Novel, Novel-er, Novelist: An Interview with Elizabeth McKenzie

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One of the writers I most admire is Elizabeth McKenzie. Each of her four books, Stop That Girl, MacGregor Tells the World, The Portable Veblen, and most recently, The Dog of the North (Penguin, March 2023), is informed by her wry, unpredictable wit and light narrative touch.

I pestered her the other day to answer a few questions about The Dog of the North, a novel that brings the word “romp” instantly to mind. I think of it as a kind of screwball coming-of-age story. It’s fresh, funny, and moving (tonally, it reminds me at times of Lake Bell’s brilliant, nutso 2013 film In a World...)

When the novel opens, the focal character, Penny Rush, has left behind an unhappy marriage in Santa Cruz and is en route to Santa Barbara to check on her fiery and formidable grandmother, Dr. Pincer, and attempt to make sense of her life.

I’m including the jacket copy here and urge you to pick up The Dog of the North (and Lisa’s other novels) soon if you haven’t yet had a chance.  

Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she's quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what's possible when all else fails.

Elizabeth McKenzie, the National Book Award-nominated author of The Portable Veblen, follows Penny on her quest for a fresh start. There will be a road trip in the Dog of the North, an old van with gingham curtains, a piñata, and stiff brakes. There will be injury and peril. There will be a dog named Kweecoats and two brothers who may share a toupee. There will be questions: Why is a detective investigating her grandmother, and what is "the scintillator"? And can Penny recognize a good thing when it finally comes her way?

This slyly humorous, thoroughly winsome novel finds the purpose in life's curveballs, insisting that even when we are painfully warped by those we love most, we can be brought closer to our truest selves.

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Christine: The Dog of the North is what I'd consider a road novel - the story begins with Penny on a train heading from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara, and by the last page, she's also traveled to and from Australia and Texas. What attracted you to the trip narrative?

Elizabeth McKenzie: What made it attractive to me was the way a journey pulls a character out of the quotidian stasis of regular life, in which days all blur together. All at once there is uncertainty and novelty moment to moment. People build their normal lives around comfortable routines if they’re lucky, but when that’s disrupted a story begins.

(Elizabeth McKenzie)

C: Penny's maternal grandmother, Dr. Pincer, is such a force—for chaos (and possibly evil)! More than one of the novel's plot threads centers on her and alleged crimes in her past, and she's also dangerous. When she stabs Penny with her roadrunner pin, I thought, Oh no, this isn't going to end well. I can't resist asking, is she based on someone you know? 

EM: I hereby dedicate the character of Pincer to my maternal grandmother, a pediatrician in Santa Barbara, whose personality was, improbably, very similar. Had I come across her, unrelated, I think I would have wanted to write about her anyway. I haven’t met many people like that, which is undoubtedly a good thing. I’ve written about her before. She’s a character in several of the stories in Stop That Girl. She’s the one who ruins Ann’s big moment with Allen Ginsberg. But I don’t think of her as evil. There is a certain integrity to the way she justifies her actions in the novel.

C: The unsolved mystery of Penny’s parents’ disappearance in the Australian outback hangs over the book. The way you resolve this thread is nuanced and strikes me as just right. Did you consider other scenarios that explained their disappearance? 

EM: Yes! I had many ideas about what might have happened to them. Some were more gruesome than others. Lots of decoy ideas that kept me moving forward into some kind of discovery. Penny’s emotional throughline led me to where that seemed to need to go.

C: Penny's biological father, Gaspard, is a truly nutty, awful man who torments poor Penny throughout her life in peculiarly juvenile ways. It's almost as if he should be Pincer's child rather than Penny's mother! Where did he come from? I wondered if some psychotic public figure from the past might have been his inspiration. 

EM: No, there was another person in my orbit who inspired Gaspard. He’s awful but Penny alludes to some of the circumstances that led to that awfulness. There’s a glimmer of restrained sympathy near the close of the book. But what could be better for one’s writing than having to sort out a bunch of perplexing personalities is how I’ve come to look at it.

Speaking of which, I love your new story collection and I’m really looking forward to our event together in July!

(Quasi-postscript: Lisa and I will be doing a virtual event together, July 11, 7 PM CT, sponsored by Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago. More information to come!

Elizabeth McKenzie is the author of the novel The Dog of the North, as well as The Portable Veblen, which was long-listed for the 2016 National Book Award. Her story collection, Stop That Girl, was short-listed for the Story Prize, and her first novel MacGregor Tells the World was a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Library Journal Best Book of the year. She is the editor of My Postwar Life: New Writings from Japan and Okinawa. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, and has been recorded for NPR's Selected Shorts.

Lastly, happy publication day to Karin Lin-Greenberg, whose novel You Are Here is out now from Counterpoint, and it’s an Indie Next pick!