'Two Nights in Lisbon' will keep you guessing
October 13, 2024
Elisabeth Sherwin -- ensherwin@gmail dot com
Columnist
“Two Nights in Lisbon” by Chris Pavone received excellent blurbs by Stephen King, John Grisham, Lisa Unger and Lee Child, so who am I to argue?
I won’t argue. The book features a very compelling, original plot. An original plot is unusual enough to merit high praise, and you will not guess the ending.
It falls into a genre called something like action/adventure/mystery, not high literature. But if you’re on vacation or just want to spend some down time without TV, this could be the answer.
Published in 2022, it joins several other best-sellers by Pavone including “The Expats.”
“I wanted to write a book where people don’t come with a lot of preconceptions about what’s going on,” he said in a YouTube interview. “I wanted the narrative to unfold in a way that really allows readers to be surprised.
“This story starts out looking very much like something you’ve seen before where an American (businessman) goes abroad and disappears…and the journey is for his wife to look for him.”
Yes, that does sound familiar. Think the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson or “Frantic” with Harrison Ford.
“It’s gradually revealed that this is not at all what this book is about,” says Pavone.
That’s why “Two Nights in Lisbon” is difficult to review. Even while Pavone was being interviewed, he was careful not to be a spoiler.
He did say that he visited Lisbon several years ago and found it to be a civilized, serene city. The hotel he stayed in was gorgeous. He had an idealized view of the city and the hotel in his head when he wrote the opening: A woman wakes up in a beautiful room in an expensive hotel with her husband gone.
“The rest I had to figure out,” he said. At first, Pavone wanted the story to take place over the course of one day and one night but found that in terms of accuracy it just didn’t work.
He likes the idea of putting a protagonist in a strange city in a strange country. He understands the confusion and frustration such a person would feel because he experienced it when he and his family moved to Luxembourg in 2008. He didn’t know the language, had no friends. He was the “trailing husband” to his wife’s job. And he was suddenly the chief caregiver to 4-year-old twins.
“It’s a predicament, leaving one life behind for a new one,” he said.
Yes, but the new life, like a novel, has so many possibilities.
Pavone’s learned some lessons along the way that could apply both to life and writing: Don’t be in a hurry. Spend more time editing than writing. Secondary characters are very important.
“I don’t feel that the world needs more novels,” he said. “But the world needs better novels. For me, that means lots of revision.”
And in a Chris Pavone book, you should expect the unexpected.
“I try in all my books to have a big paradigm shift in the middle,” he said.
He came upon this realization the hard way. When he finished writing “The Expats,” he gave it to a trusted friend, an editor, to read.
The friend read it. Said it was good. It was fine. It was even publishable.
“But not enough happens,” the friend said.
Pavone took that gentle criticism to heart.
“How can I make this book better?” he asked himself. “A new twist, a new reveal?”
He went back to work on it and the result, he said, was so much better. It became a best-seller.
Pavone also has written “The Accident,” “The Travelers” and “The Paris Diversion.” I think I’m going to read those next.
-- Reach Elisabeth Sherwin at ensherwin@gmail.com
For More Information, Visit These Links:
Armin Lear Press (www.arminlear.com)
|
