'Our Kind of Game': Mysterious page-turner looks at the cracks in suburban life

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Is there anything more delicious on a hot July afternoon than a tall glass of lemonade, a porch swing and a page-turner of a summer beach read? Well, I'm going to argue no, and I will die on this hill. And on the hill beside me, you will find a copy of the new twisty, turny (ph) thriller, "Our Kind Of Game." It is Johanna Copeland's debut novel. And Johanna Copeland is with me now. Welcome.

JOHANNA COPELAND: Hi. Thank you for having me, Mary Louise.

KELLY: It is a page turner, as I noted. You do take on some serious themes and questions, including how women move through the world and the ways that men may try to control or manipulate them. I will say that as prelude to asking you to introduce us to Stella.

COPELAND: So a few summers ago, in a scene very like the first chapter of this book, I was home alone. And a neighbor came to me because she had been beaten by her husband. She came to me for help. And it was horrible, as you can imagine, and upsetting. But what was probably even more upsetting is that a few weeks later, in the neighborhood, I found out that some dads were gossiping about her and essentially saying, you know, she does have this history of alcohol abuse. And he's a really nice guy. I mean, did it really happen? Or, I don't know. Aaybe she's just trying to cover something up. Maybe she's trying to cover up for her own, you know, something that happened because she was drunk.

KELLY: Wow.

COPELAND: And the rage that that unleashed in me, I was so angry. I spent that entire summer being so angry about those comments because I had seen the bruises on her arms. I knew. I knew what had happened. I believed her.

KELLY: And I'll just inject, for people trying to keep up, there is a very similar encounter to that that puts your story in motion.

COPELAND: Yes.

KELLY: A neighborhood mom who appears to be limping and slurring her words shows up at Stella's front door.

COPELAND: Right.

KELLY: Right.

COPELAND: And so I spent that summer thinking about violence against women. And in my mind, I started categorizing it as like small V violence where it's the kind of thing where you are not believed, or you're interrupted, or you're talked over, or you're disregarded, and how that really makes women seem smaller and unimportant. And in my summer rage, I was like, and I think that there is a thread between those, what I was calling small V violences and the capital V violences like domestic abuse and assault and rape.

KELLY: Yeah. OK. So circle back to Stella, who is the seemingly perfect woman at whose door this woman who has perhaps been beaten has appeared. Stella is - she's blonde. She's pretty. She's like your stereotypical suburban mom.

COPELAND: Yes. So Stella - Stella has secrets. Stella wears different masks. And I think Stella is, on the surface, all of these things that are perfect, you know, what we would look at and say, oh, wow, she has the perfect life. But underneath, and that's really what I wanted to show is sort of all of the cracks and all of the insecurities and all the things that she's really hiding.

KELLY: Let me change gears and ask about another thing that leapt out at me, which is, as your story cuts back-and-forth between present day more or less and the 1980s, how easy it used to be to outrun your past. There's a lot of phone tracking. There's a lot of worrying about camera surveillance in the Stella chapters. And I kept comparing that to the chapter set in the '80s, where a person, if they wanted, could just vanish.

COPELAND: They really could. Yeah. So that was something that came to me from my own children who were really, really obsessed with the time that I grew up in, and they were like, gosh, that must have been such freedom. What was it like to just go and not have anyone know where you were and not be able to have a phone? And in my mind, I was always thinking, oh, it's terrible because, you know, you had to figure out plans, and often, you know, if you didn't have GPS tracking, so you couldn't you - often got lost. You had to know how to use a map. You had to do all of these other things. But to their way of thinking, they're like, it must have been magic. It must have been such complete freedom.

KELLY: Yeah.

COPELAND: And I was like, yeah, that is true. And so in order to have people disappear and to have people have that kind of freedom, it really did need to be set pre-phone, pre-internet.

KELLY: Speaking of vanishing, Stella has a secret room. It's tucked away. It's in her house, but nobody in her family knows about it, and she goes there to think and plot. I cannot be the only woman who read that and thought, oh, my God, I want one.

COPELAND: (LAUGHTER)

KELLY: Do you have one?

COPELAND: I don't. And it's so - so that idea came to me during COVID because my office was open. And so anybody could just sort of come in. And I was like, all I want are walls. I just want walls.

KELLY: Doors that lock. Yeah.

COPELAND: Yes. But it was kind of a loft space, and people could just stand in the living room and shout up at me. And I'm like, oh, yes, here I am. Hello. Yes, I was desperate for a room of my own, a secret room during COVID. And it was during that time, I was walking with a neighbor who lives in McLane, which is very close to the CIA. And she told me they had renovated their house, and they discovered a secret room. And so I was like, wow. And I'm like, what did you do with it? Then she's like, yeah, we got rid of it, but I really wanted to keep it.

But I was fascinated by this, and I kept thinking about it and how magical it would be just to have a space where you could disappear for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, just to collect your thoughts. And then from there, I started thinking about that desk that is so often built into kitchens. And it's like, oh, that's, you know, that's the mom's office.

KELLY: The recipe desk, yes, as it sometimes gets called. Right.

COPELAND: Right, the recipe desk. And I'm like, that's not really an office because it's so open, and there's no room for people to have uninterrupted thought unless everyone's out of the house. So I kept thinking about this secret room and how it would be this amazing gift to almost any woman who had children during COVID, or even now, you know.

KELLY: Yeah. Well, here's to that, to a desk of one's own in a secret room of one's own.

COPELAND: Exactly. Exactly.

KELLY: That is Johanna Copeland talking about her debut novel, "Our Kind Of Game." Thank you.

COPELAND: Thank you, Mary Louise. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.