Vijay Khurana's novel asks what we can learn from young men who murder

In Vijay Khurana's novel The Passenger Seat, he tells a story about high school friends Teddy and Adam. 

Not yet men, but no longer boys, they set off on a road trip in search of freedom and self-discovery. But the further they go, the more lost they become, until they head down a road from which there's no coming back.

The Passenger Seat draws on aspects from the 2019 real-life manhunt for two men from Vancouver Island who murdered three people in northern B.C. — with no traceable motive. 

"I don't think that I have specific answers about how young men behave in these ways," said Khurana on Bookends with Mattea Roach. 

"That's one of the reasons why I know that fiction is my home rather than something else. Because I'm less interested in answering questions than asking them, and I'm more interested in exploring something without necessarily having to come to a black and white conclusion."

He joined Roach to delve into what questions he raises in The Passenger Seat and the threads of reality that shape his fiction.

Mattea Roach: Your novel partly draws on these real events that happened in 2019 in British Columbia, where there were these two young men that committed this series of violent crimes that sparked a nationwide manhunt across essentially the northern reaches of this country.

It was a huge story for us here and made headlines around the world. When did you first hear about it?

Vijay Khurana: I think that I actually first heard about it, or at least it probably sort of entered my consciousness a little while after those events had sort of taken place. A few months later. I had the similar reactions to probably what a lot of people had — just sort of a sense of shock, but also a sense of sort of unsurprise as well, because it was sort of the latest in what is a long series of especially young men committing acts of violence.

But for me, it also really kind of touched me in a very specific way because I had been writing a lot of short stories about male friendship and the way that young men kind of move through the world and perform their masculinity and things like that. So it really struck a note with me for those reasons as well.

What was your engagement with writing about male friendship and masculinity? What was it about that kind of bond that you felt was rich territory for fiction?

As a fiction writer, a lot of what I'm interested in is just something that I don't understand, sort of trying to use fiction to explore things that don't quite seem to make sense to me in the world. I would definitely not call myself a political writer or a writer who's interested in engaging in political issues.

Of course, male violence is is a political issue. But for me, I was trying to get to the bottom of some aspects of masculinity that I saw around me and even that I saw in myself and that I remembered from being a young man, years earlier.

What similarities might there be between those sorts of "terrible men" and the rest of us, essentially normal, if flawed men?- Vijay Khurana

Especially these ideas of the performance of masculinity, the way men see themselves reflected in other men and the ways in which game playing can come into the way men treat other people. In terms of psychological games and power dynamics. 

I had this fundamental question, which was, I wonder if there's a way to use fiction to — not answer the question — but just to explore this question of what kinds of people would be capable of doing something like those two teenagers did. 

But then also a much more troubling and difficult question: what similarities might there be between those sorts of "terrible men" and the rest of us, essentially normal, if flawed men?

I want to talk about the two characters specifically, these two teenagers, Adam and Teddy. It's the summer before their final year of high school. They're taking off on this unplanned road trip. They are similar and yet different in so many ways. How did you develop these two guys in parallel?

I started out with the desire to portray a friendship first and foremost, more than two individuals, and I thought a lot about my own friendships at that age.

I thought about the ways in which sometimes, especially as a younger person, you can be thrown together with someone who isn't at all like you, but there can still often be quite an intensity to your relationship.

I started out with the desire to portray a friendship first and foremost, more than two individuals, and I thought a lot about my own friendships at that age.- Vijay Khurana

I wanted to, from the very beginning, I really wanted to play around with the idea of the passenger seat versus the driver's seat. So asking myself always, who's in control and who's along for the ride, who's being passive and who's being dominant. 

I think that Adam is, certainly on the face of it, the more dominant one. He has a clearer sense of his own masculinity, even though it's quite a dark sense because he reads these books that are aimed at influencing young men and he spends time in various corners of the Internet.

And then Teddy is much more passive. He is unclear about what he wants from his own manhood or adulthood, and on the face of it at least, he seems to be the one who's more along for the ride.

What is the draw for Teddy as this guy who, in many ways, seems like he's more set up for success. What is the appeal of Adam for Teddy? Why do they end up drawn together in this way? 

Yeah, Teddy is a handsome kid whose parents are well off enough. He's by all indications a fine student, but I think that one thing he gets from Adam is almost a reason or an excuse not to sort of firmly cross the line into manhood or adulthood. Because I think he's quite afraid of that. 

He's afraid of what his relationship with his girlfriend might mean if he began to take it seriously.

It gives him an excuse to reject the kind of manhood that he feels is maybe being offered to him.- Vijay Khurana

And he's afraid of where he might be in five or ten years. I think that, for him, being friends with Adam, who quite firmly rejects a lot of what you might call traditional ideas about what a young man might do after high school, it gives him an excuse to reject the kind of manhood that he feels is maybe being offered to him.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Katy Swailes.