The reluctant Netflix girl

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Caroline Mackenzie and I got a Netflix deal out of my first novel, One Year of Ugly, which is being published this month.

I was born, raised and still live in town. But I lived in Acono Village. 

I’m not ‘fraid to pass the lighthouse!

My father, Christian de Verteuil, my younger brother, Justin, and my youngest brother, Sebastian, and I lost our mother, Deborah, to breast cancer when she was only 45. 

I was a month shy of 20.

It made the survivors closer.

One Year of Ugly begins after a death in a large family.

I grew up very close to my three aunts and did not feel lost in the world when my mother died.

At university, partying, living wild and reckless, you really don’t need parents. 

It was only in my 30s, when the big milestones of marriage and kids came around. that I truly felt her loss.

My mother would stay up reading to us until after midnight.

When I was 12, my father pushed me to go beyond teen dramas to tackle heavy memoirs on poverty and heartache. 

My mother, (denied) her desperate goal to be a painter by her parents’ well-intentioned pragmatism, led my brothers and me to view artists, writers and musicians as infinitely more impressive than lawyers, doctors and businessmen.

It’s no surprise I’m a writer, Justin is a painter and Sebastian is a music producer.

My childhood was surrounded by greens and blues: ocean, sunburn, the grit of sand between your teeth; saltwater-tangled hair; blue crabs, boat rides; sno cones, pholourie and boiled corn around the Savannah.

My adolescence was similar, except with copious screwdrivers at (nightclubs Coco-) Nuts and Base thrown in, all that early-2000s dancehall and hip-hop, and hours upon hours of ballet.

After ten years of ballet and all my Royal Academy of Dance grade exams, I stopped when I went to university. 

Studying and getting s--t-faced took precedence.

(But) ballet taught me focus, discipline and the satisfaction of putting in hard work, even when you don’t feel like it. Hugely beneficial for any budding novelist.

I love ballet as an art form and hope to get my son to appreciate it. (Despite) the Trini chauvinist heteronormative forces working against him.

As a little girl, I wanted to be a novelist. I compulsively kept journals from age nine up to my mid-20s.

As I got older, my blossoming neurotic disposition made me too insecure to think myself capable.

(So) I clung to my other major interest – languages – and became a translator. The daily journalling only stopped when I started writing fiction in earnest.

I never studied English literature beyond CXC but my BA and (translation) MSc introduced me, in the original languages, to Allende, Garcia Marquez, Lorca, Borges, Camus.

Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir completely shaped my world view and life philosophy. Completely.

My French literature professor, Ben O’ Donohoe, broke those texts down in ways that opened my mind up more than an acid trip would’ve. Made me a true existentialist.

I always wanted a family full of boys.

Only after having a baby and realising how crucial women are to, well, everything, did I want a daughter. To mind me in my old age.

Women, nurturers and givers, (are) ultimately the glue families need.

Five books that blew my mind: Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. A memoir, not a novel. I first read it when I was 12 and have read it six times since. McCourt contributed to my impulse to be a darkly comedic writer.

Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women is one of those books that, as a writer, you think, “Ah, s--t, why even bother trying?”

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is perfection.

Charles Bukowski’s Post Office and its terse, testosterone-fuelled, drunken, messy chauvinism is pure gold. Ah, to give as few f--ks as a man!

VS Naipaul’s genius book A House for Mr Biswas is the novel I’d take with me on a deserted island.

Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, the indomitable master of satire, I can guarantee you I’ll love. 

Green is my favourite colour. Growing up in a verdant island valley thing?

But for clothing, I have an almost compulsive pull to grey. My entire wardrobe is grey. It's a uniform. I keep re-purchasing the exact same clothes over and over.

It might be some kind of syndrome. I'm working on it.

I am a total film lover but, unfortunately, not a legitimate film festival film lover who knows why Citizen Kane was so important. 

I'm a mainstream, basic-a-- movie lover.

And I love series like Mad Men or Vikings. Reality TV is the best way to shut off after a long exhausting day. Try not to judge.

If Ugly were ever made into a movie, I’d love Guy Ritchie to direct it. He just nails dark humour and his movies just have such a dynamic, edgy feel.

 If I make it to 90, only two things will be on my nonagenarian bucket list: 1. eat nothing but bread and-cheese; and, 2. try heroin.

So I probably won’t make it past 90.

I was nine months pregnant, lugging my ginormous belly around Port of Spain, doing chores with my husband, and I get this e-mail from my agent, Sue, telling me that Netflix wants to option Ugly. 

Well, how I didn’t go into labour on the spot is beyond me. Surreal is an understatement. I started laughing wildly and told my husband someone was playing an elaborate joke on us.

I am such a Netflix lover already, so to see my characters come to life on screen, and with Netflix-level production quality, would be incredible.

But Netflix aren’t contractually bound to actually do anything with the film rights. It could be years before they put anything into production, or they might decide not to produce anything at all.

But let’s hope we’ll all be snuggling down to watch season one of Ugly some time in the not-too-distant future!

The best part of a Netflix deal would be making connections and learning about the adaptation process. 

The worst part is, I’m thrilled, but it can (still) feel a little disheartening to be consistently referred to as “the Netflix girl.” I’m like, “What about HarperCollins? Simon & Schuster?”

A Trini is a walking paradox: warm and extroverted yet hostile and cutthroat. Sunny and tropical, like the island, but with an ugly urbanity. 

But to me, a Trini, any Trini, anywhere I am in the world will mean one thing only: home.

For me, Trinidad and Tobago is a creative bottomless well and a place as multi-layered and complex as any well-drawn fictional character. 

It’s (as) full of darkness (as it is) of light, and as gifted as it is flawed. It will always be my muse.

Read the full version of this feature on Saturday at www.BCPires.com

One Year of Ugly will be published as an ebook on May 14 and in hardcover on July 14 (USA) and 23 (UK).