Allana Harrison wanted to escape her painful, broken past and enjoy a fresh
start somewhere else; anywhere else. While all of the boys in high school and
college promised to deliver that dream, only one man actually pulled through.
And
thus sets the stage for 1986, the newest suspense
romance by popular novelist, Morgan
Parker. Now a young adult, Allana finds herself on the opposite side of the
world, in the prosperous and rich town of Pripyat, far away from her past and
from the crime, grime and hustle of bigger cities.
She
doesn't understand the language or know anybody else except her husband -- and
that's just how she likes it -- until she meets Alex, another American who ends
up being her only friend, the one person who reminds her of what it's like to
feel desired, wanted and hungered for.
Engchik: Why Chernobyl?
Why this region and this disaster (as opposed to the Titanic or 9/11)
Why this region and this disaster (as opposed to the Titanic or 9/11)
Morgan Parker: Chernobyl has always
fascinated me. The thought that an accident like Chernobyl could cause that
much devastation has haunted me.
Initially, it was pure interest that kept me
learning more and more about the accident, the fall out, the way people had to
adapt and adjust their lives. As I spoke with people who were affected by the
accident, I learned that this was a very scary incident because nobody knew it
was happening.
It's not like a deadly disease where we can often say,
"yeah, but, there were symptoms that the victim ignored or just didn't
think about." For the people who died or are dying from this accident,
they had no "symptoms" at all.
Unless you're exposed to extreme
levels of radiation, you don't know what's happening. You're breathing and living
and carrying on life, just like a lot of the victims did.
As the years wore on, I would often
come back to my initial research and find that something "new" was
published. It often refuted something else that was previously published,
something I could no longer find online. This happened a few times, and
eventually the changing information seemed to become a story all on its
own.
With 1986, I tried to incorporate some
of my own experience with the conflicting information with the kind of everyday
life that people would have been leading in those months prior to a disaster
that, sadly, doesn't get a whole lot of attention anymore...
Engchik: I felt that Allana was weak,
that she gave into her body far too much and was so desperate to leave her old
self behind that is did a 360 not a 180, right back to her old self. Why did
she not protect herself more in this cold, strange land?
Morgan: I agree with you: Allana was
weak. But there's more to it than just her weakness, I think. For me, Allana
represented human change and illustrates just how impossible it is for some
people to change from their "old" ways. Allana always was that girl
who sought acceptance. Yes, she wanted to get away from her past. She wanted
her fairytale life. And she found that opportunity in Vasy, but when things
weren't going her way, she did what most of us do: she reverted to what she
knew best.
She never changed, just like most people can't change either. But in
writing about Allana, I wanted people to know that it's okay to be who you are.
If you're broken, that's okay. If you're unhappy with how things have turned
out, that's okay. If you binge on Big Macs or make bad romance decisions,
that's okay... so long as it's who you are. For Allana, it was okay, too,
because it led her to Alex and she somehow managed to convince her husband to
play a "positive" role in a disaster that could have been far worse
than it was.
Engchik: You are a male, writing mostly
in the women's voice. Why not the male perspective?
Morgan: The best person to tell this
story was Allana. I deliberated sharing the POV, but Allana's struggle was
real. I related to her in many ways during the writing process and never felt
the story could have evolved better from anyone else's point of view, which
seems counter-intuitive because in other disaster stories, like Titanic, the
Allana-equivalent character was the storyteller, but Jack Dawson was the hero.
Engchik: What kind of research did you
do into the cultural activities of Pripyat for this? There was a small mention
of the May Day celebration on May 1 that never happened due to
the April 26 explosion. What else did you discover?
Morgan: Unless you're an Eastern
European, I think it's easy to forget that these folks had a rich culture. In
some ways, because they lacked a lot of the freedom that we enjoy in the
Western world, they had even more culture than we think. This was surprising to
me in the early days of my research, something I began roughly twelve years
ago.
Engchik: How did you discover the use of records for
spy transmissions- was this a used form of relaying?
Morgan: I don't believe the use of
vinyl records was used for discrete transmissions; the engraving equipment
would have been costly and large (awkward to hide). However, the image of a
record player waiting in an empty room for Allana struck me as spooky and I
just had to incorporate it into the novel!
Engchik: Can you compare the progress
of early 1980's Pripyat to the progress of say, Naples or Miami FL - rapidly
growing hubs of progress.
Morgan: A lot of cities in North
America are experiencing tremendous progress these days. Detroit is a great
example of a place that was essentially written off, but is now (finally)
experiencing a tremendous revitalization with the inflow of capital from tech
companies. What's interesting about Detroit, unlike a lot these other
progressive hubs, is that the city peaked and crashed. And it crashed hard.
Although a lot of cities can maintain their innovative culture, it's worth
knowing that many of them don't plan properly. Pripyat (where Chernobyl was
located) was an example of this.
Like Naples, Pripyat enjoyed the kind
of luxuries that you couldn't find elsewhere in the region. Like Naples,
Pripyat drew a particular demographic. Unlike Naples, all Pripyat had the power
station. It was such an important industry that even after the entire town had
been evacuate, the power station remained functional. People would take the
train in from Belarus to work their shifts, then were sent back the same way.
It wasn't until 2010 that the power station was fully decommissioned,
highlighting just how important it was.
I think Naples is very different than
Pripyat for that reason. Same with Miami and many other cities that are
thriving today. We've seen the implications of industry concentration in
Detroit (manufacturing), Houston (oil), Los Angeles (entertainment), and the
hundreds and thousands of cities and industries in between.
“Like
the Titanic tragedy, we often forget about the routine human lives and
individual love stories that were happening at the time,” says Parker. “1986 is similar in that if
follows the forbidden love story of one particular character who finds herself
in the wrong place, with the wrong person, at the wrong time in history.”
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