique, an aspiring doctor who's fascinated by biology and human anatomy, I was able to go into meticulous detail without it sounding out of character.

Speaking of Judy Blume, I actually mailed Judy Blume a mostly-edited version of the book a year and a half ago. I wasn't expecting her to read it since she's so busy, but she did! She emailed me that she enjoyed it so much she had trouble putting it down! Talk about a dream come true!

Do you think that teen culture has changed since you were at high school?

Certainly, one of the biggest differences between teen culture now and back when I was a teen is the communications technology available to us. I didn't have email or a cell phone until I was a senior in high school, I never used the internet or text-messaged until college, I never listened to music in MP3 formats until after I had graduated, and I hadn't heard of YouTube until law school when I saw it on everyone's laptop screens during our lectures. These days, teens may choose to cultivate their relationships with zero face-to-face interaction through such social networking sites as MySpace and Facebook, which is an option my generation never had back then. But the nice thing is that "feelings" never change generation-to-generation. Getting a love letter over email feels just as wonderful as it does when it's delivered via snail mail, and being dumped by the one you love hurts no matter if it's done over IM or in a letter written with quills and ink.

What are your favourite books?

When I was 10, I read and was transformed by Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I had never before or since identified with a character as strongly as I did with Margaret. She was a very average girl going through all the regular milestones of adolescence like we all do, which is why millions of readers adore that character—she was just like her readers. Then when I was a teen, Blume's Forever took on biblical proportions for me. I was shocked and delighted by how honest and frank the prose was regarding Katherine's foray into first love and first sex. These books are why I dedicated Anatomy of a Boyfriend to Blume.

When you were younger, you wrote for your school newspaper. Did this play a part in your path to becoming a writer?

Partly. Journalism instills in writers many skills vital to fiction writing, such as working under deadlines and aggressive editing, and that all came in handy when I did Anatomy. Journalistic articles tend to be really short, though. I don't think I would have started writing a book had I not done a masters thesis in college--it was two hundred pages with hundreds of footnotes, and the knowledge that I eked that out in only a few months gave me the confidence to attempt a full-length novel.

What are you working on now?

At this moment, I'm just concentrating on my other career—law. But I have ideas for other projects . . . .

What tips do you have for any young writers out there?

I would certainly recommend that aspiring writers take creative writing classes in high school and college. In addition to helping you hone your skills and find your voice, creative writing classes often require you to critique your fellow writers' work as well as
receive criticism from your fellow writers. This isn't always a pleasant experience, but it's important to learn how to give and take feedback, even when it's negative, and then to apply it in a positive, constructive way to your future works.