Interview With Carolyn Parkhurst, Author of Lost and Found - Page 2

One of the things I like most about both your books are the characters who are much more fleshed out than those of most novelists. You remind me – in a good way – of Barbara Kingsolver in The Poisonwood Bible when you alternate narration between characters, with each sounding realistic. Was that a difficult feat as a writer to have alternating narrators? Was that tough logistically when it came to structuring the story?

Well, first of all, thanks for the nice comparison.  It was challenging to juggle the different narrators — there are seven of them — but I actually really enjoyed it.  When I first started thinking about the book, I’d imagined that there would be only two narrators, the mother-daughter team of Laura and Cassie, and that everyone else would just be in the background.   But when I started to write, I became interested in the stories of some of the supporting characters, and I decided I wanted to spend some time in their heads, as well.  I like the idea that on reality shows, people are often cast because they seem to have a recognizable type — here are the Hollywood has-beens, for example, or here are the religious freaks — and I wanted to explore the complexity of these characters that wouldn’t necessarily come across in their TV personas.

I am probably not alone in having read Dogs of Babel as part of a book discussion group. Did knowing people were analyzing and discussing that book affect how you went about writing your next book?

I’ve visited both book groups and college classes where the participants have been discussing my work, and I have to say it’s a strange experience.  I always have this sense of, “Uh oh, they’re talking about it like it’s a real book.”  By which I mean, they’re discussing themes and symbolism and all kinds of things I’m not necessarily thinking about while I’m putting the story together.  When people ask me questions in a situation like that, they’re not so much interested in the logistics of how I wrote the book, how the plot developed and why I made the choices I did; they want me to explain why a character behaved in a certain way, or what certain images mean.  And since my writing process is much more intuitive than analytical, I don’t always have good answers for them.  But no, I didn’t give any of that much thought while I was writing Lost and Found.  I’ve found that worrying about how a book is going to be received can paralyze you; not that I don’t do it, but I try not to let it interfere with the writing.

Article Author: Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education.

He is an in-house media critic, a recovering Tetris addict and a proud uncle.

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