Life lived on television

A whole life lived on television, that's what I'd be good at.

Carolyn Parkhurst, Lost and Found

Anyone who likes reality TV will probably like Carolyn Parkhurst's 2006 novel Lost and Found. This may be why I didn't care for it. I didn't find it nearly as compelling as either The Dogs of Babel or The Nobodies Album, Parkhurst novels that sandwiched this one.

The entire novel is a reality show called Lost and Found in which participants travel around the world following clues that lead them to objects, such as parrots and ski poles, they must then carry with them for the remainder of their journey. Several of these participants narrate their stories, although the main characters are Laura and Cassie, a mother and her teenage daughter. Cassie feels guilty about giving up her baby girl for adoption a few months before, while Laura feels guilty about not even noticing her daughter's pregnancy. The show's producers, feeling guilty about nothing, hope to expose their story to improve ratings.

Finding and exposing secrets, its own game of Lost and Found, seems to be what the reality show is really all about. A couple of Christian homosexuals, married to each other in hope of beating what they view as an affliction, are others with secrets just waiting to be found. Cassie, too, has lesbian feelings she tries to keep hidden.

The line quoted above, about "a whole life lived on television," comes from Juliet, a former child star who hopes to use the reality show to springboard back into the limelight. She's frustrated to discover the producers find others in the game more interesting than her.

The novel makes easy reading. We feel compassion for most of the characters and disgust at the way the mostly faceless producers manipulate them. Yet we sense Parkhurst doing the same with her characters, making her novel, like the TV show, feel like something less than reality.