Rebecca K Reilly is a Kiwi author who wrote one of my favourite books that I read in 2023 (Greta & Valdin, originally released in 2019 but published in UK/USA in 2024).
As a New Zealander, I’m used to reading books from other countries – most books I read are set in the US or in Europe. It’s been an amazing way of learning about other cultures and words, phrases that they use. Greta & Valdin was fun because I was having the ‘rare’ (for myself!) experience of reading about people in my country, in my city, inside jokes I understood, cultural niches I felt deeply about. I’ve been recommending it to friends overseas but very curious how those translate over.
In this article she goes over how she adapted it for American audiences.
>*I kept receiving the same feedback: that the novel was good, but it was such a shame that I had written it in a way that was so specific to New Zealand because I would never be able to sell it overseas.*
>*(..)*
>*As well as this, and perhaps more frustratingly, the ubiquitousness of Americanisms in media is something all the rest of us just deal with every day. I was six years old watching VHS tapes wondering what “making a couple Xeroxes at Kinko’s” meant. The people who write the New York Times Connections puzzle are not thinking hang on a minute, people in New Zealand might not know that STARZ is a cable TV network and DEWY and BUOY aren’t even remotely homophones in many accents.*
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Rebecca K Reilly is a Kiwi author who wrote one of my favourite books that I read in 2023 (Greta & Valdin, originally released in 2019 but published in UK/USA in 2024).
As a New Zealander, I’m used to reading books from other countries – most books I read are set in the US or in Europe. It’s been an amazing way of learning about other cultures and words, phrases that they use. Greta & Valdin was fun because I was having the ‘rare’ (for myself!) experience of reading about people in my country, in my city, inside jokes I understood, cultural niches I felt deeply about. I’ve been recommending it to friends overseas but very curious how those translate over.
In this article she goes over how she adapted it for American audiences.
>*I kept receiving the same feedback: that the novel was good, but it was such a shame that I had written it in a way that was so specific to New Zealand because I would never be able to sell it overseas.*
>*(..)*
>*As well as this, and perhaps more frustratingly, the ubiquitousness of Americanisms in media is something all the rest of us just deal with every day. I was six years old watching VHS tapes wondering what “making a couple Xeroxes at Kinko’s” meant. The people who write the New York Times Connections puzzle are not thinking hang on a minute, people in New Zealand might not know that STARZ is a cable TV network and DEWY and BUOY aren’t even remotely homophones in many accents.*