Minot Tells a Turbulent Story

“I think I’ll never be close to anyone again.” The words set a tone of grief and heartbreak for Susan Minot’s reading from her latest novel, “Thirty Girls,” at the Harvard Book Store on Feb. 28. As Minot continued reading, their power hung in the air, a reminder of the novel’s turbulent subject matter.

Minot drew inspiration for “Thirty Girls,” her first novel in over a decade, from real-life events. While attending a dinner around 16 years ago, Minot met an African woman who described to her how the Lord’s Resistance Army kidnapped 139 girls from a boarding school in northern Uganda. While a nun and teacher from the school were able to save several of the captives, some girls remained with the bandits, including the woman’s daughter.

“The story struck me, so I decided to write about this,” Minot said. Though she, a journalist, rarely covered conflicts in foreign lands, she traveled to Uganda to talk with the affected girls and write a piece about the events. After publishing the article, however, she received no direct response; while she never expected responses for her books, the lack of reaction toward the article made her discontent. “I really did want to communicate something that was going on,” she said.

As the years passed, however, Minot was unable to let the story go; when she started her next novel, she decided to recreate the events and their effects. “I couldn’t forget the story about these girls,” she says. “So I thought I would try to write a fictional version of some of the things I had learned there and in a way tell the story more inside what was going on, inside these characters in the situation, instead of outside.”

The process of writing “Thirty Girls” was not simple. To convey the narrative accurately, Minot studied accounts from children in similar situations and read psychological explorations of trauma. Her story’s focus also shifted and changed as she wrote. While she initially hoped to explore Uganda’s history, she eventually felt compelled to focus on the characters and their reactions to the events. “I thought it would take three years to write,” Minot said. “It took seven years.”

Minot’s finished product interweaves two narratives: that of Esther, a Ugandan girl captured by the Lord’s Resistance Army, and that of Jane, an American journalist hoping to report on the story. Minot initially planned to tell solely Esther’s story, but she added Jane into the narrative after she realized Esther’s events were too brutal when read alone. “There’s only so much you can throw at a reader,” she says. Through the introduction of Jane, Minot was able to add another dimension to the story and contrast the characters to explore both internal and external trauma. “I did want to explore violence, trauma, the fact two people who are existing 10 miles from each other can have different experiences in life,” she said.

Though Esther’s experiences are difficult and unusual, portraying a trauma victim was not a huge leap for Minot. “I know what it’s like to be traumatized,” she said. “Everybody does.” Her ability to identify with a different character—to draw connections between two radically different lives—allowed her to weave the two narratives together and create identifiable characters despite the complex subject. “I like to point out the lack of difference rather than the difference,” she said.

By focusing on similarities, Minot hoped to close the gap between her readers and her characters. In this objective, she was motivated by her own experience as a reader and her observations about what makes a book powerful. “When I’ve read other books, I’ve been variously moved by them—sometimes…emotionally, sometimes…intellectually,” she says. “I like to read books that make me feel connected to other people. So I think the pleasure that I take in books, I hope to offer any of those things to the reader.”

As Minot continued enunciating every word and elucidating every emotion in Esther’s narration, her desire to move her readers through her writing was more than evident. Using outlets of creative expression like writing is an innate response for Minot, and in her eyes, every person. “One is held to make things,” she says. “It seems to me a natural way to respond to the experience of life.” Passing on those different experiences is then all the more crucial. “To convey being alive is an important thing to share with each other,” she said.