Jandy Nelson Celebrates ‘Generational Joy’ in New YA Novel ‘When the World Tips Over’ (Exclusive)

It’s been 10 years since young adult author Jandy Nelson published a novel, and as the release date for her latest, When the World Tips Over, approaches, the author admits that it feels a bit surreal.

“I’ve been joking that I feel like Rip Van Winkle, who woke from a 100-year sleep,” Nelson tells PEOPLE. “I feel like my whole heart is in [this book]. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to write.”

For many young readers, Nelson, the author of 2010’s bestsellers like The Sky is Everywhere and I’ll Give You the Sun, is a beloved name. Her latest novel follows the Fall siblings who, after the disappearance of their father years earlier, see their lives upended by the arrival of a mysterious girl with rainbow hair.

When The World Tips Over could be called many things: a family saga, a magical realism story and a fairytale, among them. For Nelson, however, the novel’s setting of the fictional town of Paradise Springs, Calif. is the real star.

“I really do feel like Northern California is another character in all the novels. It’s an objective correlative for the emotional life of the characters in the story,” she says. “I feel like I shoot up the California landscape with adrenaline, maybe, so the rivers rush harder and even the redwood trees are higher.”

Nelson, who now lives in San Francisco, grew up between New York City and Long Island following her parents’ divorce. When she later moved to Southern California, she was enraptured by the surfers on the beach and the “wild sense of freedom” that the state brought with it.

But for years, Nelson herself wasn’t an author, instead working as an adult fiction and nonfiction literary agent. Though Nelson had been writing poetry since she was a kid, she became hooked on the young adult genre while getting an MFA in children’s and young adult literature at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

“I didn’t write a word of fiction until I was 40,” Nelson says. “Not one word … It just never occurred to me that I could ever write fiction or that I would ever be a fiction writer.”

The seed for When The World Tips Over was planted for the author while she was on a road trip to the hot springs in Northern California.

“When I would drive up there, I would pass this old white Victorian house, and I got obsessed with it,” Nelson says. “It always seemed light-struck and it seemed really enchanted. It was abandoned, it was beautiful … I would pull over and walk around and peek in the windows, and I started seeing the characters.”

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“The weirdest part of the story is the house is completely gone now,” Nelson says. “It’s vanished. I went back recently and it’s not there. I’m just so happy that I took pictures of it because I would think that I made it up … my editor thinks that it is no longer needed to be in the world because now it’s in the book.”

It’s the kind of whimsy that feels fitting for When the World Tips Over, where fantasy occasionally melds with reality. Fans will also be privy to the family relationships in the novel, particularly between the Fall siblings, Wynton, Miles and Dizzy. Nelson credits her fascination with sibling dynamics to her closeness with her own brothers, but also the potential for drama that’s inherent in those relationships.

“There’s no one in the world that will get to you like your siblings, and also no one in the world that gets you like your siblings,” Nelson says. “And each family situation is this pressure cooker that might blow at any moment.” The novel also touches upon topics like grief and mental illness; and while they aren’t always explicitly named, Nelson says that’s part of their importance to the story.

“All the characters are experiencing everything for the first time,” she says. “You’re writing about first love, first grief, first experience of, perhaps, mental illness or mental challenges. As a writer, I just try to stay authentic to my character. I just try to stay in their point of view.”

And for Nelson, it’s rewarding to see the authentic reactions she gets from her readers.

“The best part about writing for young people, for me, is hearing how they relate to your characters and how important the books are to them,” the author says. “It’s just that level of absorption in fictional worlds. I don’t know if adults are that way as much.”

A decade after her first foray into the genre, Nelson understands that the world has changed for young people too.

“I hope that they relate to these characters in the same way,” Nelson says. “Of course, our culture has shifted a ton since, in the last 14 years when Sky has come out. But we shift with it, as writers.”

Nelson’s books have also reached people beyond the page, as seen with the 2022 screen adaptation of The Sky is Everywhere, on which Nelson served as a screenwriter. The author says that though she enjoyed working on the screenplay, it was nice to return to writing books too (and if When the World Tips Over was a film, she could see actors like Rachel Weisz and Josh O’Connor in starring roles).

With her new novel, the author hopes to convey another important message too.

“There’s a lot about generational pain in this story, but I feel like not enough attention is given to the fact that there’s generational joy, too,” Nelson says. “We’ve passed down, maybe, trauma, but also all these rhapsodies from the past.” Another joy that the author is looking forward to? Finally letting her characters go into the world.

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“I don’t have children, so I feel like a lot of these characters I write are my children,” Nelson says. “I just feel really grateful to readers of the world that want to read stories.”