Today we talk about Trillio, a book by Andrea Ginevra Jane Green published with our publishing house Europe Books.
Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author, Andrea Ginevra Jane Green, to get to know her better, where and when she found the inspiration to write her book Trillio, as well as how she came up with the idea of a little bird as the main protagonist of her story.
Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!
- Where and when did you find the inspiration to write your book?
I found my inspiration to write Trillio on Lampedua. A desolate rocky platform in the middle of a huge rolling pitiless sea. Harsh and elemental. An island now known as a place where desperate souls find or fail to find footfall after deadly journeys. It was just after my first son was born and I had taken him back to the island. I found myself in an isolated part of an isolated island, with this young child who I had no idea how to care for. I was alone and couldn’t even speak the language. I felt gagged with the inability to communicate verbally I wrote to liberate and communicate my thoughts via pen and paper. At the same time I was travelling every so often North to the UK. Miraculously I found my little friends already there or arriving soon after. I recognised them and I heard their calls in both my home on Lampedusa and my home in Wales. I was flabbergasted, I travelled on an aeroplane, itself a ghastly horrible long journey but they? How on earth did these tiny creatures do it? So I started to imagine their journey and Trillio was born.
- What is the message you want to convey to your readers?
The message I want to convey is how amazing and precious these tiny creatures are. How much we ignore their existence, how they live completely unnoticed and sadly how their numbers are dwindling. During Covid there was a slight upturn in numbers but compared to years ago so few manage to pass through and survive the journey. I see the few that arrive battered damaged fighting for their lives. I want to help with this story particularly our children to protect our wildlife. At the moment in time when I had finished the manuscript I put it away in a drawer. So why now? The recent feeling of urgency, the disastrous climatic changes to our world, the continuing decimation of all forms of life other than human convinced me to offer little Trillio and put him out to the world. The need to protect nature and wildlife today has reached such proportions that I felt however small my contribution is or could be I had to share this experience with others and try to help these tiny friends. That is why I opened the drawer and present Trillio.
- How did you come up with the idea of a little bird as the main protagonist of your story?
I was in a unique position to observe these migratory birds and wanted to share my experience. It began when I periodically noticed tiny exhausted birds close to my house dealing with even further difficulties than just the migratory journey. The first ones I found were those that flew into my windows or I saw cats playing with them and saved them, or on the road unconscious after being hit by a car windscreen and left on the road to be squashed. I would stop the car and fight with myself to go back and help. To start with I was frightened to touch them but when I got enough courage to lift them and help them and felt the tiny weightless being in the palm of my hand, I was just so amazed at the thought of the incredible journey they were on and I felt I had to write about them. Another terror unfortunately are the hunters who I can’t believe would kill a being so small so fragile so courageous, but they do! Luckily that too is now finishing there are fewer and fewer hunters, not because they have evolved consciousnesses but because there are no more birds left to hunt! I felt I needed to give a voice and a representation to these minuscule heroic beings in our unobservant society.
- What was the first book you read and what did it teach you?
As soon as I could read I loved reading. Reading became my world. I would lose myself in the amazing characters places and stories in every new book I read. I very quickly discovered and devoured all the Enid Blytons. I loved the stories I would buy one a week with my pocket money rush home and read it usually in one swoop. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell was probably in that epoch, it stands out and had an effect because it is narrated from the viewpoint of and by the horse itself. The representation of the feelings, internal dialogue and understanding of a mute animal I remember fascinated me. Then I moved on to books such as Alan Garner The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and The Owl Service. The Hobbit was another true reading experience. Fantasy worlds of strange and mysterious happenings. I loved searching for gems pearls of wisdom, oblique observations that opened new vistas. I love storytelling and disappearing into other worlds. I always found/find diving into a new book a journey of thoughts and imagination that truly brings finer higher quality of mental communication of human minds.
- Are you working on a new writing project, you can tell us about?
I am working on a couple of things. Firstly a compilation of short animal/human/ insect stories. All intermingled. Giving animal voices and lives an equality to humans. Secondly, I am writing a ghost story set in the West Midlands in the 1970s. The story recounts an obsessive love story. It has long been an ambition of mine to write the ghost story for Christmas for the BBC.
Europe Books thanks the author, Andrea Ginevra Jane Green, once again for taking the time and answering our questions. We are really pleased to have walked alongside her on the editorial path that led to the publication of her book Trillio. We wish her the best of luck for her future works.
To you, my readers, I wish that this book, in addition to making you curious and delighting your reading, allows you to reflect on the importance of protecting wildlife and how to help these little volatile friends not to become extinct, and survive in this world now devastated by climate change and disasters
So, my dear reader, all I have to say is to enjoy your reading!
Your editor!