Wit and pathos, in the world of prime-time humiliation
Lost and Found
By Carolyn Parkhurst
Little, Brown, 292 pp., $23.95
It takes a nimble and courageous writer to jump from tragedy to comedy, especially on the heels of a successful debut . Carolyn Parkhurst's `` The Dogs of Babel" told the story of linguist Paul Iverson, a man agonizing over whether his wife's death was an accident or suicide.
Not a funny book, and not trying to be.
Yet three years later, using reality TV as a springboard, Parkhurst has penned an ingenious and entertaining story that deserves the Nathanael West Memorial Prize for Show Business Best Rendered Through the Acts of the Greedy and the Desperate.
``Lost and Found" follows seven two-person teams competing in a high-stakes scavenger hunt that crosses the globe, unapologetically in search of good television and prime-time humiliation. The novel owes its premise, ostensibly, to CBS's ``The Amazing Race." But Parkhurst takes that one-note odyssey -- get there first and win a million dollars -- and tweaks it until, in Hollywood jargon, high concept meets heart and wit. This is an ambitious novel: The fictional competition is more complicated than its TV inspiration , its clues and riddles thornier , and its population more confessional.
Parkhurst begins and anchors the book with a mother-daughter team, Laura and Cassie, a young widow and her unhappy teenage daughter, who are suffering their separate miseries and have been chosen by the prurient producers as excellent candidates for on-air meltdowns.
Blessed is the creation of the married team of Justin and Abby, who are deeply devoted to their mission, which is curing homosexuality -- their own -- through Jesus. The push-pulls of their sexual impulses are some of the book's best moments, with Abby as the realist and Justin piously in denial. ``The Redemption program is tough," Abby confides. ``You have to cut yourself off from all of your old friends. . . . You have to learn to censor your thoughts and to angle your desire. It's like teaching a plant to respond to the moon instead of the sun."
A satire, most definitely, yet Parkhurst hits her targets with admirable subtlety. Justin, about to scratch his old hated itch, describes a cameraman as ``a quiet guy, but nice. He's tall and blond , very muscular; I mention it because anyone would." And later, after his fall from self-imposed grace has been secretly taped for the folks at home, he says about his bedfellow, ``Just to look upon his face makes me terrified and ashamed, but underneath there's something else: a small, obscene note of buoyancy."
Abby confides that God spoke to her through a Bob Hope public service address. (``Bigotry has no place in this great nation, and violence has no place in this world, but it happens. Prejudice hurts, kills. Please don't be a part of it. ") She calls this ``my moon landing, my Ruby -shooting-Oswald , my Beatles on Ed Sullivan; this was the moment I realized that television mattered, that it carried some weight. That under the right circumstances, it could possibly change a life. "
``I never saw the ad again," Abby continues. ``I later learned that Bob Hope had filmed the PSA as an apology for using the word fag on The Tonight Show." In a similar hymn to television, Justin reflects on his childhood devotion to ``Fantasy Island." `` Every episode was a morality play. It told the viewer, Be careful what you wish for; everything comes with a price. "
There is such authenticity in each voice that one would swear that the author is, in turn, a gay born-again heterosexual wannabe, his nostalgically lesbian wife, a 40-year-old divorced goofy good guy, a teenage cynic, a bachelor millionaire, a flight attendant, and former child star Juliet (``I played the youngest daughter, the one that they had unexpectedly when the ratings started to drop "), who is teamed up on ``Lost and Found" with fellow has-been child actor Dallas . No longer ``America's fresh-faced darlings anymore, we're a couple of where-are-they-nows."
Alternating narrators is usually a pet peeve of this reader, but not here. I found myself welcoming each switch as if an entertaining friend had come back to the table at exactly the right juncture. Juliet's chapters could be monologues in a one-woman off-Broadway show. ``I paid my dues," she confides. ``I did the soft-porn cable movies and the straight-to-video splatter films, and it's made me a better person. . . . I've spoken publicly about my short-lived religious conversion, my taste in music , and my boob job. People know I'm a vegetarian, and they know my birthstone is ruby. When my cat died, I got condolence cards from people I'm never going to meet."
Characters reap what they sow. New allegiances either open or heal the old pre-production wounds. The reader is the viewer who roots for skeletons to leave the closets. Exploitation in Parkhurst's hands is fresh, complex, and funny. There is no preening here. Only a wry eye would let a contestant report solemnly, ``Elliot gets some great footage of us finishing the meal in silence." She has a wonderful ear for all ranges of emotions and degrees of bluster, religious and sexual hypocrisy especially.
How refreshing that Parkhurst doesn't telegraph a defense for making reality TV the novel's touchstone, and why should she? It is true storytelling, bigger than the sum of its parts, absorbing, delightful, and casually profound.
Elinor Lipman's eighth novel, ``My Latest Grievance," was published in April. 
