AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Do you remember, as a kid, those long summer days, just running around wild with other kids while the adults were off having adult conversations? In Krystelle Bamford's new novel "Idle Grounds," a family has gathered for a summer birthday, and the young cousins are soon to be set loose. Here she is reading from the first pages of her book.
KRYSTELLE BAMFORD: (Reading) We were all together, which everyone seemed to dread and anticipate in equal measure. Cousins stuck their legs out from car doors, always the children first. Parents girding their loins behind the steering wheels. It's 11 now. We're out of here by 3, our parents said, a fount of shaky determination. Three at the latest. Cousins eyed up cousins, standing a full cousin length away, giving a shy wave while the adults eased themselves out with a dish covered in tinfoil or a six pack of Beck's tinkling like a piggy bank. Bug spray was passed along. Hot dogs were sliced from their packaging. Hummingbirds appeared at the feeder, fed, vanished.
RASCOE: In the novel, the day takes a turn when the smallest cousin disappears, and the children come face to face with some grown-up truths. "Idle Grounds" is written by Krystelle Bamford, who joins us now. Welcome.
BAMFORD: Hi, Ayesha. Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: This story, which I really, really enjoyed - it's filled with a kind of magical, spooky, hazy quality that I think is really specific to childhood because it's like, anything can happen. You're a little bit scared, but you're also a little bit excited. Do you know that feeling?
BAMFORD: I remember that feeling really well from childhood. I think my memory isn't very good as an adult, but it's great for when I was a kid. The book is based in part on my own childhood in New England, just kind of running around in the woods and making forts and coming home just in time for dinner. And I loved it, and I loved that sense of kind of making and remaking, like, a child society every day with your pals.
RASCOE: And what is it like for the specific kids in this book? They're only about 20 feet away from the house, but they are, like, in their own world completely.
BAMFORD: Yeah, that's right. So I think that the world of "Idle Grounds" starts to get sinister. So because it's told by this group of kids, you're not entirely sure if it's their imagination at work or if there is something genuinely sinister kind of stalking them across the grounds.
And I think I think of a little bit of the book as fitting into a New England gothic mode, and that's very recent. I actually just was home in Salem, Massachusetts, and I saw a sign that described New England gothic as old sins, innocence lost, light dimmed and nightmares that may be real. And I was, like, that is perfect. I'm going to steal that. Like, that's exactly right.
Basically, "Idle Grounds" takes place completely in the daytime. But New England gothic really deals with the fact that there's always a darkness bubbling underneath that kind of daylit adult world. That's kind of how the story unfolds, is they're uncovering this mystery of their family's unhappiness, basically is what the parents are all distracted by talking out on the deck.
RASCOE: I asked you about this before we even started really recording because this is - 'cause as I was reading this book, I was like, who is the narrator? - because the narrator is never named. Is it one of the children, or is it the whole of the group? Because the way they talk, I'm like, who is the narrator (laughter)?
BAMFORD: In a way, it's both. So at first, you think it might just be a single child, and then it slides into kind of a Greek chorus voice. I really liked the fact that this narrator knows a lot and also understands nothing most of the time. I think that is really reflective of the way kids experience reality. They're really intuitive, and they can really read the room. They can read emotions. And at the same time, they're operating with, like, a really limited instruction manual. So they have, like, lots of feelings and very few facts. This group voice was able to kind of encompass that.
RASCOE: Now, we are introduced to a few of them by name. Tell us about Abi and Travis and Autumn and Owen. Why are they named?
BAMFORD: Yeah. So at the very beginning of the book, Abi and Travis are the golden children of the family. So Travis...
RASCOE: Yeah.
BAMFORD: ...Is the eldest child, which is always obviously a very revered position in child society. And he goes to a very fancy, private school, and he's kind of like the bearer of the family's ambitions. And his little sister, Abi, is the youngest of the tribe, and she's just adorable. And then Autumn and Owen - they're almost kind of perceived to be, like, weaker members of this child society. But as the story progresses, we realize that they have their own inner resources that powers the group as it goes along and keeps them - or at least tries to keep them - on the right course.
RASCOE: Owen finds these eggs - these chicken eggs - and he kind of adopts them, and he becomes the parent. What's going on there?
BAMFORD: Yeah, I love the eggs. They're maybe my favorite thing in the book. Hopefully, the reader should be very nervous for those eggs and hope that at least one of them makes it through intact.
RASCOE: Yeah, very nervous about those eggs - and I should say, my youngest daughter heard me talking about, you know, Owen and the eggs. And this little girl went to the fridge, and she got one of the eggs out of the fridge saying she wanted to have some eggs. And I said, you know how expensive eggs are?
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: This is - so this is very real. Children are fascinated by these eggs (laughter).
BAMFORD: Yeah, it's real. I think it might've come from a little boy that we know. He'd stolen an egg from the kitchen and hid it out in the grass, and they found it after it started to smell. And he'd just gotten his wires crossed, and he was trying to grow a new baby cousin. And I just thought there was something really lovely about that. And so I think for Owen, parenting the eggs is a way for him to strengthen himself. He becomes their protector. The book calls him the mother of these eggs, but he could equally be the father of these eggs.
RASCOE: I guess when you look at that - the children kind of taking on the adult roles - how do you look at this or what this story is trying to say about childhood, what it's trying to say about what it means to grow up?
BAMFORD: Yeah, I think the book thinks a lot about the dangers of nostalgia, of getting too caught up in sadnesses of the past to the point where it warps your present, and kids are really attuned to that. So I think kids are very good at picking up on their parents' unhappiness. And I think parents often forget that their kids are listening and are absorbing and often absorbing with very little ability to interpret what they're absorbing. So I think that's what it looks at overall, that kind of dynamic.
RASCOE: That's Krystelle Bamford. Her new novel is "Idle Grounds." Thank you so much for joining us today.
BAMFORD: Thanks, Ayesha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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