As I approach a major milestone here on W&C, I seem to be struggling for something to blog about. I have boasted that has never really been an issue since I started blogging in September 2003. So today, with nary a good blog thought in my head... you get a quick-turnaround book review... I just finished this one yesterday!
This is the second of my hardcover purchases from a couple weeks ago. Why did this make the pricey hardcover cut and would it be better than The Ruins? Well, the reason was pretty much a no-brainer... Carolyn Parkhurst's Lost and Found is a novelized version of one of my favorite shows... The Amazing Race. Plus I had heard good things about Parkhurst's debut novel (The Dogs of Babel), but since I never quite got around to that one... I figured I'd skip ahead to this one and, if warranted, go back to Dogs.
Ok, it's not exactly The Amazing Race in book form. The minor twist is that contestants must collect "found" objects along the way, most of them quite odd and cumbersome, and drag them around as they race around the world. A two-person team is philiminated eliminated at end of each leg by icy hostess, Barbara Fox, who philosophically asks the booted team... "You've lost the race, but what have you found?"
Ironically enough, I wasn't quite liking the at the get-go because it was too much like The Amazing Race... from team monikers (a couple of religiously "converted" gays is referred to as "Team Brimstone" or "Team Shut Up Already")... to mocking the contestants who expect foreigners to understand English by speaking louder or adding an "o" to the end of word ("airporto! quicko! quicko!")... c'mon now... I've been writing/blogging this kind of stuff for years!
But things started to turn... unlike the show, we are treated to quite a bit of each contestant's backstory... many of the contestants were selected based on a "secret"/skeleton in their past. But there may be something a tad sinister going on... is the show manipulating things to expose those secrets and make for some "good television?" (Now, we know a "real" reality show would never be exploitive, right?!).
There is a different narrator for each chapter... as the chapter ends, the next one picks up where the action left off and a little different perspective. Just like the real TAR, it is a little confusing at first to keep track of all the teams (especially when you have to create your own mental "visual")... but be patient, they sort themselves all out fairly quickly. The book starts mid-race... so there really aren't that many teams: mother and daughter, brothers from Boston, ex-child stars, the "converted"/ex-gay married couple, young millionaire inventors, and former high school sweethearts.
Now this certainly isn't serious lit by any stretch... but it is a fun and quick book. Like the real TAR, having become invested into the characters I was a little sad to see it all come to an end.
On a sidenote, in the acknowledgements, Parkhurst thanks Shii Ann (from Survivor) and Zach (of the winning, and infamous, TAR winning team of Zach & Flo) for their insights about appearing on reality television.
tags: carolyn parkhurst, lost and found
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