By Jennifer Bostrom
Chris Bohjalian’s The Guest Room, is a story of debauchery gone wrong when a bachelor party turns into a double homicide. The seemingly perfect life of Richard Chapman – a loving husband, doting father and successful investment banker in New York – takes an unexpected turn when the “entertainment” for Philip, Richard’s younger brother, murder their handlers in Richard’s home. The Guest Room paces like drama-based mystery-thrillers while deftly accommodating, with nuanced prose, multiple character voices.
Although character driven, Bohjalian’s novels often tackle issues that plague society on a greater scale: sex slavery in the case of The Guest Room. Steeped in suspense, Alexandra, the victim of an illicit underground world, is given a voice that is riddled with the wisdom of experience, the innocence of a child forced to grow up too soon, and the strength of surviving her reality.
JENNIFER BOSTROM: Your books often focus on a specific issue – domestic abuse, environmentalism – read a number of statistics on your website regarding sex trafficking, such as:
The International Labor Organization estimates that 4.5 million people are trapped in forced sexual exploitation around the world.
Did this provide motivation for this topic in The Guest Room and were there any particularly hard scenes or moments of censorship you found yourself battling?
CHRIS BOHJALIAN: I was unaware of the prevalence of human trafficking in the world when I embarked upon the novel. I honestly can’t imagine beginning a novel based on a number – or, to be honest, basing one on a social issue.
I always begin with a character. The research and the issue (if there is one) comes later.
In this case, the book began a couple of years ago. My family and I brought one of our daughter’s friends with us to Armenia. Our daughter and her friend were 19 at the time. Our daughter’s friend was leaving a day before my family and was on a six a.m. flight to Moscow. The plan was that I would meet her in the lobby of our hotel about 3:30 in the morning and bring her to the airport.
I got to the lobby first, about 3:15, and while I was waiting I saw another young woman paying off the bellman to go upstairs. She was clearly an escort, and she was roughly the age of my daughter and her friend. It broke my heart as a father – but I had a sense that here was the kernel for my next novel.
And when you research prostitution in the Caucuses and the Middle East, you are a razor thin line from researching human trafficking and sexual slavery.
Like all my books, my hope is that The Guest Room is a page-turner with characters you care about deeply, especially a couple of very remarkable women: a suburban history teacher in Westchester County and mom, and a young woman trafficked to America. It’s a thriller about that one moment you wish more than anything you could take back.
But, yes, I hope also that it raises awareness of human trafficking and sexual slavery.
JB: Your books are well known as character driven stories. Told from multiple points of view – if just for one scene – and both the third and first person, how did you decide which characters to follow and how their story needed to be told?
CB: Sex slaves in this world rarely have a voice; they are afraid to speak. So, I made one decision right away: the character who is the sex slave would be the only first person voice in the novel. The rest – the Americans – would be presented with a more traditional third person omniscience.
JB: Some authors begin with lists of everything they know about their characters, others start with a sketch and learn on the way, how do you go about getting to know your characters?
I begin with a voice – a single sentence. That’s really all I know. In the case of Alexandra, the Armenian sex slave, it appears in one of the last chapters of the novel, but the very first chapter I wrote: the earthquake that destroyed the city of Gyumri in 1988. “My father and grandfather were stealing two boxes of wristwatches for Communist party official. Very big-deal guy,” was the very first sentence I wrote. After that, I allow my characters to take me by the hand and lead me through the dark of the story. I have no outlines and no plan. I have always loved that great E.L. Doctorow quote about the process: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
JB: Richard Chapman is a good man. Granted he makes his mistakes but he’s the only character to refuse a temptation every other has given into. At the very heart he is loyal to his family, brave in the face of danger, compassionate to those who need it most. Why was it necessary to have such a good man as a main character?
CB: It probably wasn’t. But I wanted a reasonably ordinary guy who has made one – maybe two – disastrous mistakes. (The first would be agreeing to host his brother’s bachelor party at his house. I know guys who have done that. I categorize that one as the “maybe.” The “definite mistake?” Going upstairs to the guest room with Alexandra.)
JB: Although he’s a minor character one of the most profound moments as a reader was when Philip, Richard Chapman’s immature younger brother, comes to the realization that “he’d learned nothing at all,” despite this horrible experience. This reflective moment grounds us in an uncomfortable reality: even when we are aware of these issues we do very little to grow or change as a society. Was that the intention of that moment of reflection?
CB: Yes, precisely. I fear that Philip is never going to really grow up. And, yes, I think we are all more likely to repeat past mistakes than figure out new ways to screw up.
JB: There’s a recurring focus on Barbies, the Bachelor, and Kim Kardashian by Alexandra – the young courtesan – and at one point Melissa – Richard’s nine-year-old daughter – states “It was always the princess that people cared about.” I wouldn’t categorize any of the women as princesses, or categorize them at all, so how you do go about writing strong, realistic female characters without running into stereotypes that follow them?
CB: My daughter is an immensely gifted 22-year-old actor in New York (she reads audiobooks, among other things, and actually brings Alexandra to life in the Penguin Random House audiobook of “The Guest Room”). She said something really astute after she read “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands” and it was this: “Dad, take this as a compliment, because I mean it that way, but I think your sweet spot as a writer is seriously messed up young women.” I had never thought about it, but she was spot-on. I think on some level I am always writing about my greatest fears and the things that cause me dread — and often that means fretting about the safety of my wife and my daughter, or simply trying to be a worthy husband and father.
JB: Both Richard and Alexandra experience moments of “If only:” if only Alexandra hadn’t been kidnapped, if only things had gone different, but quickly move past them to accept what is. In fiction, how do the “if onlys” shape the overall structure, the overall narrative of a novel?
CB: I think we all love the “what ifs” that pepper fiction and film – and life. In my novel, “Secrets of Eden,” one character remarks, “Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.” Certainly I’m fascinated by those “if only” moments.
JB: On average it seems you publish a book every one to two years, what type of schedule do you set for yourself?
CB: Doubleday and I don’t have a publication schedule. But I write almost everyday starting around six in the morning. I’m happiest by far when I am deeply immersed in a book I am writing.
Lincoln, Vermont’s Chris Bohjalian is the author of 18 books, most of which were New York Times bestsellers. His work has been translated into over 30 languages and three times become movies. His books have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Bookpage, and Salon. His awards include the ANCA Freedom Award for his work educating Americans about the Armenian Genocide; the ANCA Arts and Letters Award for The Sandcastle Girls, as well as the Saint Mesrob Mashdots Medal; the New England Society Book Award for The Night Strangers; the New England Book Award; Russia’s Soglasie (Concord) Award for The Sandcastle Girls; a Boston Public Library Literary Light; a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Trans-Sister Radio; and the Anahid Literary Award. His novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Timesbestseller, a selection of Oprah’s Book Club, and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. He is a Fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences.