Lost and Found: Carolyn Parkhurst
Dogs of Babel Author's Sophomore Release
In her second novel, Carolyn Parkhurst looks at mothers, daughters, and reality TV
Dogs of Babel author Carolyn Parkhurst explores the fragile bonds between mother and daughter in her second novel, Lost and Found.
Laura and Cassie—the mother and daughter, respectively—share a shocking secret one night, when Cassie awakens her mother and takes her to her attic bedroom. When Laura realizes what has happened, she quickly tries to remedy the situation. Their secret heightens an already strained relationship, which is then shared with the rest of the world when they join an eclectic group of contestants on a reality TV game show called, appropriately, Lost and Found. The other players include former child stars, middle-aged flight attendants, goofy brothers, a converted homosexual couple who got married after they both claimed to have found God, and millionaire inventor best friends. The stakes in this game turn serious when the show’s creators scheme to reveal the most intimate details of the players’ lives.
Parkhurst alternates narrators in each chapter, so each character has an opportunity to talk about their pasts and why they decided to audition for the show. We get a lot of the intimate details that the show producers threaten to expose, and many of them are things that people wouldn’t really want to share. Some start to question their sexuality, others find attraction in unlikely places, and others decide to use their 15 minutes of fame to advance their fading careers. Parkhurst’s characters are well-developed, and she is good at both revealing each contestant’s backstory and keeping up the pace of the novel. Even Barbara Fox, the icy host of Lost and Found, gets a chance to talk about herself a bit. Though she claims her ice queen demeanor is an act, you’d never know it, according to the rest of the contestants. However, her cool sense of remove adds an interesting element to the story—she can talk about the characters and the action without getting very personal. This would be a much harder feat for some of the other characters to achieve, particularly when the producers make the decision to switch teammates just as the drama begins to climb. (How convenient that Carl, the more serious of the goofball brother team, winds up teamed with Laura, whom he’d shown interest in earlier in the book.) And is it really a good idea to pair Cassie, who has started grappling with her sexuality, with Juliet, a former starlet? Are ratings worth damaging real human relationships?
Parkhurst adds an interesting angle to the recent reality TV phenomenon by introducing characters who are all too human—a new dimension of the real side of reality TV.
