Thursday, July 9, 2015

Lori Lansens's "The Mountain Story"

Lori Lansens burst onto the literary scene in 2002 with her first novel Rush Home Road. Published in eleven countries, Rush Home Road received rave reviews around the world. Her follow-up novel The Girls was an international success as well. Rights were sold in 13 territories and it featured as a book club pick by Richard & Judy in the UK, selling 300,000 copies. Her third novel The Wife’s Tale is currently in development as a feature film. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, Lori Lansens now makes her home in the Santa Monica Mountains with her husband and two children.

Her she dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Mountain Story:
I had a short career as a screenwriter and what I remember most is that producers would say that my screenplays read like novels. (I knew they didn’t mean it in a good way!) Now, when readers tell me that my novels leave them with the sense that they’ve just watched a movie, I’m chuffed. The Mountain Story is an adventure story about four people lost together in the mountain wilderness for five days without food, water or shelter. The protagonist is an eighteen-year-old boy so when I think of the novel as a movie I look at the stars of the Divergent and Hunger Games series as the right type, only younger. The three women lost with Wolf Truly in the mountain wilderness that overlooks Palm Springs are from three different generations – there’s a girl still in her teens – I picture the teenaged Kali Hawk, a young Lisa Bonet, Rihanna. There is an attractive hiker in her late thirties, a blonde triathlete, and I did imagine Gwyneth Paltrow as Bridget when I wrote the novel. For the older woman, I thought of Meryl Streep, but readers tell me they imagined Kathy Bates. Go figure.
Visit Lori Lansens's website.

--Marshal Zeringue