Dennis Lehane’s latest twists and turns
Many people know Dennis Lehane for his books-turned-movies: “Mystic River,” “Shelter Island,” “Gone Baby Gone.” Others know him for his TV work (including “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire”). And some of us know to go straight to the source: his books.
“Since We Fell”, the latest action-packed novel from the former Bostonite who now lives in L.A., is his first told from a woman’s point of view. Rachel Childs, the daughter of a difficult mother who refuses to tell her daughter who her father is, tries to find her dad, becomes a journalist who covers the earthquake in Haiti, and her experiences make her agoraphobic — or maybe she’s being gaslit by her husband? Oh, and she shoots him on the first page. There’s much more, but no spoilers. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
At first we think she’s going to be focused on her past, then the book shifts and changes. How much did you have mapped out?
The return to western Massachusetts in those first eight chapters, that came very late to me. It was my way of staking claim to it very much as a book, because I knew I was going to be writing the film script. And I thought, I want there to be a lot of things in here that couldn’t fit in a film. That became, this journey in pursuit of her father and, ultimately, herself.
This isn’t a book of realism — there’s a lot of amped-up action, — but do you know anyone who, like Rachel, doesn’t know who their father is?
No. People have told me since — it’s nuts. I had no clue. The missing father was not what concerned me; it was the motherdaughter dynamic that I was really riffing on. The way in which [Rachel’s mother] Elizabeth Childs is a horrible paradox: A woman of great, sweeping intelligence, but also her inner child is a rageful fanatic, deeply wounded, and uses that against her daughter for no other reason except her daughter is the closest person to her. And that’s what I was really exploring.
How has being a parent affected how you think of the dynamics between parents and children?
It’s all I think about. As a parent, you live with this terrible knowledge that you fail all the time, and a lot of times in ways you can’t even see. You won’t find out until they tell you 20 years later: My therapist told me, mention the time that you did this is the reason I’m doing this now. It’s the greatest job in the world. It’s the greatest joy — before I had kids, I knew plenty about happiness, but I’d never experienced joy. And even if you’re a completely committed parent, which I am, you think, I’m still messing up left and right. The unforgivable thing among people who try hard as parents is to see people who don’t. Or to see people who pour all their own damage into their kids.
The book is told from Rachel’s point of view, but she doesn’t always know what’s happening. What’s that like to write?
There’s not another single point of view anytime. It’s all Rachel, all the time. You commit to this idea that you will never see anything that she can’t see. Even to the idea of what happens to the people she ends up caring for in Haiti — we never know, because she never knows. She can only see what’s right in front of her nose. I as the novelist could have chosen to show more than that, but I didn’t. I wanted the reader to be locked into the claustrophobia of the book as Rachel is.
It occurred to me late — “Since We Fell” is kind of a twin to “Shutter Island.” They’re both books in which the central characters go through a global upheaval — in Teddy’s case it was World War II, in Rachel’s case it was Haiti — that reflects their internal helplessness and their internal disintegration. And it’s this idea of the global and the personal intersecting and causing a breakdown.
You wrote the book and also the screenplay. Simultaneously?
No, I would never do that. I wrote a draft of the book, then I wrote a draft of the screenplay, then I went back … The script’s with DreamWorks, and I heard it was out to directors. With scripts, it’s very out of sight, out of mind with me. Once I hit send, I’m moving on. And I’m back to doing my TV work, which is the major portion of my L.A. life. I’m working on an adaptation of Stephen King’s “Mr. Mercedes” with David E. Kelly and two other projects.
What advice would you give to a young writer who wants to be the next Dennis Lehane?
I don’t know. Read. And write every day. And we’ll get along fine as long as you stay out of Boston.