Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Natalie Zina Walschots discuss Canada Reads contender Hench
Paul Sun Hyung-Lee is championing Hench on Canada Reads 2021
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee is one of the panellists taking part in Canada Reads 2021. The Kim's Convenience star will be championing the novel Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots.
Hench is a novel about Anna, a woman who pays the bills by doing administrative work for villains. But when an incident involving the world's most popular superhero leaves her injured and gets her fired, Anna realizes what happened to her isn't unique — and she might have the means to take down the so-called hero who hurt her. How? With every office worker's secret weapon: data.
Canada Reads will take place March 8-11, 2021.
The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
Lee and Walschots got together virtually to discuss the great Canadian book debate and Hench.
You can watch their conversation above or read an excerpt below.
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (PSHL): Hench is your first novel. I am totally blown away by that. Not only is it your debut novel, it's one of the few genre novels to make it onto Canada Reads. What's that like? How amazing is it?
Natalie Zina Walschots (NZW): I don't want this to come across as cliché, but it barely seems real. I wrote Hench for me and for my friends and for a very small, beloved target audience. I put everything I liked into it and things that I thought were important and things that I love when they happen in stories, all of that was distilled in there.
The fact that this is resonating with so many people and has been received so warmly and to be on Canada Reads is legitimately a dream come true. I am somewhere that I did not think I was going to be. Being in a very small group of genre writers who've made it on, like Madeline Ashby, that's incredibly great company to be keeping.
PSHL: Writing a novel and getting it published is a very public thing. What were your hopes for Hench when you wrote it and you wanted to share it?
NZW: I just wanted it to be something that readers would enjoy. I wanted it to be a fun, pleasurable read that didn't get in its own way and was fun to consume, was a fun experience to have had. Those were honestly the highest hopes that I had for it — that somebody would read it and think it was fun.
PSHL: Well, I did and I absolutely did. You totally nailed it, because what I keep saying in all the interviews is that it's a fun read. It reminds me of why I started reading for fun. But Hench is all that and more. It is not just fun. But it is a familiar world.
You take a genre and you twist it and slightly subvert it and have a slightly different perspective, which gives it a fresh twist.- Paul Sun-Hyung Lee
There are a lot of themes in it that resonate with me that are applicable to our daily lives now, if you stop to think about it. What I love about Hench is the world that you created, that you built.
You've built a world that feels authentic, it feels lived in. It has superheroes and supervillains in it, but it's not like so far ahead sci-fi where it's like Star Wars, a galaxy far, far away, or Star Trek, where you have such advanced technology. Can you talk about creating that world? It is very familiar and it is very authentic and believable, right down to the office dynamics.
But when you were creating this world, was that a conscious decision on your behalf?
NZW: Absolutely. I think the world in which we live is a very weird place. There are equally strange things that exist in reality than exist in a universe where there are superpowers. It's just a different weird. There's weird that we're familiar with and weird that we're not. I consciously kept that in mind, wanting to keep things strange but strange to a familiar degree.
For all of the lava guns and and the microwave contact-heat abilities that cook somebody, I wanted it to be very ordinary, like having dingy apartments and public transit that only medium worked. Having extremely annoying coworkers and extremely great coworkers. I wanted it to feel full and lush and complicated and boring, in all of the same ways that our universe is all of those things. Then to have the things that were strange feel no stranger than something we might encounter here, just different.
PSHL: You've created a world that is completely believable because of those mundane things, those everyday things. We have all the DC movies and the Marvel movies. Superheroes have become almost commonplace in our vernacular. When you take those superpowers and you ground them in something as ordinary or as familiar as the world you've created, then it's utterly believable.
I also want to talk about the believability of the office dynamics that you create, even though they are working for a supervillain. I love the team that Anna puts together and the banter that they have back and forth. There's something lovely as well about the inclusivity and the diversity of the characters that you've brought in, without drawing attention to their diversity. Your characters just are, which I love as an actor of colour. That's my biggest dream, to play a character that just is. You happen to be of this background and it'll colour or inform them, but there's so much more than just that. Can you speak a little bit more about that?
NZW: First of all, thank you so much. I love and appreciate that resonated with you and anybody. It was a very conscious decision on my part, to make the cast what it is and to not put race or sexuality or gender in a position where any character's trauma was exploited or in a situation where those identities were mined for discomfort or the pain of that character. There are a lot of wonderful and important stories that are about what a character is experiencing as a gay character or as a non-binary character. And those are really, really crucial. I wanted to give my characters space to exist without that being called upon and called out and be a central part of the plot. The plot did not revolve around their pain or their discomfort or their trauma associated with their identity. That was important.
PSHL: That's mission accomplished. It's much appreciated, too. I know I appreciated that.
Do you think genre novels get ripped off in that way? I think comic books are able to put a magnifying glass on a lot of ills or a lot of issues that we have nowadays, but in a very, very presentable way. But for whatever reason, they are never quite taken seriously. Why do you think that is?
NZW: I'm an all-genre media apologist. I am more interested in horror and speculative fiction than I am any other literature, and I have degrees in experimental Canadian poetry. I understand how literature works. I am familiar with this structure and these devices. And, frankly, books with robots and ghosts in them are more fun. They tend to be written for joy and pleasure. And sure, there are often really horrifying things or ridiculous things. And there are definitely talking dinosaurs and wizards and whatever. Like all of that's there. And it's very easy to be like, "There's a dragon here. I don't need to take this seriously." But genre tends to hold joy as being extremely important in a way that I have often experienced that literary fiction does not.
Books with robots and ghosts in them are more fun. They tend to be written for joy and pleasure.- Natalie Zina Walschots
For all the very important work a book might be doing, there's the pleasure of reading, the experience of, "This is really fun. I want to know what happens next and I cannot believe that just occurred."
That fun story stuff can sometimes get pushed to the side in favour of important themes and complicated structure and device. Those are good, important things. I don't want to be dismissive of that, but media can forget to be joyful or pleasurable — or forget that stuff can just happen because it's cool and we want to see it. There is an incredible power in the catharsis of a moment.
There is a reason that the theatre I was in started screaming when Captain America said, "Avengers Assemble!" Because you have the entire Marvel Universe preparing for that moment, this huge story-engine driving to that moment. But the joy and catharsis and profound emotion and triumph that you get to share in that moment is extraordinary.
A big part of that is because genre stories, whether they be superheroes or horror or any other kind of speculative fiction, don't forget about the power of those moments and the power of that joy and that pleasure in consumption.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Canada Reads 2021 contenders
- Rosey Edeh champions The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
- Scott Helman champions Two Trees Make a Forest by Jessica J. Lee
- Devery Jacobs champions Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
- Paul Sun-Hyung Lee champions Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
- Roger Mooking champions Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi
