Where We Have to Go

Canadian Author Lauren Kirshner's First Novel

Set in Toronto throughout the 1990s, Lauren Kirshner's Where We Have to Go is a sassy first novel about the last days of Lucy Bloom's childhood.

When we first meet Lucy, she's an imaginative 11-year-old dreaming of a taste of freedom, and only beginning to grasp that all is not well between her parents. Both humorous and affecting, Lucy's voice begs to be heard.

On Lucy's journey to adulthood she is joined by her boisterous mother Joy, and her father Frank, a failed glamour photographer turned travel agent who's never been out of the country. There is also Lucy's best friend, Erin, an artist whose outspoken iconoclasm inspires Lucy; and Crashing Wave, a mysterious former exotic dancer who Lucy imagines as the ideal of all that is feminine.

The Globe and Mail has already said that, "Bloom is an imaginative only-child brilliantly imagined by Lauren Kirshner, who creates a first-person narrator you never stop rooting for, even while cringing at the awkwardness of her journey. . . . Where We Have to Go is a somber, but playful saga of a nerdy girl's fight for herself and her family . . . . A very strong, original debut."

Lauren Kirshner on Where We Have to Go

Where did Lucy come from? Who or what was her inspiration?

Where We Have to Go really started with Lucy's voice. At first I wrote her into a short story, but after 50 pages, I kept going. I knew I wanted to write about a tough, funny, survivor of a girl and how her life could unfold against a series of complications. I like writing characters who are dynamite tough, yet vulnerable. Lucy is incredibly shy, yet says what she means; she's easily injured, but a fighter; she's self-deprecating and self-critical, but has a well of inner strength..

Lucy and her mom and dad are such full, 3-dimensional characters. Can you describe your process for creating characters that seem so real?

When I write, I'm always discovering new things about my characters, so making them 'real' is very much a process. Graham Greene once said that some of his best characters were those he chipped out of hard wood, and I really relate to that description, because it always feels like really hard work to make characters live.

I'm always alert for pieces of real life that I can use to become sure about characters, to hear their voices, know their tastes and inclinations. I carry a notebook with me, take notes on interesting dialogue I hear around me, on the subway, in the street, wherever I happen to be. I also work from images.

Lucy's dad, Frank, used to be a glamour photographer so when I began putting together his character I kept a scrapbook of images relating to photography, cameras, and the general time frame in which he was working as a photographer. Lucy's Mom, Joy, worked at Eaton's when she arrived in Canada in the late 1970s. I used old catalogues to inspire my imaginings of this time.

So there's all of this research going on in the background. But of course I always go back to my instinct. There's just a certain feeling I get when a line, a description, or an action, feels true.

Lauren Kirshner is a graduate of the University of Toronto's M.A. program in English in the field of Creative Writing, where she was mentored by Margaret Atwood.