Rainbow Rowell had the kind of YA debut most authors dream of. In 2012 and 2013 she published two novels, Eleanor & Park and Fangirl, which cemented her reputation as a writer uniquely gifted at writing emotionally propulsive contemporary teen stories about smart, sensitive young women and the very nice boys who love them. Fangirl, about a college freshman named Cath and her very popular Harry Potter-inspired fan fiction, not only struck a particularly resonant chord with her readers, but set the Nebraska-based Rowell on a surprising path to publishing some magical fiction of her own, poking holes in J.K. Rowling’s stories long before it was popular to do so. Carry On — the story of Simon Snow (a British boy with magical powers, which might sound familiar) and his Malfoy-esque wizarding-school roommate, rival, and eventual boyfriend, Baz — was published in 2015, and Rowell’s loyal readers didn’t quite know what to make of it.
What they couldn’t have known is that Rowell had written Simon Snow’s story while severely ill. In a recent phone call with Vanity Fair, she revealed that she thought Carry On might be her last book. Ever. The prolific Rowell took an extended break from writing, and eventually learned she had an undiagnosed thyroid disorder that drained her energy. While recovering from having a tumor removed, she started work on other projects which meant it was four years before the second Simon Snow book, Wayward Son, debuted in 2019. But in those intervening years, Simon, Baz, and their schoolmates Penelope Bunce and Agatha Wellbelove had found their audience. Wayward Son was a best-selling smash hit. Rowell quickly made good on her promise that readers wouldn’t have to wait another four years and the third and final (for now) Simon Snow book hits bookshelves this Tuesday.
While the first book was an apparent Harry Potter riff and the second book took the de-powered Snow and his Watford School of Magicks classmates on a rip-roaring road trip adventure through America, Any Way the Wind Blows is a much more personal and intimate story that finds the characters frequently camped out and locked down in their homes doing battle with their personal demons. In other words, it’s a book Rowell clearly wrote during the pandemic. In addition to her health, Rowell has been weathering other personal storms including renewed controversy over her earlier work and an unrelated Twitter hiatus in 2019. In partially grappling with her own turmoil in the pages on Any Way the Wind Blows, Rowell delivers her most profoundly emotional story yet. And that’s saying something.
All the same fun trappings of the first two Simon Snow books are also here, including the clever conceit that magic is found in repeating common phrases or lyrics — hence the familiar-sounding book titles. Simon, Baz, and the rest also have to deal with the rise of a new charismatic Chosen One who rushes in to fill the vacuum left by a magic-less Snow. Rowell spoke with Vanity Fair about writing her own anxieties through the lens of Simon and Baz and what, exactly, she thinks of happy endings. There are no significant spoilers here but if you’d prefer to go into Any Way the Wind Blows not knowing anything about what’s to come, perhaps it’s best to save this until after you’ve read the book.
Let’s start with your decision that this is the third and final book in the Simon Snow series. How final are you feeling about it these days?
When I wrote Carry On, it was right before I got a diagnosis for something that I’ve been sick with for a long time. I got to the end of Carry On really feeling like this is it. Maybe even like this is my last book because I was really not well. Then I found out what was wrong with me and felt a little bit more hopeful about feeling better. People kept asking me on social media, are Simon and Baz happy? Well, no, how could you think they would be happy? They just went through this really hard thing. They killed the bad guy.
When you’re out of danger is when you can process your trauma. When I was in a place in my life where I had a little bit of distance, I was like, oh God, I really need to help Simon through this. If Carry On is this unpacking and dissection of the Chosen One story, then it should really have an unpacking and dissection of the happy ending. So then I very quickly had mapped out the next two books in my head because I thought it would take at least two books to see Simon through a sort of recuperating from the happy ending.
Okay that’s why it’s three books, but what about it being only three books?
I feel really energized by how much I wrote these last two years. I feel like I have a lot of other things I could write now. I’m super done with [Simon and Baz] at the moment. I have written so many words and pages about them. But I would never say I’m never going to write about them again. I think it’s likely that I might revisit them someday. But this story is over. If I were to come back to them, it won’t pick up the next day.
I think Simon’s trauma and his attempt to process it is the most compelling aspect of the second and third books. You and I have spoken before about your desire to subvert the Chosen One narrative but has your attitude towards those kinds of stories changed over the course of writing this trilogy?
When I started to Carry On I was more cynical about Chosen One stories being falsely inspirational. Now I’m in a place where I can feel inspired by a Chosen One story again. I don’t think they’re real, but I can see why we need them. Part of it was during the pro-democracy protests in China I listened to a This American Life episode where some of the activists were talking about how important the Harry Potter stories were to them. It did remind me why I love them, too. Not specifically Harry Potter, but all of them. I think you pick your favorite stories apart, right, but that doesn’t mean you stop loving them.
In the acknowledgments for Any Way the Wind Blows you mention that this book is coming on the tail end of a very trying time for all of us. Obviously there’s the pandemic, but it also feels like the villain of this particular installment has some real MAGA energy. Was that intentional?
It was not consciously that, no. I keep introducing these characters who think they have all the answers. Whether it’s The Mage or the Now Next or the vampires in Las Vegas or the character you’re referring to, I’m very drawn to those sorts of figures as antagonists. Anyone who tries to tell you they have all the answers for you — whether that is from a health standpoint or a cultural standpoint or a religious standpoint — I am very distrustful of. I think that’s the through line in every book with the antagonists. Don’t sacrifice your own thoughts and your own judgment to a mob mentality.
I want to switch gears a little and talk to you about Agatha. Just as it did in Book 2, her plot runs in parallel to the main story in Any Way the Wind Blows until it doesn’t. Why do you think you keep having her as this thread outside the central narrative?
Agatha is always a surprise to me. Carry On is set up as a reaction to how these characters existed in Fangirl, where Agatha was the beautiful love interest and Penelope was the smart, resourceful best friend. They were very intentionally trope-y. Agatha was really the most difficult character for me to write because she’s the least like me. Agatha Wellbelove is the most beautiful girl at Watford. I’m not the most beautiful girl anywhere. In Carry On, I wrote Agatha off stage in the middle of the book and never brought her back. My agent was like that’s a real hole in this book. You have to bring her back. She ended up being really important to the end of that book. I tried dump her again for Wayward Son, she’s just too hard for me to write. I needed to find a way to identify with her and, kind of frankly, get past her beauty.
When you are not conventionally attractive, you can resent the ease that conventional attractiveness brings. I don’t want to climb inside the head of this really skinny, beautiful girl. But some of my best writing in Wayward Son is from Agatha’s point of view. I was locked into her because Agatha and I really share distrust. Finding that I also realized I could make her funny. She ends up being just incredibly important not just to Wayward Son but to Any Way the Wind Blows. I’m really glad my agent kept forcing me to do the hard thing.
Rainbow Rowell is also
By Augusten BurroughsAnd what about Penny who also gets somewhat splintered off in this book? She’s got her own adventure with Shepherd.
Penny is the stock best friend, right. She is always there for the hero helping them save the day. The interesting thing to do to the person who exists as a sidekick is to just remove them from the protagonist. What happens when you just say, “No, you don’t get to be in the story with the hero at all.” You examine how much of her identity was based on being Simon’s right-hand person. It was kind of traumatic to separate her from Simon. And Shepherd, well, he’s almost like candy. Everything he says is going to be either funny or absurd. I think in the first book, Simon says that Penelope quotes her mom the way other people quote Monty Python. Mom knows everything. So let’s challenge how she sees her mom and let’s look at her mom. None of these adults are perfect. The reality of Simon’s world is he’s a Chosen One in the real world where nobody has that clarity of good versus evil.
I let you know that at one point I was reading Any Way the Wind Blows and I had this really emotional sort of panicky reaction of my own to Simon’s panic attacks and I was wondering what you can say about how you handled his trauma around intimacy in this book?
I have gone deeper on my own demons in these books than I have any of my other books. You were asking about writing during a tough time. I think this book was radically transformed by me writing it during the pandemic. I wrote it completely cut off from the world in a way. I’d also decided, maybe two years ago, to step back from Twitter because I was in the middle of writing the series and I was getting constant opinions about the characters. I don’t know how you are on Twitter, but my brain can’t handle that level of feedback. I took this huge step back. What a weird time to take a huge step back because I was also stuck in my house. I had this feeling of tomorrow not being promised so I should just kind of throw off all of my fears and anxiety about an expectation for these characters. It made me much more fearless about where I could go with the characters and how deep I could go with them. What if I let them deal with the things that really scare me?
What scares you?
I had a really rough time as a kid, so with Simon I’m always looking at how does that affect your ability to be an adult? We you grow up in an unhealthy place, can you expect yourself to be unhealthy in your adult relationships? If you’ve been kind of in fight or flight mode for so long. Simon is literally fight or flight.
Oh my god you literally gave him wings.
All he wants to do is kill something or run from it. Now he has to have a relationship where he can neither kill nor run. What I was kind of trying to get to the truth of is you develop this auto-immune disorder against being hurt. You know how auto-immune disorders work where your body attacks anything it sees as a threat. It can be your own immune system that it’s reacting against. You can emotionally get that way when you’ve been traumatized or when you’ve been through hard things. Anyone gets close to you, like someone coming to hug, and you have this feeling of get away from me. I can’t handle it.
So I think that’s where Simon is. I just really wanted to see him try to work through that. He is having so much trouble being present with Baz. And as bad as Baz’s life has been, he has really been loved. He’s better able to receive and offer love because he’s had that in his life. Simon really hasn’t so we just see him panic. I wanted to stay with him during those hard moments. When he wants to run.
It’s a kind of story that we don’t often get. There’s the happily ever after or there’s the end of the affair. But the struggle to stay and how painful that can be, I found it very profound and I obviously had a huge emotional reaction to it.
I also wrote more physical scenes than I’ve ever written before and I don’t think I would have written that if we weren’t in a pandemic. Those were scary for me to write. If I hadn’t been alone with my own thoughts, I’m not sure I would have been able to get through them. Simon might be the most messed up, but Baz is no great shakes either. If you’ve been in a relationship where all you can do is just stand by someone, that’s who he was. In Any Way the Wind Blows, Baz finally gets to have a little bit more “this is what I need. I can cope with your dysfunction, but I need you to help me out with mine.” There’s this feeling you need to get yourself right before you get into a relationship. But when would we ever get there? I feel it’s more realistic for you to be like, okay, here’s the ways that I’m broken. Can we help each other? Or will we make it worse?
Right. Here’s my fracture, what kind of glue do you have? You’ve already articulated how you relate to Simon, but are you just as easily able to get into Baz’s head?
I’ve given half of myself to Simon and the other half to Baz and this, I don’t think, is unusual. Often the most intense conversations in a book are the two sides of yourself. I think the way that I’m like Baz is I just don’t give up on people in relationships very quickly. He really is a romantic and I think he’s an idealist in some ways. He believes that love conquers all and I want to believe that, too. So, no, I don’t struggle to write Baz ever. I really love them both and when I’m writing one of them, I just think about how much I love the other one.
Because this is the final (for now) installment of this story, what can you say about where you wanted to leave these characters?
I think sometimes my endings are kind of abrupt for people. I always have this sense of — if you’ve watched Mary Poppins — the wind changing and I need to just get out of here. It really felt like at the end of this book, there had been a huge shift for them. Not that they’re going to live perfect lives from now on, but that they had settled a lot of the conflicts that they came into the series with and they were ready for new problems. I really wanted it to have a satisfying ending because I’m somebody who is often very disappointed by the end of a TV show, movie, or series. I really tried to give everybody the moment they needed, even some of the minor characters like Fiona and Ebb.
I have a concern that this very specific ending with Simon and Baz won’t feel big enough to people. Editors always want you to resolve everything at once about two-thirds of the way through the book. You know when characters spend a whole season apart and you’re like, “Oh geez, we just had to get through this.” What if in Any Way the Wind Blows you get two climaxes and you get one climax almost right away? The more interesting part of that story is what happens after.
How much does the larger conversation about the ways in which queer love stories have been treated in the media and who is and isn’t allowed a happy ending play into how you crafted this book?
The conversation and the reality of queer characters in fiction is radically different now from when I started Carry On. It isn’t that there weren’t [other queer] books then, but there’s better representation everywhere. More diverse types of queerness, more kinds of books, more genres, more availability. There’s been so much progress. I don’t think that any character I write can bear the weight of the world. Simon cannot tell every story. This is one thing that I thought about when I was writing Eleanor and Park as a fat person who had very rarely seen myself in fiction. I didn’t want to write a story about Eleanor where everything was perfect and where she was happy. So I tend to write stories where people are having a hard time.
This story was always going to be about how hard it was to be Simon. I want to write stories about imperfect people getting through hard situations. I’m always listening to the conversations about representation and about diversity, but you’re also listening to yourself and just trying to tell a real story knowing that the world needs all kinds of stories.
Do you have any idea of what you want to do next now that you’ve put Simon and Baz to bed?
I’ve written a couple short stories, so I think I’m gonna write a few more just to change gears. It’s been a long time since I wrote a contemporary novel that’s set in our world, but I have a couple of ideas for adult books.
I know you’ve been off Twitter but you’re still lightly on Instagram. How much awareness do you hold about just how much of a nerve this book series has hit with readers? How do you grapple with how important these characters have become to so many people?
I don’t think it’s good to think about it. When I’m on Twitter or Instagram it’s like I’m walking down a hallway and all of a sudden 200 people are shouting things at me and my brain thinks every single one of those things is important. I’m so grateful that people have connected and I didn’t want to become oppositional to that feedback. Have you ever loved a series or a movie and you felt like it was being affected by the fandom? Sometimes [creators] are indulging the fans but sometimes they’re giving fans the finger. I think there’s this thing creators do where they’re like, you don’t own me. Sometimes that means that they drive a character off path because they’re trying so hard to surprise or confound readers or show readers who’s boss. I desperately did not want that to happen.
I didn’t want to really screw up my story just to spite people who thought they knew what was going to happen. Now, hopefully, I can just kind of relax again and be happy that people have connected to the characters and I’m glad they did because this series felt like a real risk to me at the beginning. I was known for writing contemporary books. Nobody was asking me to write a fantasy. So I’m extremely grateful that for so many readers they got it immediately and they’ve been with me ever since.
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