What Happened to My Sister

by Elizabeth Flock

  Caroline Leavitt: You were a journalist covering all kinds of news stories, and you gave it up to be a fiction writer. You never looked back—a leap of faith I love. How does your background inform your writing?

  Elizabeth Flock: I loved reporting, being able to indulge my curiosity. I’m also a news junkie, so having a job that combined both was a dream come true. The training I got first in print then in broadcasting served me well, I think: the research, investigative work, digging deep and becoming a de facto expert on an array of subjects. I had so many extraordinary experiences—from traveling to Cuba for the pope’s historic meeting with Fidel Castro to being in Hong Kong for the handover to covering the death and funeral of Princess Diana in London, with a myriad of other stories in between—I feel incredibly lucky to have reported such varied stories. Having said that, after a couple of years traveling the globe for CBS News I found the fast, frenetic pace to be too much for me. Toward the end of my time on television, when I was going through a particularly difficult time of my life, I was out in the field reporting on a plane crash. I was in a very dark place and I had less than one minute to pull myself together. By some miracle I did. But I remember I had about thirty seconds before going on live TV when I thought, What would happen if that red light on the camera went on and I went mute? It’s a reporter’s nightmare. I filed away that thought—that fear—and later used it as a launching point for my first novel (But Inside I’m Screaming). I had my main character freeze up on live national TV and the story was off and running.

  As it turns out, the leap from journalism to writing fiction wasn’t as difficult as you might imagine. Some subjects I write about are quite dark: child abuse, childhood trauma, neglect. Luckily I haven’t had personal experience with any of those topics, so when I sat down to write Me & Emma [the precursor to What Happened to My Sister] I knew I had a lot of reading, researching, and interviewing to do, and those skills came right back to me. It was liberating to realize that I could exercise some latitude with the story, but I wanted to get the facts right about what would happen to a traumatized and neglected child. Since then I have made much use of the latitude. That poetic license. What Happened to My Sister is a good example—I set it in contemporary times even though I have told countless readers and book groups that I originally intended this book’s predecessor, Me & Emma, which has some of the same characters, to be set in the 1960s.

  CL: I had an editor once ask me, “How do you know what you know when you write?” I love this question so much I want to put it to you. How do you know what you know about these characters and their situation?

  EF: Mental illness is a subject that I am deeply interested in—it has a stigma attached to it that is as infuriating as it is ingrained. So when I was initially kicking around ideas for my second novel, I kept thinking that I would love to tell a story where the main character’s thoughts and actions are her own truths, absent of discrimination. I wanted to tell a story from the inside out. I wanted readers to become attached to the character before I upended everything.

  Think about it photographically: The camera eye is tight on a face, and over time you come to know every crease, every curve, you attach a story to it, and perhaps you even come to love it. But then the camera slowly pulls back and the face is put in context. You see the environment it’s in—maybe it belongs to an inmate on death row. Or a politician running for office. Or a patient in an insane asylum. Our world is so polarized right now—people make snap judgments based on very little information and I just hate that. Appearances are almost never what they seem. That certainly proved true in Me & Emma and, I hope, in What Happened to My Sister.

  CL: As novelists, we fall in love with our characters, and it’s often hard to say goodbye. We get so attached! What was it like to revisit the characters from Me & Emma? Did it take a while for them to come back alive, or were they fully formed on the page? Did anything surprise you?

  EF: Only another writer would ask this question. Writers know exactly what it’s like. Did you read Charlotte’s Web? Remember at the end after Charlotte dies and all her babies are floating away on the breeze, calling out “Goodbye! Goodbye Wilbur!” in their little voices? Wilbur’s heartbroken to see them go, but deep down he knows it’s time for them to leave the web. That’s usually what it’s like for me when I come to the end of a novel I’ve written. I can practically feel my characters drifting away from me, going out into the world. It’s hard to say goodbye, but it’s necessary.

  Well, Carrie Parker never left the web. I felt like I let go of her little hand too soon. So I decided to pick it back up, to reach for her again. If I hadn’t, I would have felt that I was letting her down somehow, as corny as that sounds. I always wondered what happened when their car pulled away from the curb. When I began writing What Happened to My Sister I had lots in store for Carrie and her mother but, funnily enough, I look back at my original outline for the book and it’s totally different from what came out in the writing. It always surprises me that a story I’m in the process of writing ends up having a mind of its own.

  CL: Oh, I love that you said the outline changed! That happens for me, too. How did it change? And why do you think that happens to us?

  EF: I don’t know why it is. Maybe I was in a different place when I wrote Me & Emma, and I saw the story through the prism of my life then. Which is not to say I was unhappy when I was writing Me & Emma or What Happened to My Sister. Quite the contrary.

  CL: Sometimes I feel that I’m the happiest when I’m writing the darkest …

  EF: Me, too. I am incredibly lucky to have had as close to an idyllic childhood as it gets. Growing up, I had no concept of darkness or depravity, no experience with child abuse. Maybe that’s why that proverbial dark side fascinates me so much. And believe me, the research I did for both Me & Emma and What Happened to My Sister was dark—and heartbreaking. But for What Happened to My Sister, for instance, I needed to understand child suggestibility. I wanted to convincingly write about a mother basically brainwashing her young daughter, and though I ended up with a lot of research material that I didn’t use, all of it enabled me to know and understand my subject.

  CL: I’m always really interested in process. How do you write? Do you have rituals? Are you an outliner or do you follow your characters wherever they take you?

  EF: I’m fascinated by other writers’ processes, too! Maybe because I have so many writing-related habits. They’re more idiosyncrasies or peculiarities than actual habits, so I suppose I like to know that others are equally obsessive. Having to be at the proverbial writing table by a certain time, beverages at the ready, phones off. That sort of thing.

  In terms of plotting, when I started out writing fiction, I never outlined. Now that I do, I frankly don’t know how I ever did it any other way. I didn’t study creative writing in school, and I’ve never been a part of a workshop, so in the beginning I flew by the seat of my pants. I didn’t want to be married to an outline.

  CL: For me, the outline is a lifesaver. It’s like you’re swimming in this huge, churning ocean and you fear you might drown, and then you look a few feet away and there is the outline—you can grab on to it for support. If you’re overwhelmed, you can just pick a piece of it and write that one section, so you don’t feel so intimidated by the scope of the novel. My outlines are really detailed, but I hate the perception that if you use an outline, you’re not creative.

  EF: Didn’t John Irving say that he doesn’t begin to write until he knows his last line? That makes complete sense to me. I’ve been held up by the book I’m working on now for almost a year because I haven’t known how it is going to end. With Me & Emma, I knew what was going to happen. It was the best feeling because in getting from point A (the beginning) to point B (the end) that book practically wrote itself—the only time that’s ever happened, by the way. With What Happened to My Sister, I simply wanted to do the characters justice. I couldn’t let it end sloppily. By the time I was nearing the end it occurred to
me that I will, perhaps, make this a trilogy. I really want to carry my characters over the finish line. I’ve made them suffer through an obstacle course of pain! I want to feel the satisfaction of seeing them flourish.

  CL: Do you show your work to others or are you private?

  EF: I’m a private writer, but I’m trying to come out of my shell a bit. It’s a tricky process, though—knowing when and how to show one’s work. For years I have stared at a Nietzsche quote I have on a Post-it beside my computer: “That for which we find words is already dead in our hearts.” I feel that if I speak about what I’m doing, at least in the early stages, those ideas flutter away and I can’t get them back. But I now recognize that my writing is better for having my agent or my editor weigh in early on, so I know I need to sprinkle in a few more “trusted readers.”

  Furthermore, writing is a solitary pursuit and sometimes you need a little encouragement. A bird chirping on your shoulder: “It’s great! Keep going!”—the only way to get that is by sharing at least a few pages. Do you show your work?

  CL: I was like you at first. I never did. Not until the last four books. I have four or five readers with wildly different views, and I’ve learned to listen to their comments, to take them in, and then see what resonates with me. Once a reader told me, “Every writer has a book they need to burn. This is yours,” but the other four readers really liked it, so I didn’t go back to that particular reader after that.

  EF: I’m only half-joking when I say that, generally speaking, I think writers are insecure narcissists. We’re riddled with insecurity, but our vanity, for lack of a better word, forces us onward. We keep putting ourselves “out there” because without words, without books, without stories, we would crumble. At least I would.

  CL: Me, too! And speaking of crumbling, so much of this novel is about how we survive. Carrie has flashes of insight and at times her imagination seems to save her. As a writer, can you talk about how imagination saves you?

  EF: I know you can speak to that, too. Imagination definitely saved me from some very dark times in my personal life, like illness and heartbreak. I can honestly say that in my whole life I have never been bored. I credit my mother for that. When we were kids, if one of us whined that we were bored, she’d say, “Boring people are bored. Read a book! Go find something to do. Use your imagination!”

  CL: It makes me sad not to see kids just dreaming on a park bench or playing with dolls.

  EF: When I was young, I loved the book Harriet the Spy. I would watch people closely and make up silly stories about their lives. Actually, I just loved reading, again, thanks to my parents, who are still voracious readers. I’ll never forget my mother taking me to get my very own library card—oh, what a wonderful day that was.

  I worry that we’re losing a generation of creative types because we are all so programmed now. Every minute of our day is accounted for. We hurry from event to event, moving so fast, task to task, all these screens in front of us. Many kids don’t have enough downtime to get lost in books read for pleasure, not homework. We need to get back to that unstructured time. So our imaginations can take flight.

  CL: Agreed! So where is your imagination taking you these days?

  EF: To the next story. [smiling] To the next story. I don’t quite know what it is, but I imagine it will surprise me. It always surprises me.

  QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. The mother-daughter relationship is an important theme in this novel. What lessons can be learned from Libby and Carrie, and from Honor and Cricket?

  2. Why do you think Elizabeth Flock chose to narrate the story from Carrie’s and Honor’s points of view? How would the novel differ if it were told through the eyes of Cricket? Of Ruth?

  3. Honor’s relationship with Cricket is very different from Eddie’s relationship with Cricket. Do you think that father-daughter relationships are inherently different from mother-daughter relationships? If yes, how so?

  4. What are the characteristics of a strong mother-daughter relationship? Do you think that Honor and Cricket have a strong relationship? What in their relationship works? In what ways do you think Honor approaches motherhood differently than Ruth does?

  5. Discuss Carrie’s relationship with Cricket. How are the two girls alike? How are they different?

  6. The death of a child has a devastating impact on parents, and the death of Caroline was one of the main reasons that Eddie and Honor separated. Do you think Eddie and Honor would have gotten back together if Carrie hadn’t come into their lives?

  7. Libby seems to put all of her needs before Carrie’s. Do you think that she was always like this? Or was there a time when she was good to Carrie? Is Libby’s act of confession at the end a sacrifice for her daughter, or is it a selfish act?

  8. Carrie’s flashbacks hint at what really happened to Emma. At any point before the ending, did you guess the truth? What surprised you most?

  9. Ruth kept alive the dream that she was related to Charlie Chaplin for many years. Is her behavior in any way similar to Carrie keeping alive the dream that her mother cared about her? And that her “good” behavior could influence her mother’s moods? Have you ever wanted something so much that you held out false hope? What are the benefits or consequences of fooling ourselves?

  10. After losing her first child, Honor has a desperate need to keep control in her life. How does Carrie ease Honor’s need for control?

  11. Can you imagine living in a world like Carrie’s? Do you think that you would be able to be as resourceful and optimistic as she?

  12. In this book, Mr. Burdock is the only positive male figure in Carrie’s life. Do you think that he should have called Child Protective Services when he saw that Libby wasn’t really looking after Carrie? How do you define the line between minding your own business and stepping in to help someone?

  13. Do you feel differently about Mr. Burdock’s inaction versus the Dressers’ overreaction? If Honor and Eddie hadn’t been wrongly accused of child abuse, do you think that they would have been quicker to intervene in Carrie’s situation? Or do you think that Honor made the right decision by feeding and helping Carrie as much as she did?

  14. Did Carrie’s unfamiliarity with modern technology make you think about how much of the way we live our lives has changed over the past few years? How would this story be different if it was set in a time without the Internet? Do you think that Carrie would ever have learned the truth about her family?

  15. Elizabeth Flock extensively researched child psychology and trauma in order to portray Carrie in a realistic way. Though Carrie is never officially diagnosed or labeled with a psychological condition, how did you interpret her character? Why do you think the author refrained from labeling her in the novel?