Costco Connection - March 2005

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT BOOK BUYER’S PICK

Dark corners

Elizabeth Flock blends reporting skills and

imagination in a psychologically complex novel

Little tops the joy of discovering a book that consumes me—the kind that fills my waking thoughts and invades my dreams. Me & Emma, by Elizabeth Flock, my Book Buyer’s Pick for March, is that kind of book.

FRANCE FREEMAN

By Diana Jordan

Me & Emma is Elizabeth Flock’s At first, she found the transition from the baby. The 39-year-old former busy chatter of the newsroom to the austere journalist—for Time and People quiet of a room in her home jarring. When her and CBS—reveals that a recent husband came home she would emerge from a battle with cancer probably rendered her day of solitude and, she says, practically leap infertile. “Coming to grips with that part of at him like he was the last person on earth. my life, and letting go, gave With Me & Emma, Flock says, she me more focus, and I put all hit her stride “in terms of combining the my eggs in Me & Emma’s bas- best of both worlds. I loved the detective ket,” she says. work of figuring out this character … as

The narrator is 8-year-old Carrie, who tries to protect her little sister and herself from a drunken, abusive stepfather.

JANET GAINER

Elizabeth

Flock

In Me & Emma, this well as the flying and getting back to month’s Book Buyer’s Pick, grassrootsreporting.”

Because child abuse is a major theme, it’s not an easy read, but it is a powerful and moving read. With a few well-chosen words, Flock relays images and ideas that get to the heart of the story. Carrie is more than a character; I felt I really knew her. I was so affected by some passages that I had to put the book down to absorb what I’d read. It’s been weeks since I’ve finished it, and images of Carrie and Emma are still seared into my memory.

And then there’s the ending. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s so surprising that I was completely blown away.

Flock exposes the chilling, iso- Flock’s voice lightens and soars as
lated world of Carrie, an 8- she compares her two lives, the journal-
year-old sexually abused girl ist who takes notes and then writes from
who frantically tries to protect fact, and the novelist who invents some-
her younger sister. Flock’s thing from nothing. “I can really create
childhood held none of those out of thin air,” she says. “That was the
experiences, nor did she know hardest thing and also the most liberat-
any children who had been ing to realize: that I don’t have to stick the interior meeting the exterior.”
sexually abused. Instead, her reporter’s to facts if I don’t want to. That was a lot of The shocking psychological twists in Me
instincts kicked in. fun. That’s a wonderful, wonderful realization & Emma won praise from her agent and her
Flock used the same skills to get behind to discover that these characters can come to publisher. That early response, Flock says,
Carrie’s eyes for Me & Emma that she life and just be flawed.” “has been probably the highlight of my life.”
employed for her psychologically complex Flock admits she is flawed. She suffered She says life “feels even sweeter right now,
cover stories for Time magazine, talking to throughout her adult life from depression, because I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, and
doctors and digging through research. Then, which was the spark for her first novel, But that’s what makes this ‘up’ a lot better. It’s
just as she once waded through floods and Inside I’m Screaming. She confides, “That been the most gratifying because I don’t have
explored plane crashes while reporting, she book to me was exorcising a lot of demons.” children of my own.” (She is very
flew to North Carolina and tromped through At one time, she was based in close to her two stepdaughters,
the backwoods to learn how Carrie would New York City, jetting from one however.)
have lived. powerful breaking story to the next. When Flock is asked what
Flock says she stumbled into a wonderful She says she struggled to reconcile she hopes her legacy is, she
new life as a writer. While she happily took her her painful interior life with the glam- says, “I think it does go back to
reporter skills with her, she left behind the orous life people saw on the outside. the fertility issue, because, to
gritty, rigorously paced journalism job where In her writing, she says, she is drawn me, [Me & Emma] is my
“you’re never home long enough to pick up to the kid in the corner, “and if I have immortality. This is my child,
the dry cleaning.” Now she lives in Chicago something that I’m constantly going and I feel OK now that I’ve
with her husband and two stepdaughters. back to, it is the psychological, it is brought it into the world.”
There is one more thrill for
Elizabeth Flock: Finding out that
Costco will be carrying her book. “This was
a big pop-the-cork-on-the-champagne kind of
news,” she says. “I’m just so grateful.” C

Me & Emma is available in most warehouses and at costco.com.

—Pennie Clark Ianniciello,

Costco Book Buyer

Book Giveaway

Costco has 10 autographed copies of No purchase is necessary. Entries must be Elizabeth Flock’s Me & Emma to give received or postmarked by April 1, 2005. Void away. To enter, print your name, where prohibited. Employees of Costco and membership number, address and daytime their families are not eligible. Winners will be phone number on a postcard or letter and notified by mail. One entry per household. send to: Me & Emma, The Costco Connection, _Send _your _feedback _onP.O. Box 34088, Seattle, WA 98124-1088, or this month’s book to: fax it to (425) 313-6718. discussionquestions@costco.com