Facebook X-twitter Instagram Linkedin

Amy Scribner

NonfictionSelf-Help

Amy Cuddy

Interview by Amy Scribner

On a recent flight, I was deep into social psychologist and Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s fascinating new book, Presence, when the woman next to me leaned over and said, “Is that the TED talk lady?”

By now, Cuddy is used to that description. Her 2012 TED talk, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,” touched a collective nerve, racking up more than 29 million online views. In her presentation, she urged the audience to make small changes like striking a superwoman-style “power pose” before tackling a difficult situation.

Cuddy also revealed in the talk that she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident when she was 19. Her IQ dropped by two standard deviations, forcing her to struggle through years of therapy before she regained her mental clarity and graduated from college.

Cuddy’s experience motivated her to study psychology, and in Presence she takes mountains of research about body language and translates it into simple, useful insights for taking control of your life by being more “present.”

I spoke to Cuddy from Rome, where she had just delivered a presentation to a group of human resources professionals. Despite her jet lag, she sounded buoyant and, well, present when talking about her new book.

You recently tweeted, “When we stop looking after our own posture, we are abandoning ourselves.” What do you mean by that?
Posture is one of the ways to be one’s authentic best self. If we start slouching or hunching over our phones, or wrapping ourselves in our shawls, we’re doing things that are leading away from our best selves. We’re putting ourselves in these powerless poses without thinking about it. 

After reading your chapter, “I don’t deserve to be here,” I have to wonder: Why do so many people feel like an imposter?
One [reason] is that we feel we need to present a confident version of ourselves, so we’re not allowed to communicate any self-doubt. Self-doubt is like blood in the water and the sharks will come get you. We assume everyone else is fine, and we’re the only ones who feel self-doubt. But of course we all do. We’re human!

We often have this sense that the community we’re in is more homogenous than it is, and we’re the ones who are different in a bad way. Oh, I’m from a farm town, so I don’t fit in at a place like Harvard. It’s not even status-based. You could be a [Harvard] legacy, you could be a first-generation immigrant. We all sometimes attribute success to luck.

I was surprised to read that this happens as much to men as women. Is it just a stereotype that women are more apologetic and less sure of themselves?
After the TED talk, I got thousands of emails, and half were from men saying they felt like a phony or fraud. I couldn’t believe it. I started to dig in, because I didn’t know the imposter literature very well. Then it started to line up for me that men have this burden where they’re not allowed to share this feeling, so they’re really in the dark. 

You have interesting and wide-ranging conversations in the book. I was particularly taken by the one with actress Julianne Moore. Why did you want to talk with her?
It was never the plan to include performers in the book. But I met her, and she was so fascinated with this whole idea. The way she articulated her understanding of presence was just as I would as a scientist. She is great at leaving everything behind and being in the moment. Everyone she works with says she’s totally reliable at being present. And she’s phenomenally good about explaining what it’s all about. It’s about power; it’s about openness and not fearing social judgment. It’s about the moment and not about this huge, transcendent permanent state that you get to.

You write quite a bit about the power of yoga, yet you confess to not being a yoga person. Have you given it another try?
I promise I’m going to when my life slows down! And I know that completely goes against all my own advice, but I just can’t seem to get it started. I am definitely going to become a yoga person. 

Yoga was always kind of marginalized, so scientists didn’t want to study it. Now there’s a heap of research. I use the example in the book of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s this proud group of mostly men, who you don’t associate with yoga, and still it works for them. It works because you’re focusing on the movement and the posture instead of what’s happening. Most of the postures are pretty expansive, even if you’re on the ground or in downward dog. And expansive poses are hardwired to make you feel powerful. 

You have a teenage son. How do you think the concept of presence can be applied to parenting?
I hear from so many parents who practice presence with their kids. One of the things is to start early when the kids are not so self-conscious about doing funny things like striking a power pose. 

You know how you can wrap a piece of paper around a pen, [and the paper stays curled]? That’s what I imagine when I see my son’s female friends and how much their body language has collapsed since they’ve started middle school. We need to start practicing presence much earlier. Kids have in some ways the boldest body language because they are not constrained by cultural norms or stereotypes.

Writing, teaching, parenting: How do you achieve balance in life?
I think I’m doing way too much. That’s the totally honest truth. And I’m trying to do it all full time and perfectly. I’m still kind of struggling with my fears of being insignificant if I stop doing all these work things.

I’m divorced and remarried, and I have my son half of the week. For that half of the week, I get home as early as I can. My son is super savvy, though. He’ll say, ‘You’re not really being present with me, Mom.’ So that helps!

 

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

On a recent flight, I was deep into social psychologist and Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s fascinating new book, Presence, when the woman next to me leaned over and said, “Is that the TED talk lady?”
FictionHistorical Fiction

Allison Pataki

Interview by Amy Scribner

She was the Princess Diana of her time, a storied beauty who longed for more than the trappings of royalty. So why has Sisi been largely lost to history?

Allison Pataki’s new novel, Sisi: Empress on Her Own covers the turbulent later life of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, known to her subjects as Sisi. While her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph, struggles to maintain the power of his monarchy, Sisi seeks refuge from the stifling halls of the royal court in late 19th-century Vienna, where her every move is watched and analyzed.

Sisi travels around Europe, often accompanied by her youngest daughter, Valerie, the only one of her three children she was allowed to raise without the interference of her mother-in-law, the Archduchess Sophie. Whispers start at Sisi’s frequent trips away from the Hofburg Palace and her close relationships with other men—namely the darkly handsome Count Andrássy, a key advisor to her husband.

Pataki, whose own family roots trace to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Austria, became intrigued with the empress during a trip to Austria a decade ago.

“Everywhere I went, I saw images of this striking woman,” Pataki says during a call to her home in Chicago, where she lives with her husband—a resident in ortho-pedic surgery—and their newborn daughter. 

“Her smile looked a little mysterious, a little sad, like there was more behind it. I thought, this is a really intriguing woman. Why don’t I know more about her?”

Pataki began researching and soon realized she had struck literary gold—enough for two books. (The first, The Accidental Empress, was published in 2015.)

“I didn’t know how much I could rely on the historical record, but the more I looked into it, the blueprint for the story was right there in the facts,” she says. “You have the stunning settings of the Alps and palaces and courts. You have the characters of the most powerful man in Europe [Franz Joseph] and Mad King Ludwig [Sisi’s cousin, the King of Bavaria].”

And, of course, you have Sisi, a woman Pataki calls “larger than life even in her own life. She inspired mythology the way a Princess Diana or a Jackie Kennedy did.”

Pataki, the daughter of former New York Gov. George Pataki, grew up in New York and moved to Chicago for her husband’s residency. The lifelong New Yorker is acclimating to her new home. 

“What I love about New York is the layer upon layer upon layer of history,” she says. “Chicago is so wonderful because it’s so livable and friendly. You get all the wonderful aspects of New York—great restaurants, great museums—but a slower pace. I consider them both home.”

Pataki began her career in journalism, mostly working for cable news. It was not for her.

"I love getting to the bottom of people’s stories."

“I love history. I love writing. I love narrative. I love getting to the bottom of people’s stories. I thought that meant I should be a journalist,” she says. “But it was get in, get out, boil the story down to 15 seconds or less. I was told, use less big words, be more snarky.

“I was going home at the end of the day and writing fiction. It was writing therapy. It was so much fun I thought it couldn’t actually be a job. It was everything I thought I would love about journalism. I decided I would give myself a short window to see if I could make this a career.”

Pataki quickly learned that historical fiction was her niche. “My whole bookshelf is historical fiction,” she says. “Historical fiction makes history accessible and entertaining.”

While Pataki does meticulous research before diving into a novel, she wants readers to understand the difference between historical fiction and biographies.

“I’m not intending to write dry, historical text,” she says. “I’m not a historian, I’m a novelist. Don’t take my version as the Bible. This is a novel.”

Still, Pataki shows deep reverence for and understanding of her subject, and draws a sympathetic portrait that shows the empress was more than her beauty. Where The Accidental Empress focused on Sisi as a young, naive woman—she was married in 1854 at only 16—Sisi portrays a woman at midlife who very much understands her place in the world, even as she resists it. Though she was disappointed in her marriage and disconnected from her older children, Sisi found happiness in travel and horse riding.

“Sisi was never one to derive her greatest joy from her husband and children,” Pataki says. “She was such a wandering, restless spirit.”

After spending so much time reading and writing about Sisi, Pataki struggled to write about the empress’ 1898 death in Geneva at the early age of 60, at the hands of an assassin. The Italian anarchist had another target in mind, and stabbed Sisi only after his initial plan failed.

“It was incredibly different at times to write about the tragedy of it all,” she says. “It was a split-second decision . . . just the dumb bad luck of that really struck me.”

Still, Pataki believes that, for a woman so defined by her legendary beauty, dying before she became an old woman might have been Sisi’s wish. Conscious of the public’s scrutiny, the empress maintained her legendary slender waistline through exercise, fasting and tight corset lacing, and she spent hours grooming her famously long and thick hair. 

“Sisi wrote very often to family and in journals that she wanted death to take her quickly and young,” Pataki says. “In some ways, it was eerie that she almost prophesied her death.”

Sisi is a deeply moving book about a complex character.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Allison Pataki’s new novel, Sisi: Empress on Her Own covers the turbulent later life of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, known to her subjects as Sisi. While her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph, struggles to maintain the power of his monarchy, Sisi seeks refuge from the stifling halls of the royal court in late 19th-century Vienna, where her every move is watched and analyzed.
NonfictionNature

Steve Olson

Interview by Amy Scribner

Science writer Steve Olson captures the background and aftermath of the cataclysmic 1980 blast of Mount St. Helens in his compelling new book, Eruption.

Why did you decide to write about Mount St. Helens, 35 years after the eruption?
I grew up in a small farming community in eastern Washington, about 100 miles downwind from Mount St. Helens. But I moved east for college in 1974 and spent 35 years there after meeting my wife in the back of an English class. When we moved to Seattle in 2009, I wanted to write about the most dramatic thing that has ever happened in my native state—and the eruption of Mount St. Helens was the obvious choice.

How did you find people to talk with about the eruption? Was it difficult?
Almost everyone in the Pacific Northwest has a Mount St. Helens story, and almost everyone was eager to share their story with me when I asked them about the volcano. Many people in southwestern Washington told me, “If it had blown the week before, I wouldn’t be here today”—that’s how many people ventured into what would become the blast zone before the eruption.

Harry Truman became somewhat of a folk hero for refusing to leave his home near Spirit Lake. Why do you think that was?
Harry Truman captured the public’s imagination by coming across as a proud loner defying government authorities. But the situation was more complicated up close. Many people who wanted access to their properties near the volcano said, “If Harry’s up there, why can’t I go?” which made life very difficult for the sheriffs who were trying to keep people away from the mountain. He was taking an immense risk, and his friends feared for his life. And in the end, he was the only one of the 57 people killed who was breaking the law when the volcano erupted.

Mount St. Helens is still an active volcano, as is Mount Rainier southeast of Olympia. Do you think officials learned from the 1980 blast? What would be different if there were an eruption today?
Volcanologists and public safety officials learned a lot from the eruption of Mount St. Helens. They are much better now at monitoring volcanoes and predicting eruptions—plus, new technologies have made monitoring much easier. They have developed systems to warn people in surrounding communities of eruptions or dangerous mudflows, which could happen at Mount Rainier even without an eruption. Public safety officials are much more cautious in keeping people away from dangerous volcanoes. But some volcanoes still erupt without warning, as when Mount Ontake in Japan killed 57 people in 2014. And if people don’t heed warnings, disasters can still occur.

When was the last time you visited Mount St. Helens? How would you describe it?
I drove to the mountain too many times to count while writing this book—and every time I go, I’m as astonished as the first time I visited. It’s an incredible place. The mountain is so huge, and the destruction so vast, that you still can’t believe anyone would be crazy enough to be anywhere near it in the weeks before the eruption. If you haven’t been there, you really should go. There’s no place like it in the world.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Eruption.
 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Science writer Steve Olson captures the background and aftermath of the cataclysmic 1980 blast of Mount St. Helens in his compelling new book, Eruption.
FictionPopular Fiction

Curtis Sittenfeld

Interview by Amy Scribner

Reimagine a book as beloved and timeless as Pride and Prejudice? Inconceivable! Curtis Sittenfeld is probably one of the few modern authors self-assured—and talented—enough to try.

And she succeeds, wonderfully. In Eligible, Liz Bennet is a New York City magazine editor on the verge of turning 40. She’s in a dead-end relationship, but she doesn’t know it yet. When her father suffers a health scare, Liz and her beautiful older sister, Jane, decamp to the family home in Cincinnati for the summer to help care for him. 

None of the five Bennet daughters is married—to their mother’s shame—and only Liz and Jane have actual jobs. Kitty and Lydia spend their days at the local CrossFit, and Mary is a perpetual college student.

When Liz is introduced to the handsome but arrogant Fitzwilliam Darcy, a Cincinnati neurosurgeon, she is immediately put off by his arrogance. But Darcy’s friend Chip Bingley, a recent star of a “Bachelor”-like reality TV show, falls for Jane. Liz and Darcy keep crossing paths (literally—they jog the same route), and their hate-hate relationship slowly transforms into something else.

Eligible sparkles with Austen-esque wit and intelligence and is a pure pleasure to read. How did Sittenfeld, the author of four previous novels, including the bestsellers Prep and American Wife, decide to remake a bona fide classic? She was recruited as part of The Austen Project, in which bestselling authors retell Austen stories in a modern way. 

“When someone offers to pay you to spend a few years in the world of Pride and Prejudice, it’s very hard to say no,” Sittenfeld says during a call to her home in St. Louis. 

Sittenfeld is quick to point out that the project is not meant to improve upon the original.

“I definitely see this as an act of homage and admiration, and it’s not like I thought, well, Pride and Prejudice has gotten stale and it falls to me to make it relevant,” she says. “I think Pride and Prejudice is perfect. I understand different people will have different reactions to Eligible, and I’m OK with that.”

Making Austen-era characters seem modern took some planning on Sittenfeld’s part. 

“I tried to think about how the characters act in Pride and Prejudice, and how they spend their time, and to find present-day equivalents,” she explains. “The characters arose out of that. If you were to describe the characters in Pride and Prejudice, you’d probably use the same or similar adjectives to describe their counterparts in Eligible. I wanted them to be recognizable as themselves but also wanted to make it feel fresh.”

“I tried to think about how the characters act in Pride and Prejudice, and how they spend their time, and to find present-day equivalents. . . . I wanted them to be recognizable as themselves but also wanted to make it feel fresh.”

The first modern twist is positioning Bingley as a reality TV star. 

“Pride and Prejudice starts with this bachelor arriving in town. In the present day in a medium-sized Midwestern city, if a new eligible man arrived, how would everyone know he was single?” Sittenfeld says. “The reality show seems like a plausible explanation.”

Secondly, Liz and Jane are independent professionals, twice as old as the original characters. And Liz (gasp) has a sex life.

“Some readers may not like that she’s sexually active,” Sittenfeld says. “She’s 38, and it’s 2013 in the book, so that seems fairly realistic to me. In no way do I consider her to be trashy; it isn’t meant to be a comment on the fact that people’s morals have fallen.

“I have enormous affection for all my characters in general and in Eligible specifically,” she says. “I actually think the way I can be most generous to them is just by liking them. If I as a writer am condescending to my own characters, it makes them unappealing to the reader and doesn’t make them three–dimensional.”

Though she’s a Cincinnati native, Sittenfeld hasn’t lived in her hometown for years and had never set a novel there before.

“I did have to do research,” she says. “It was fun. I was home with my own family. I was visiting my parents for Christmas and literally walking around with my cell phone trying to decide what apartment building Darcy would live in.”

Her brother, P.G. Sittenfeld, a city councilman, kept close tabs on how she wrote about the city.

“My brother is Mr. Cincinnati,” she says with a laugh. “He’s a little protective of the city and wanted to be sure I depicted the city in a flattering way.”

The busy mother of two children, ages 5 and 7, Sittenfeld has become fiercely mindful of her writing time.

“Because I’m lucky to have flexibility in my schedule, that actually means I need to be more careful. In theory, I could have lunch with friends every day. In practice, it means I would never finish a book.”

As a mom, Sittenfeld says she has a whole new respect for reading as a source of pleasure as well as food for thought.

“After I became a parent, I developed a greater appreciation for a book or TV show or movie that is light or fun but still smart,” she says. “Maybe I’m tired at the end of the day and I have half an hour before bed to devote to pure entertainment, so I want something that doesn’t make me feel incredibly depressed. I feel like Eligible is supposed to be that thing for people. There are very few books that are engrossing and smart but not depressing. It was a fun challenge to write a fun, fizzy, but still intelligent book.”

“My other books—I’m proud of them, but I don’t know if ‘fun’ is the first word I would use to describe any of them,” she says. “I feel like this is fun. It’s good to learn to be fun at 40—it’s never too late!”

 

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Reimagine a book as beloved and timeless as Pride and Prejudice? Inconceivable! Curtis Sittenfeld is probably one of the few modern authors self-assured—and talented—enough to try.
NonfictionMemoir

Clinton Kelly

Interview by Amy Scribner

The former co-host of “What Not to Wear” delivers candid and comical observations on growing up gay and other topics in an entertaining new memoir, I Hate Everyone, Except You.

My favorite line from the book is addressed to your fans: “Start focusing on you . . . your power, your value, the stuff that goes way deeper than designer jeans and the perfect shade of lipstick. But also on the perfect shade of lipstick if that makes you happy. Because you deserve to be happy.” What do you think needs to change for women to stop equating their appearance with their value?
A cultural revolution, I suppose. Men and women have tied a woman’s value to her looks for a very long time. That kind of thinking doesn’t magically cease overnight, but we could begin by praising our daughters, granddaughters, nieces for qualities in addition to their beauty, like their intelligence, strength, creativity, talent. And we could start teaching boys at an earlier age not to behave like pigs.

You write about how hurtful it was to you and your husband when Ted Cruz called the ruling on marriage equality one of our nation’s darkest days. You briefly considered moving to Sweden but write, “even if he, or someone just as horrible, becomes president, it’s not worth jumping ship.” How are you feeling post-election?
Well, I’ve been experiencing a wide range of emotions. I want to be clear, I would never leave the United States just because I don’t like a president. I love this country very much and believe the vast majority of Americans are good human beings. But if the Supreme Court reverses its marriage equality ruling, I’ll have a big problem with that, as I’m sure you can understand.

In the hilarious chapter “Clinton for President!” you eat a marijuana gummy bear and then talk about how when you’re president, you will make American fabulous again. So, Clinton Kelly 2020?
I’m not gonna lie: Part of me thinks I could do a freakin’ awesome job as president, but another—much larger—part of me doesn’t want to work that hard at anything. Taking all those meetings would be torture for me. If I’m on a conference call that lasts for more than 10 minutes, I want to commit hara-kiri.

You have a funny fake sitcom script in one chapter. Do you think you’ll ever try writing an actual TV pilot?
So glad you liked it! I have a drawer full of sitcom scripts I’ve written. Writing them and subsequently squirreling them away is a weird habit of mine. I never show them to anyone because I assume people will think they’re stupid. But then again, a lot of really stupid stuff makes its way to television.

Your afterword is addressed to your grandma, saying you didn’t share any stories about her because she’s all yours. Come on, tell us one thing about your grandma!
Aw, she’s just a dream. She’s 97 and originally from New Zealand. When I was a kid, she’d make me a proper cup of tea—she would never use a tea bag!—with lots of milk and sugar, then read my tea leaves, like a fortune teller. She always saw all these wonderful things happening in my future. . . . And this is why I didn’t include any stories of ours. I’m totally crying. Thanks a lot, Amy!

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of I Hate Everyone, Except You.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The former co-host of “What Not to Wear” delivers candid and comical observations on growing up gay and other topics in an entertaining new memoir, I Hate Everyone, Except You.
NonfictionMemoir

Pamela Paul

Interview by Amy Scribner

While working a dead-end job in my mid-20s, I spent several hours setting up an Excel spreadsheet in which I listed every book I could think of that I’d ever read, starting with The Wind in the Willows. I devotedly logged each subsequent book into that spreadsheet until sometime around age 28, when I lost track of it in the shuffle of changing jobs.

I’ve since moved on to an app that allows me to continue my obsessive book tracking, but I still think wistfully of that spreadsheet and the books it contained. So My Life with Bob, the new memoir by New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul, resonated deeply with me.

It would be a ridiculous understatement to call Paul an avid reader. Whether highbrow Russian literature or V.C. Andrews’ incest-laced Flowers in the Attic, she reads with gusto. And she records it all in Bob, her “Book of Books,” a well-worn journal in which she’s listed every book she’s read for 28 years.

Paul first wrote about Bob in a 2012 Times essay; turning that essay into a book was not an easy decision.

“There was a huge amount of trepidation and fear,” she admits, speaking by phone from New York City. “I didn’t actually think of it as a memoir, and it was only when I read something that said, ‘Pamela Paul to write a memoir,’ that I thought, oh my God, I’m writing a memoir.

“It’s so personal. I’m usually very cautious writing about myself. I have a great amount of admiration for those who say, damn it all, I’ll write what I want. It’s very brave, but the journalism I’ve always done is feature writing, where people I interview are voluntarily participating; they’re in it of their own volition. It felt odd to me to be writing not only about myself but the people in my life.”

Paul’s previous books—By the Book; Parenting, Inc.; Pornified; and The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony—are investigative looks at different aspects of social and consumer behavior. In My Life with Bob, in contrast, she is her own subject. Her chapters focus on key books in her life, from The Grapes of Wrath to The Secret History, and her reflections on what those books mean to her and what they say about her.

“The first outline was 64 chapters!” Paul remembers. “It was really sad to cut out books; each book I cut out was like cutting out a chapter of my life in a way. It was hard to think about what books captured my intellectual life and my internal life and my social life, where I was in my life at a given moment.”

My Life with Bob catalogues Paul’s journeys—both literal and metaphorical—including her time teaching English in Thailand and her early years in the New York publishing world.

In one of the most poignant chapters, Paul writes about reading with children, and that sudden jolt of realization when your children no longer want to read whatever you hand them.

“The ability to choose one’s own books becomes slightly less satisfying when you realize your own children have that power, too, and they insist on reading about rainbow fairies or killer cats,” she writes.

In the Paul household, books play a pivotal role.

“I’m obsessed with the idea of what makes a reader,” she says. “Part of it with our kids was total deprivation of any other type of entertainment. We’re horrible, terrible parents. No TV, no video games; we barely have computers for the kids. The idea of entering into a narrative in which you are actively constructing and contributing to that narrative is something that you have to learn to do. I get it—I love TV and movies, too, and in a way it’s a lot easier on the brain because you’re not conjuring up images in your brain of what characters look like.

“So I joke about deprivation, but it’s really enormous abundance. My kids have a lot of books. We regularly have to go through and purge.”

Even with the lure of technology, Paul believes books will remain central to our culture and that it’s up to parents to help imbue that interest in young readers.

“If you have fresh fruit but you also have candy, the kids might eat the fruit, but they’re gonna eat a lot of candy,” she said. “One thing I find very comforting is that for young people especially, real books—paper books—continue to be more popular than eBooks. For young children, it’s about having that tactile experience and being in the lap of a parent looking at something together.”

She may be the editor of the New York Times Book Review, but Paul is anything but a book snob. She reads widely and deeply, admitting in My Life with Bob that she hated The Catcher in the Rye (she thought Holden Caulfield was a jerk) and loved Nancy Drew.

Sometimes, she writes, we choose books as voyeurs of others’ misery. She recalls reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich during the summer after her freshman year of college, drawn to Holocaust reading “like many other morbid kids with Jewish ancestry.” And sometimes we choose books based on a recommendation. Which, by the way, Paul resists when possible, as she describes in another thought-provoking chapter.

My Life with Bob is a love story about books, and it will be irresistible to bookworms who recognize that what you read reflects who you are. Paul’s writing is warm, revealing and elegant, and at times, quite funny, such as when she’s too engrossed in The Hunger Games to realize that her newborn son isn’t latching on properly while nursing.

“Once I put the book down, I returned to my resting emotional state of maternal guilt,” she writes. “My lunatic years of turbo lactivism, nursing my children until they were weaned, were tainted not by formula but by the competing desire to read while they fed.”

My only quibble—and it’s a tiny one—is that Paul includes just one tantalizing photo of one page of Bob in her book. Did she ever consider reprinting Bob in full as an appendix?

“Oh no,” she says with a laugh. “That would be like hanging out my laundry.”

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Paul’s previous books—By the Book; Parenting, Inc.; Pornified; and The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony—are investigative looks at different aspects of social and consumer behavior. In My Life with Bob, in contrast, she is her own subject. Her chapters focus on key books in her life, from The Grapes of Wrath to The Secret History, and her reflections on what those books mean to her and what they say about her.

FictionDebut Fiction

Rachel Khong

Interview by Amy Scribner

Rachel Khong makes her fiction debut with the small-but-mighty Goodbye, Vitamin, the story of 30-year-old Ruth, who moves home to help care for her aging father, Howard, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In poignant and often hilarious journal-like entries, Ruth charts the joys and sadness of her days at home and ultimately her journey through grief.

Khong, the former executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine and the author of All About Eggs: Everything We Know About the World’s Most Important Food, makes us laugh once again as she shares the secret behind her first novel’s diary style and shakes her fist at memory.

How much of this story is drawn from your own life experiences?
My father doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, I’ve never had a fiancé break up with me, and I’ve never spent a year at home being a caretaker. But I do know about career-related ambivalence, about heartbreak and about anger. I’m also forgetting things every day. I’m often asked if I have personal experience with Alzheimer’s and I do—my late grandmother had Alzheimer’s. But I’m hesitant to place too much emphasis on it, because though it resembled Howard’s at times, her experience was very different, and our relationship was nothing like Ruth and Howard’s in my book. It informed my writing, but wasn’t the reason I wrote this book.

The story unfolds through journal-like entries, which is really effective in offering intimate glimpses into Ruth’s state of mind. Why did you choose this format? Are you a diarist yourself?
I wish I could say I chose the format for some intelligent reason, but it wasn’t as much a choice as it was what was possible for me. I didn’t know how to write a novel, but I did know how to write paragraphs. Stringing those paragraphs together was how I was able to write this book. I had been reading books like Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick, Speedboat by Renata Adler, Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison—short books made up of much smaller pieces. And these were books that, despite their length, nevertheless made an outsized impact on me.

I am not a diarist, but last year I started writing in Tamara Shopsin’s Five-Year Diary, a little notebook that has five spaces on every page for every day of the year. There’s only enough space for a few lines, so it’s something that’s easy to do right before bed. The point is so you can look back on the year before, or five years before, and see how your life has changed. That’s been a useful exercise in perspective.

Goodbye, Vitamin is part break-up story, part Alzheimer’s story, part family story, part coming-of-age tale. Piece it all together, and it’s a novel about memory. Has your way of thinking about memory changed for you since writing this book?
Something that I thought about memory, and still feel now, is that it is incredibly crappy material we have to work with. It’s faulty, it’s inaccurate, it’s misleading. It leads us to believe relationships are better or worse than they are; it stops us from forgiving us or allows us to forgive too readily. “Memory is shitty,” was the main thing I thought about memory when I started the book, and I still think that now. But while my thinking on memory hasn’t changed—I still think it sucks—writing the book was a way to come to terms with it, in a way. It’s a frustrating thing, but there’s something beautiful, too, about this flaw we all share. It’s human, and it’s imperfect, but it’s what we have.

What kind of research did you do into the effects of Alzheimer’s—both on the individual and on the family?
I don’t have a good answer to this question! I read a lot on the subject—from books to discussion threads on Metafilter and Reddit. But a lot of it was imagination. It’s easy to imagine your own memory much worse than it is. We’re forgetting things every day, all the time. I don’t have to look too far for examples of that in my own life.

Ruth is such a great character. I loved when she listed things that take up room in her brain (and she wishes wouldn’t), like the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and various taxonomic ranks. What are a couple things taking up unnecessary room in your brain?
As a kid, I was a big fan of the Babysitter’s Club series, and to this day every personality trait of each of the Babysitter’s Club members is still rolling around uselessly in my adult brain. You’d think I should be allowed to free up that space in the hard drive and be better at, I don’t know, geography.

Food doesn’t play a big role in Goodbye, Vitamin, which surprised me considering all the food writing you’ve done. Was that intentional?
I started writing fiction long before I ever wrote about food; this novel, too, preceded the food writing. Though food—both cooking and eating—is certainly one of my interests, it’s just one. People have actually told me that they’re surprised by how much food there IS in the book. I think, in the same way that people have different thresholds or tastes for humor or violence or sentimentality, they have sensitivities about how much food is in a given book. So it’s interesting to me to hear these different reactions. I didn’t intentionally leave food out, nor did I intentionally include it. I tried to correctly represent how often a human might think about or talk about food, and it might be abnormally high or low, but I only have my own experience to go on!

If you had to pick, do you think Goodbye, Vitamin is more tragic or funny?
Hopefully funny!

You’ve said that you never thought you’d write a novel. Now that you have (and it turned out so well!), do you think you’ll do it again? And again?
Writing a novel has always been the dream, but it always seemed daunting and impossible, the same way that, when you’re young, it seems impossible that you’d ever possess enough money to be able to buy a car or house. As it turns out, being older really helps, and the main factor in writing a novel or buying a car is simply accumulation of little things into a bigger thing. I’m working on my new novel now, and it’s very different. Decidedly NOT a diary.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Goodbye, Vitamin.

Author photo credit Andria Lo.

Rachel Khong makes her fiction debut with the small-but-mighty Goodbye, Vitamin, the story of 30-year-old Ruth, who moves home to help care for her aging father, Howard, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Khong, the former executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine and the author of All About Eggs: Everything We Know About the World’s Most Important Food, makes us laugh once again as she shares the secret behind her first novel’s diary style and shakes her fist at memory.

NonfictionSelf-Help

Manoush Zomorodi

Interview by Amy Scribner

Do you feel like your phone may be trying to take over your life? Can you even remember the last time you had a sit-down dinner without someone whipping out their phone? Manoush Zomorodi understands, and she wants to help. In Bored and Brilliant, she explains that taking a step back from technology is essential for creativity, and armed with research and challenges, Zomorodi will help you discover the beauty of taking a break from technology. We asked her a few questions about boredom, children’s use of technology and those addicting phone games. 

What first drew you to this idea of boredom as a catalyst for creativity?
I’m a sucker for self-improvement, and when I realized I was struggling more than usual to come up with original ideas for my podcast, I went on a quest to pinpoint what my problem was. Turns out, looking at my phone and taking in and disseminating information nonstop disrupts specific brain functions that facilitate original thinking. So, boom! It all made sense. But that didn’t mean there was an easy fix!

What was one of the best outcomes you heard about from someone who participated in the Bored to Brilliant Project?
My favorite quote is from a guy in Brooklyn who said, “I feel like I’m waking up from a mental hibernation.” I think I teared up at that one. How extraordinary to help someone observe their own behavior and then see such a change.

Did you hear from skeptics when you launched the project?
Absolutely yes! Some people (including my producer at the time) were like, “What are you even talking about? I just put down my phone.” But usually their minds changed when they saw how this project REALLY resonated with a friend, co-worker or family member. Look, telling people that thinking is important isn’t a philosophical breakthrough. But combine that with new things we know about the brain and our new digital habits and it’s clear we are living through a grand societal experiment. THAT is fascinating, even if you just have flip phone.

Look 10 years into the future: What do you see in terms of people’s relationships with their devices?
Well, other technology journalists and I differ vastly on this. My 13-year-old neighbor told me she likes to takes breaks on the weekends from social media. I think in a decade it will not be cool to be posting all the time and being on your phone at a party will not be OK.

What kinds of limits do you put on your own kids’ use of technology?
My kids are 7 and 10 and they are in love with the iPad. It’s a constant power struggle. Right now we limit them to half an hour if it’s not a school day. I’ll admit I’m not looking forward to them having phones.

Why do you think boredom gets such a bad rap?
Because there’s a moment when it stinks! Boredom truly is uncomfortable and frustrating. But if you can get through that window of discomfort, you will get to the good stuff. It’s funny how semantics work, right? If you really hate getting bored, just tell yourself you are activating your Default Mode. LOL.

You write about your own time wasting on the game Two Dots. Be honest: Do you ever relapse?
Uh, yes. When I relapse, I know that means I’m mentally exhausted.

You interviewed the creator of Two Dots for the book. What was it like talking to the man who helped you waste so many hours?
David is utterly charming and extremely intelligent. Obviously. I found it very helpful to have a conversation with someone who understands how to trigger specific behavior in his customer (me). We should be having more human interactions with the people actually making the stuff we use all day.

I loved the challenge in which participants are required to identify a problem, then literally watch a pot of water come to a boil, then put their mind to solving the problem. Did you do this exercise? What came of it for you?
I found it extremely relaxing. There’s something about being given permission to focus on one thing that just makes the tension in your neck release. I came up with the idea for another project, which was on information overload (we called it Infomagical).

How do you manage social media to make sure it doesn’t suck up too much of your time?
No notifications. Giving myself a max of 10 minutes to look at Twitter or Instagram. And then it’s OFF.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Bored and Brilliant.

(Author photo by Amy Pearl.)

Do you feel like your phone may be trying to take over your life? Can you even remember the last time you had a sit-down dinner without someone whipping out their phone? Manoush Zomorodi understands, and she wants to help.
NonfictionMemoir

Armistead Maupin

Interview by Amy Scribner

Armistead Maupin finished writing his bold memoir, Logical Family, months ago. He couldn’t have foreseen just how relevant his searing reflections on growing up in the deeply conservative, racially divided South would be.

In Logical Family, Maupin, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate and the author of the groundbreaking series Tales of the City, lays bare his own struggles with self-acceptance and making peace with his past. BookPage spoke with Maupin by phone the day after the violence in Charlottesville that stemmed from protests surrounding Confederate statues.

“It was horrifying to see that much hate made visible,” Maupin, 73, says from his home in San Francisco. “When I was a boy, I got into a fight with my best friend, Eddie, because Eddie was a Yankee. He disapproved of the statues. He said, ‘You lost the war and you were fighting for slavery—why should you have a monument?’ It’s taken 50 years for this to come back up again. Stop tormenting our African-American citizens this way and stop celebrating what should be a public shame.”

Just as he is in conversation, Maupin is unflinchingly outspoken in Logical Family. The book title is based on a term he coined 10 years ago in his novel Michael Tolliver Lives. “[Logical family] is the family that makes sense to you; the family that supports you and loves you unconditionally,” he says. “How many people gripe about having to go home for Christmas and sit with some Trumpy old aunt—yes, I said Trumpy—and bite your tongue? I’ve stopped trying to win the approval of my family. Gay people have spent way too long being good little boys and girls and not relying on the strength of their real families.”

Logical Family opens with Maupin as a young boy in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father was an unapologetic racist who proudly displayed furniture made by “slaves in our family,” and his mother was a Southern belle. In this environment, Maupin developed strong conservative beliefs, at one point even working for notorious segregationist Jesse Helms. “I was trying to please my father,” Maupin says. “Even though he was teaching me some terrible things that I had to unlearn, on the other hand he had a ribald sense of humor and loved to tell stories.”

Given his upbringing, Maupin was deeply conflicted about his homosexuality and remained a virgin until his mid-20s. “Thank God that sex came along and saved me,” he says. “You can’t roll around in the dark in the bathhouse and not bump into somebody who’s nothing like you, but very much the same because tenderness and sweetness and passion are all the same.”

Maupin speaks matter-of-factly about his relationship with his biological family, without a trace of bitterness or regret. Regret, it turns out, is not something he has much use for. “I’m sorry that I was a virgin for so long. That’s my real regret!” he laughs. “I missed the opportunity for youthful lust. The real honest answer is we have to go through what we have to go through. I’m just glad we got through to the other side.”

A generous portion of Maupin’s memoir is devoted to his time serving in the Navy, stationed in Saigon during the Vietnam War. “I found whole stacks of letters from me to my mom during that time,” he tells me. “It was fascinating to reread and research my own history. To be perfectly honest, writing is never a whole lot of fun. To be done writing is fun. Writing is a process of slow, tedious self-doubt.”

“The thing I feared was the thing that ultimately brought me the most joy in my life.”

Maupin also recounts writing the Tales of the City column in the 1970s for the San Francisco Chronicle, which became the basis for his pioneering book and TV series featuring a transgender character. The column was a sensation in a city that was at the heart of the gay rights movement.

But Maupin is modest about his role in helping move our society toward acceptance of people who are gay, bisexual and transgender. “I’m very proud of my role in changing people minds, but there are others who have done much more in changing laws,” he says. “The best thing I’ve done in my life is help gay people change their minds about themselves. To find their own dignity and their own voice, to grow impatient with their own oppression. It just started out as fun, telling stories about my own self-discovery. But you dig as deep as you can in your own heart, and you come up with something others will get. For years I lived in terror of expressing anything in regards to myself being gay. The thing I feared was the thing that ultimately brought me the most joy in my life.”

To complement the memoir, a documentary, The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin, directed by Jennifer M. Kroot, came out this spring. Maupin had previously admired Kroot’s work on a 2014 documentary about George Takei. “Any illusion you’ve ever had about your personal beauty is shattered when you see yourself on screen,” Maupin says with a laugh. “But I trusted her. I could open up to her in a way I might not have with other people. I said yes on the spot.”

Maupin has found his own family, and he has delivered a generous, deeply satisfying memoir. “I made an effort at poignancy and humor and honesty,” he says. “I always like to take people on a roller-coaster ride. Make them cry one minute and belly laugh the next. That’s the most satisfying thing in the world. Humor is healing.”

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Logical Family.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Christopher Turner.

In Logical Family, Maupin, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate and the author of the groundbreaking series Tales of the City, lays bare his own struggles with self-acceptance and making peace with his past.

FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Abby Geni

Interview by Amy Scribner

For her second novel, acclaimed writer Abby Geni dives into the complex relationship between siblings and how trauma impacts family bonds. Geni discusses her inspiration for The Wildlands and what it’s like setting out to write another novel after a successful debut, The Lightkeepers.

You write so vividly about Oklahoma, a place where “the heat baked the air into paste.” Why did you choose to set The Wildlands there?
My husband grew up in Oklahoma, and his family still lives there. By contrast, I’ve spent most of my life in Chicago, so my travels to Oklahoma always felt a little otherworldly. There’s something magical and harsh and untamable about the landscape. From my first visit there, I knew I wanted to write about it.

I also think Oklahoma often gets overlooked as a modern literary setting in favor of Texas. Texas is a big place with a big personality, and Oklahoma is sometimes viewed as a smaller, lesser version of the same thing. But Oklahoma is very much its own place, with its own climate and culture and life. It captured my imagination.

How much was your highly acclaimed debut novel, The Lightkeepers, on your mind as you wrote The Wildlands?
The Lightkeepers wasn’t on my mind so much as it has become a part of my DNA and is with me at all times. I think that’s true for many writers—each story infuses itself into your psyche, and each story informs everything else you write.

In some ways, my second novel is quite different from my first. The Lightkeepers is a slow-boiling murder mystery with an unreliable loner protagonist and an eerie island setting. The Wildlands, on the other hand, is a fast-moving literary thriller about a deeply connected family living in landlocked Oklahoma.

I learned so much in writing The Lightkeepers, but I didn’t want to use the same blueprint for my second novel. As much as possible, I hope that each new book I write will be its own experience, its own entity.

How do you balance teaching writing with preserving time for your own fiction?
Writing comes first. I mean that literally—I write at the beginning of the day, when my mind is fresh and clear. Later, when my writing mojo is all used up for the day, I read student manuscripts and prepare lesson plans. By then, I’m either blissed out after a good writing session and excited to dive in to my students’ work, or frustrated from a bad writing session and eager to focus on something, anything, else.

Also, I’ve never been someone who writes every day. Anyone who says, “Real writers should write every day” is just making up arbitrary rules. I write four or five days out of the week, then take two or three days off. My days off from writing are great for editing other people’s work or preparing for upcoming classes.

How has teaching influenced your own writing?
Teaching makes me a better writer. Writing happens in isolation, and one downside of that solitude is that you rarely have a chance to talk about the process of your work with anyone. You’re in a room alone, in silence, figuring out how to revise a tricky passage or hone your point of view or deepen your characters. Your insights are instinctive and half-formed because they’re never articulated aloud.

Teaching makes you articulate those things aloud. It makes you think in words. As I figure out how to explain something to my students, I come to understand it better. And of course, my students are brilliant and full of insights of their own.

The connection between humans and nature is a prevalent theme throughout your work. What do you enjoy about exploring that theme?
Part of my interest in that theme is happiness—nothing brings me more joy than working in my garden, walking my dog, interacting with nature in any way. And I love to learn. I never outgrew that schoolkid wonder at a new idea, a new word, a new book. Nature is infinitely complex. I’ll never be done learning about the natural world, and that learning brings me joy, too—reading about fungi, watching a documentary about rodents, memorizing the constellations.

But another part of my interest in that theme is fear. Our planet is at a tipping point. We’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction of all life on earth. The climate is changing and changing and changing. All of it is caused by humans. If we don’t find a balance—if we don’t re-evaluate our relationship with the natural world—we’ll cause irreparable harm to our unique, inimitable home and our own species.

Which books are on your must-read list right now?
As a working mom with a young child, I do most of my reading via audiobook, since that way I can “read” while I’m picking up my kid from school or doing laundry or walking the dog. Next in my queue are Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Atlas of a Lost World by Craig Childs and Stiff by Mary Roach. All research for my future writing!

What types of book are you drawn to? Which genres do you tend to avoid?
Sadly, I tend to avoid reading fiction, since I find that other people’s stories bleed into my own work in counterproductive ways. I love fiction, I write fiction, but very rarely am I in a headspace that allows me to read fiction.

So I read a huge amount of nonfiction. I’m always doing research for upcoming projects. I love biology, physics, geology, psychology—any kind of scientific lens I can use to see the world differently and hone my understanding of it.

What are you working on next?
A novel! That’s all I can say now. I’m incredibly private about my work, even by writer standards. But it’s going to be a novel, and I think it’s going to be good.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Wildlands.

Author photo by Dan Kelleghan.

For her second novel, acclaimed writer Abby Geni dives into the complex relationship between siblings and how trauma impacts family bonds. Geni discusses her inspiration for The Wildlands and what it’s like setting out to write another novel after a successful debut, The Lightkeepers.

NonfictionMemoirFashion

Isaac Mizrahi

Interview by Amy Scribner

Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi discusses his anticipated memoir, I.M., his love of New York City, his favorite designs from his many influential collections, creativity and more.

Why was now the right time to write your memoir?
It’s never a great time to write a memoir, but recently it’s seemed like the right time ’cause I was ready to share the specific details of my past and talk about where I wanted my life to go. I was ready to be honest. Any earlier it would not have been the right account. It takes a certain kind of distance from one’s past to be able to return to it.

You write, “I hate summer weather and sunny days.” What’s your idea of the perfect day, weather-wise and otherwise?
My idea of perfect weather is FREEZING COLD and grey. I love being able to open the window if it gets too warm indoors. I love the idea that I don’t sweat. I love the idea that my hair always looks so good. I love LOVE coats.

In your memoir, you’re very honest about your struggles with depression and body image. Was it difficult to write about issues you’ve grappled with since childhood?
Now that I’m in my 50s it seems like there’s enough distance from those troubled times, also I have enough strength in my life currently between my career and my husband, that no matter what anyone thinks of the book, I’m still OK. If the reviews are bad, if certain people don’t like it, it’s my story, told I think with no rancor, no anger, and deserves to be respected.

You write with such love for New York City. How has your relationship with your hometown evolved over your life?
For me, New York City has been a kind of magic place. I grew up here in Brooklyn, and began going to the city every day at high school. It was my way out. My way to a life of my own, which was something I had to take, I was not given. A big anonymous city is really important. A place where you can be exactly who you are without being judged. You can make mistakes and start over. You can actually start over any number of times here. You select your privacy here. I was told early in my life by a psychic that NYC was my forever home and not to think of moving. He described my feelings about NYC the way a farmer feels about the earth under his feet, there for his safety and cultivation.

Your mother is an enormously stylish woman, and you write about your weekend breakfasts when you both talked fashion as a child. Do you think you would have become a designer without her influence?
My mother was a great influence on me. She was a great example of pluck, of style, of shrewd maneuvering of events to suit her own agenda. More than stylish she was Machiavellian in her approach to making the best of her situation, manipulating the world to suit her. More than anything about style, I learned that.

You are one of the most successful American designers, yet you reveal you still feel like “a performer, a writer, trapped in the body of a fashion designer.” You’ve appeared in movies, had a talk show and performed cabaret! What do you think it’ll take for you to feel like a performer?
The more I work on stage the more I feel like a legitimate performer, and these days I do more and more of it.

You’ve worked with some of the most famous women in the world. Who are some of the most memorable women you’ve dressed?
Women I’ve dressed that I was awed by: Streisand, Liza, Meryl Streep, Hilary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Roberts.

When I think of you as a designer, I think of the Isaac Mizrahi dress from Target that I’ve owned for years and will wear until it disintegrates or I die. Which specific pieces or collections first come to mind when you think back over all the clothing you’ve designed?
I love to think of the plain, well-cut, beautifully fabricated pieces I made for Target that were literally under $20. I think of a pink corduroy blazer I did in the first collection. I think of a red duffel coat. I think of the cashmere sweaters I did. Not to mention so many of the great, great handbags I did for them, some of which I still see people carrying. When I first started working with them, the merchants were scared of anything besides tops, mostly T-shirt tops. And by the time I left five years later, they had a big business in dresses and even skirts.

You married in 2011. How did that influence your creativity?
Meeting my husband, Arnold, and learning how to commit to him, learning how to love him, is a big influencer on creativity. As the relationship gets stronger I feel bolder about my approach to my work. It feels like I have nothing to lose. I can’t tell if that’s age or being secure in my marriage. My work is the most important thing in my life, but it wouldn’t be possible in so many ways unless my husband was there to support me. Not creatively, just as a human.
 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of I.M.

Author photo by Gregg Richards

Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi discusses his anticipated memoir, I.M., his love of New York City, his favorite designs from his collections, creativity and more.

FictionThrillerSuspense

Denise Mina

Interview by Amy Scribner

A true crime podcast leads a woman on a dangerous adventure across Europe in Denise Mina’s crackling new novel, Conviction.

In this fresh thriller, excerpts from a podcast weave throughout Anna McLean’s travels, during which she comes face-to-face with the woman who once almost killed her, the full details of which are (of course) not immediately revealed. It’s a deliciously clever premise that fully delivers.

The idea came to Mina—bestselling author of 13 novels including the Alex Morrow and Garnethill series, as well as plays, short stories and even graphic novels—after she found herself hooked on podcasts. “They’re so intimate, and you feel like you get to know the podcaster so well,” Mina says in a phone call to her home in Glasgow. “It’s not formal, and every episode is a little story in itself. I’ve listened to literally thousands of them. I’ve stopped listening to music.”

Mina found that true crime lends itself particularly well to podcasts. “The story form is already set in true crime,” she explains. “The narrative arc is already set out for them. . . . Podcasts can focus on characters in a very strange way. They can suddenly start talking about a different character. I find them delightful to write because they’re little short stories about backstory or character.”

The day Anna starts listening to the podcast called “Death and the Dana,” her husband declares that he’s leaving her for her best friend, Estelle, and the two of them are taking Anna’s daughters on a vacation. In shock, Anna curls up in her marble hallway and hits play on “Death and the Dana.” It tells the story of a father and his two kids who were killed when their yacht exploded off the shores of a swanky French island. 

When a familiar name is mentioned in the podcast, Anna is jolted from her misery. The dead man was a friendly guest at a hotel where Anna used to work. And the wife left behind is the woman who once almost killed Anna.

Nearly at that very moment, Estelle’s husband, a depressed former rock star named Fin, turns up on Anna’s doorstep. Heartbroken and reeling, Anna and Fin set out to solve the mysteries of the Dana explosion—and maybe save Anna’s life. To find answers, Anna and Fin go from Edinburgh to London to Venice to Paris.

“I really loved writing a book set in so many places,” Mina says. “I wanted to write a story that was one of those old–fashioned stories that spans continents. These people are not spending time filling out visas. They’re having rip-roaring adventures. I love closed environment crime stories, but I wanted to do something expansive in this one.”

At the center of it all is Anna, a woman with a tough past who says what she’s thinking and shares her opinion, solicited or not. “She was glorious to write,” says Mina. “She’s so disinhibited. She says the things you think and then feel guilty for thinking. Just generally there’s a lot of social performance in the world, and Anna’s in such an emotional state, she just can’t do it.”

Hearing Mina enthuse about her latest book, it’s clear she still delights in creating new stories, and Conviction falls somewhere between old tales and new. She purposely included many old–fashioned narrative tropes in Conviction. “There’s the European jaunt, the combination of characters in the drawing room, the ill-matched double act.” But a recent piece in The Guardian casts Conviction as particularly of-the-moment, as part of a fresh crop of books that are inspired by the #metoo movement. 

Mina doesn’t necessarily view her book as a product of #metoo (“I’ve been writing about the themes of sexual assault and violence for 20 years, but if it makes it palatable and comprehensible, that’s fine”), but she does proudly accept the label of feminist writer. “I totally embrace it,” she says without hesitation. “You know the feminists you don’t like, the really shouty, angry ones? That is the one I am.” She laughs before taking on a more serious tone.

“It used to be much less popular to be a feminist; there was so much prejudice against the feminist movement in the ’80s and ’90s,” she says. “It’s really about equal money for equal work, and equal protection under the law. Gender and race is all about money. No one wants to pay us the money we’re entitled to. Take the emotion out of it—which I don’t have time for—just pay us what were entitled to, and leave it. I’m not going to pretend that’s some mad crazy leftist nonsense.”

Like most working moms, Mina has had to make many decisions about prioritizing her time and her energy, a practice she calls “shaving off the flummery.”

“Personally I gave up dieting and all the stuff you hate,” she says. “Being bitchy about people. Worrying about what people think of you. Just go about your business and never mind.”

One thing Mina won’t change? Her love of Scotland, and particularly of Glasgow.

“It’s a brilliant city for a writer. People tell you stories all the time. It’s very much a storytelling culture. People are interested in each other. It’s rare.”

 

Photo credit: Neil Davidson

A true crime podcast leads a woman on a dangerous adventure across Europe in Denise Mina’s crackling new novel, Conviction.

NonfictionBiography

Alexis Coe

Interview by Amy Scribner

Although it’s as well researched as any of the myriad George Washington biographies out there, Alexis Coe’s You Never Forget Your First approaches its legendary subject with a healthy dose of irreverence. We asked the historian a few questions about what it was like to tackle the life of the ultimate Founding Father.

You infused a fairly serious subject with humor and liveliness. How did you do it?
That’s the ultimate compliment! If history is boring, it’s the historian’s fault. I happen to have a dark sense of humor, and I realized early in my career that it was a useful tool—but not the only one in my arsenal. Being funny, being original, being analytical . . . it all requires serious mastery over a subject. Years of careful research and a critical eye allowed me to be funny in one chapter and dead serious in another and, hopefully, seamless in the transition. Oh, and lots and lots of drafts! 

What did you want to bring to the table as a female biographer that would shine a new or different light on Washington?
Previous biographers and I agree on the big goal of a Washington biography, which is to chisel away at the marble statue he’s become, but we go about it very differently. I questioned things they took as a given, and a whole new world opened up to me.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of You Never Forget Your First.

What was your research process like? 
Why are people sleeping on Founders Online, an open access site through the Library of Congress?! I had the absolute best time reading 18th-century letters on there—so much so that I found myself messing around after work hours, too. I highly recommend using random search words like “slut.” You’ll get Jefferson lecturing his daughter, and Washington’s old house manager writing to say that his slut died in the straw, which editors took to demonstrate Martha’s love of dogs.

Your research reveals Martha Washington to have been a reluctant public figure. Were she and George a good match for the life he chose?
They were both homebodies, but when they were in public roles, Washington got to have a lot more freedom and fun with it. But I do think they were a good match. He got the rich widow he needed to make it big, and she got the hunky, same-age husband she hadn’t had the first time around. They worked hard to make each other happy. That meant she had to spend a lot of time out of Virginia, and he had to raise her ne’er-do-well son and grandson. 

“If anyone could have changed the fate of black people in America, it was George Washington.”

One of the most fascinating aspects of your book is your unflinching reporting on Washington as a slave owner. How much does his reliance on enslaved labor tarnish his legacy?
If anyone could have changed the fate of black people in America, it was George Washington. No other founder had the stature, the reputation, the popularity. He could have set a powerful example in Virginia, then the biggest state in the country, by emancipating his slaves, but he didn’t until he was near the end of his life. He knew the world was changing and that he would be judged. And let’s not forget, he passed the buck to Martha. Half of Mount Vernon’s enslaved population knew they would be free when she set them free or died, and it’s pretty clear her fear of being murdered or burned alive motivated her to sign their manumission papers. She didn’t do the same for those she enslaved outright. 

Did this project change your feelings about Washington?
When I came to this project, Washington was a portrait, a hero, a myth. He wasn’t necessarily a real person to me, but now he is, and people are complicated. There are things I like and admire about him, and there are things that absolutely repulse me.

I had no idea our first president faced so many illnesses! And they had such names: carbuncles and bloody flux and quinsy. How much of an impact did Washington’s health have on his politics?
He took far more risks with his health than he did his politics!

What are your favorite books about American presidents?
I love anything by Doris Kearns Goodwin, whom I’ve had the great fortune to work with. I was so scared to show her the manuscript, and her blurb means the world to me. Also, Annette Gordon-Reeds’ work on Jefferson is incredible.

Your book Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis is being developed into a movie. How involved are you in that process, and what’s it like?
I went to Memphis with Jennifer Kent, the director and screenwriter, and walked and talked Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward for days. Since then, I’ve read drafts of the screenplay and given some feedback, but for the most part, I trust Jen! She’s managed to stay true to our girls and the spirit of the book but is also making something that’s also totally her own.

What do you think our Founding Fathers would think of the current state of American politics?
I can only speak for Washington. He would be enraged by the level of foreign influence Trump entertains and horrified at how Republicans continue to support him in order to stay in power.

You can invite any three presidents to a dinner party. Who would you choose?
Washington, of course, although he would probably be too distracted by technology and a woman wearing pants to focus. Still, I’m interested in experiencing his charisma, because that’s the hardest thing to get from descriptions. For that reason, let’s throw John F. Kennedy into the mix, too. And I’d love to talk to FDR! But honestly, with that crowd, I doubt I’d get a word in!

Author photo © Sophia Rosokoff.

Although it’s as well researched as any of the myriad George Washington biographies out there, Alexis Coe’s You Never Forget Your First approaches its legendary subject with a healthy dose of irreverence. We asked the historian a few questions about what it was like to tackle the life of the ultimate Founding Father. You infused a […]

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Features

All Features