Brooke Davis is the author of the novel Lost & Found. She has been a travel writer, editor, and bookseller, and she lives in Perth, Australia.
Q:
Of your three main characters, one is very young and two are elderly. What role
do you see age playing in the novel?
A:
When I first started writing the book, I think it was about self-preservation:
I found it difficult to write about things from my own point of view because it
felt too close. I wanted to keep a distance so I could have time to work out
how I felt.
This
eventually evolved into the feeling that I wanted to represent grief as a thing
that we all deal with differently. I felt like I couldn’t do that from my own
singular point of view; that it required the freedom of both fiction and
multiple points of view.
The
very young and the very old also have these really interesting positions within
Western culture—there’s an invisibility to them. They’re not really heard.
The
very young are constructed as being pre-social-awareness, and the very old as
the opposite but exactly the same, a kind of post-social-awareness. And the
idea of tackling a subject we struggle to talk about like death via characters
who aren’t listened to—it was a very compelling idea to me. It made sense.
There
was such a sense of freedom in writing from their point of view—I was able to
ask those real thorny questions about The Way Things Are that I was afraid to
ask myself.
Q:
You’ve noted that the book was inspired by your own grief after your mother’s
death, and that you’ve asked, “How do you live knowing that anyone you love can
die at any moment?” What reaction have you had from readers to the book,
especially from readers who also might be grieving?
A:
The best reactions have taught me that when you make yourself vulnerable in
front of other human beings by revealing intimate and painful details about
yourself, you give other human beings permission to do the same. It’s been a
really vital lesson to learn.
I
was signing books at an event and heard complete strangers in the signing line
telling each other all about the people they’ve loved and lost. I just loved
that.
Another
time, I was going for a run in the bushland near my house and I ran past a
young woman and her children. From behind me, I heard, “Are you Brooke Davis?”
I was sweaty, panting, and wearing this terrible heavy-metal hoodie of my
brother’s.
I
seriously considered saying “No, no I’m not,” and running far, far away, but I
turned back and we started chatting. She said her mother had died a couple of
years ago, that she’s struggled to come to grips with it, that seeing a woman
her age talking about grief openly was a great help to her.
At
another signing event, an 80 year-old woman sobbed while telling me that her
100 year-old mum had died recently. She kept apologizing; she didn’t feel like
she should be crying because her mum was old. I learned then that no matter how
old you are, or she is, she’s still your mum.
The
American writer George Saunders has said that fiction, for him, is about “softening
the borders between himself and other people,” and in writing this book—instead
of feeling like a big weirdo who spends all her time thinking about death—I
have indeed felt as if those borders have been softened between myself and
other people.
Q:
The three characters end up traveling around Australia, by car, train, and
bus. Do you think the book has an only-in-Australia quality to it, or could the
story have been transplanted elsewhere?
A:
It’s such a great question. I don’t think the setting of this book is really
that important to a story like this because the themes of it are so universal.
No
matter where we’re from, we are all born, we will all die, and, like I said
before, if we’re on earth long enough to experience the death of someone close,
we will all grieve. It could’ve been set anywhere with those themes.
Having
said that, the Australian setting was really important to me. As I’m sure you
can imagine, we have so many stories/films/books/television shows that come
from overseas—from Britain and the States particularly.
So
it was important for me to tell a story that was from here and about here—that
had the sound of our voices, the poetry of our version of English, the nuances
of our culture, the beauty and ugliness of our landscape, the beauty and
ugliness of our people.
Q:
Did you know how the book would end before you started writing, or did you make
many changes along the way?
A:
I had absolutely no idea how it was going to end. One of my weaknesses is most
definitely plotting!
I
began with my characters and just wrote around them for years, really. I put
them in different situations, in different headspaces, with different people. I
played with them in this way till I felt like I knew them, and then worked on a
plot to try to get the story moving forward.
I
had all kinds of ideas for the ending. Endings are really difficult because
they can ruin or make an entire book for someone. So much pressure to get it
right!
But
it eventually became clear to me that it was important to have an ending that
felt like what I believe grief to be like—that wasn’t entirely resolved. I
wanted the reader to feel a little uncomfortable at the end. For them to have
to sit with something that wasn’t completely tied up.
Q:
Anything else we should know?
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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