Liza Palmer: A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents
Book Club Discussion
December 23, 2009. Liza Palmer, author of A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents,
discusses her latest novel in an interview with Queenie D.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Liza Palmer
Is
the Hawkes family inspired by a real family – your own or someone else's?
I think
all my novels are based on this elaborate "What If" game. I started with an idea of a particularly extreme situation: a family torn apart twenty
years ago by a father that abandons them, is torn apart again when their single mother dies five years prior to the book's beginning and is now
threatening to tear apart once again when their estranged father has a stroke and summons the children to his bedside. I love the idea of the absolute
paradox of grief: that in moments of such extreme sadness there are these hints of the most beautiful glimmers you've ever seen: in your loved ones,
in yourself, in the world around you. Therein lies the paradox that is the engine for A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents. The absolute
wrenching beauty of loss and love and how Grace (and the rest of the Hawkes clan) deals with it.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Liza Palmer
Even,
and especially, after finishing the book, I still wonder over how Grace could so quickly and efficiently cut her family out of her life for five
whole years. Once reunited, it was almost as if they all breathed as one. How was she able to walk away?
I think
the prospect of not having to feel the pain of losing her mother was too tempting for Grace to pass up. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, as
they say.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Liza Palmer
Are
either Huston or Leo gay? Even though Huston seemed married to his work and Leo too unusual in personality to sustain a relationship, I felt that
either one of them could have been "in the closet."
I always
look at relationships with significant others as a litmus test to see how well each character has dealt with their past, their parents and their
own histories. I didn't have Leo or Huston in relationships with women because I wanted it to be clear that neither man had dealt with the loss
of their mother.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Liza Palmer
Ray's
interest in his each of his children's adult life was obvious. Why didn't he try to befriend them in real life as they grew up? Why wait until
on his deathbed?
A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents
really chronicles that crossroads where you either get busy living or get busy dying – as Red so poetically said in Shawshank Redemption.
I think for the Hawkes family it was all about being less miserable and what they're all dealing with now is the prospect of actually being happy.
And with being happy, comes vulnerability – which is a hard pill to swallow sometimes. And what makes the Hawkes kids' journey different, is they
saw the fall out from their parents choosing the safe path - and that it doesn't pay off in the end.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Liza Palmer
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Liza Palmer
How
did you become interested in the idea of family bonds, and all that goes with them?
My novels
never start out as family dramas, but I find myself asking one question about my main character and boom: I'm flipping wildly through their old photo
albums. I just don't think you can really know your main character until you dig up all the family dirt and understand where they came from.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Liza Palmer
Can
you tell us anything about your current writing projects?
I'm
working on Book Four right now and loving it. It's still on that awesome honeymoon phase where I'm excited to get to writing. That phase's days
are numbered, I assure you, but until then I'm going to savor this time.
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