In Aimee Pokwatka’s new novel, The Parliament (hardcover, Kindle), some owls surround a library.
But that’s not what this “supernatural thriller wrapped around a dark fantasy story. It’s magical realism…” story is all about.
(Or is it?)
To find out, please read the following email interview.
To start, what is The Parliament about, and when and where is it set?
The Parliament is a contemporary novel about a group of people trapped in a West Virginia small-town public library by a large parliament of aggressive owls who quickly deflesh anyone who leaves the building.
Madigan “Mad” Purdy, a cosmetic chemist who has reluctantly returned to her hometown library to teach a class on the chemistry of self-care to middle school students, is now charged with keeping her students safe and distracted.
During their siege, she reads to them her favorite childhood book, The Silent Queen, a fairy tale about a young queen who is dragged against her will to retrieve her voice from the monster who took it when she was eight. The chapters of the fairy tale are interspersed with the story of the library’s occupants and their struggle to survive.
Where did you get the idea for The Parliament?
The primary story set inside the library stems from a few places, one of which is my love of locked room stories and the way they create a kind of pressure cooker for characters.
I was also inspired by my own experience teaching writing classes for middle school students at my local library. Middle schoolers get a bad rap (puberty is a form of torture), but my students were always funny and weird and vulnerable and kind — the time I spent with them gave me hope for the future.
But as a parent myself, I’m always thinking about the many dangers we’re sending our kids out in the world to face — gun violence, climate change, communicable disease — dangers which are nearly impossible for any one individual to prevent or reform alone.
The fairy tale within the book has its own inspiration: a 2014 documentary called Searching For Augusta, about a Belgian-Congolese nurse named Augusta Chiwy who survived the siege of Bastogne in 1944. When Chiwy was eventually located, it turned out that she’d been suffering from selective mutism. It was this detail that stayed with me — the idea that Chiwy’s trauma had stripped her of her ability to speak about it. This was the seed for The Silent Queen‘s Alala, a queen who has traded her voice to a monster as a way to cope with her own trauma.
Is there a reason why the library is surrounded by thousands of owls as opposed to hawks or eagles? Or hummingbirds? That would be freaky.
Some years ago, when my younger son was entering kindergarten, he asked for an owl backpack. This seemed like an easily granted request until a quick Google search revealed that the preponderance of owl backpacks available were very cute and very pink and purple. It hadn’t occurred to me that owls — which are, after all, birds of prey — had become gendered, let alone gendered as feminine in the least threatening possible way.
I spent a lot of time those days repeating frightening owl facts to anyone I encountered. Owls can fly in near silence! They can grip up to 500 pounds per square inch with their feet! Sometimes they eat other owls!
In conclusion, owls are scary, and in my opinion, they do not get the respect they deserve. Thus, I have portrayed them as terrifying murderers in my book.
Also, should we read anything into the fact that Madigan is usually referred to as Mad and not Maddie or Maddy? Or did I just ruin the book for everyone?
Mad is a self-styled weirdo, a character who, upon suffering a childhood trauma, taught herself to juggle while atop a unicycle. Though a few people do call her by the more traditional nickname Maddie, “Mad” suits her personality much better.
The Parliament sounds like it’s a horror story, but I feel like there might be more to it.
Speculative fiction is usually where I land when describing my work, since it rarely falls neatly into one clearly-defined category. While there are moments of horror and gore in The Parliament, it’s not a traditional horror novel (nor is it a traditional anything). It’s a maybe-supernatural thriller wrapped around a dark fantasy story. It’s magical realism with an extra helping of library patrons being stripped of their flesh down to the bone.
The Parliament is your second novel after Self-Portrait With Nothing. Are there any writers, or stories, that were a big influence on The Parliament but not on anything else you’ve written, and especially not Nothing?
The Parliament is a much more horror-leaning book than Self-Portrait, so it certainly draws on my love of horror in a way that Self-Portrait didn’t. (My first foray into horror was watching A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 when I was in first grade.)
The Silent Queen is also hugely influenced by my love of fairy tales, and is meant to feel a bit derivative, like a Tolkien story, but with women, some of them winged, instead of Hobbits.
What about non-literary influences; was The Parliament influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games? Because having a whole lot of birds attacking people automatically makes me think of Hitchcock’s The Birds.
I’ve actually only seen The Birds once (again, when I was way too young for it), but the sound of those birds’ wings in the absence of music has stuck with me ever since.
In terms of movies, The Parliament draws more on my love of the fairy tales and dark fantasy stories I grew up with in the ’80s: The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal. This is definitely a book by a writer whose psyche was shaped ( / scarred) by repeated viewings of Atreyu’s death in The Neverending Story.
And then, to flip things around, do you think The Parliament could be adapted into as a movie, show, or game?
I’m not sure how anyone would adapt the book-within-a-book format, and I’m not great at fantasy casting my own books, in part because I can only name like four actors under the age of forty, but I think the key to casting Mad would be to find an actress who can embody weirdness. Emma Stone [Poor Things], Aubrey Plaza [The White Lotus], and Kristen Schaal [flight Of The Conchords] are all actresses (whose names I can remember) in the approximate age range who channel weirdness in ways that are interesting and delightful to me.
Now, it sounds like The Parliament is a stand-alone story. But since you never know, I’ll ask: Is it?
The Parliament is a stand-alone, because a small-town library being surrounded by murder owls is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
(Or is it?)
You forgot to say “dun dun dun…”
Finally, if someone enjoys The Parliament, what recent novel or novella that you read of someone else’s, and enjoyed, and think is somewhat similar to yours, would you recommend they check out next?
If you want a book that dives headfirst into the absurd, I recommend That Time Of Year by Marie NDiaye. If you want to live inside of fairy tales forever, I recommend White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link. If you’re just here for the animal bloodlust, I recommend Open Throat by Henry Hoke.
