Aldrich went from writing plays to developing an animated feature. His first book grew out of an interest in the modern longevity movement.
Writing Coco at Pixar
Aldrich started out writing plays and moved into film and television writing in 2001. He began working on Coco at Pixar in 2011. He shares the screenplay credit with Adrian Molina and is one of four writers credited for the original story. The film follows Miguel, a young musician whose trip to the Land of the Dead gives him a different view of his family's history.
Coco won Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and for its song Remember Me. Aldrich and Molina shared an Annie Award for the screenplay, which also received a Humanitas Prize nomination in the family feature category.
The road to The Natural Order
Aldrich has said he's drawn to fountain-of-youth stories and to the people who turn the pursuit of a longer life into a project. He was especially interested in who would get left behind. That question gave him a way into a first novel about a man trying to sell a breakthrough while reckoning with a family relationship he'd left alone for decades.
Coco and The Natural Order take very different routes through family history. Miguel goes looking for his ancestors. In the novel, the person left to answer for the past is still alive and barely seems to have aged.
Aldrich's first novel takes place in Northern California. A commercial launch draws violent opposition and brings an estranged father and son together inside a guarded estate.
Bibliography
Books by Matthew Aldrich
Reviews and book guides open on Book Review Guide. The full list comes from the linked bibliography source.
