Neverhome and Kind One
I would love to sit down and hear the “story” of Laird Hunt and his novels. I most recently read Kind One and Neverhome; you can scroll back to read about Zorrie, The Evening Road, and In the House in the Dark of the Woods. Every author must have a “here’s what I want to convey” message, but I am so struck by what I’ve read from Hunt so far because all five novels feature female protagonists who have “left” in some form of another. (Neverhome features a woman who fights in the Civil War while leaving her husband to tend to their home/farm, and the protagonist of Kind One is a 14-year-old who marries her mother’s (much older) second cousin. [Spoiler alert: He’s terrible.]) As I said with Zorrie — although I feel like it applies far more to the 4 I read after that one — I feel that there is something “experimental” about all these novels, and how Hunt uses language to share story is fascinating.
I help small organizations (mostly nonprofits) with their “story.” But sometimes it’s just individuals…one of my first projects of 2021 involved crafting a letter for an amateur musician who wanted to get the attention of a major sporting organization. (It’s an interesting story!) What do readers/followers need to know — and why should they care? (And getting people to care can on occasion be way harder than people think. You really, really gotta spell things out — but sometimes experiment in unusual ways. Like taking a picture of a bunch of paper bags splayed on your floor. [It worked!])
Do novelists ponder the same questions? I’m not sure novelists should answer questions explicitly the way a communications person should. The real art, I would think, is in addressing your message subtly and slyly and unexpectedly. Leaning more into the experimentation and less toward the “spelling out.” Which is why I would love to hear Laird Hunt speak…about his life, what he cares about, why he writes. Because, to me, his novels are full of surprises….but seem to have a theme. Unlike organizational stories that should prompt you to act, story-stories are the best when they prompt you to think and feel.
originally published on instagram