|
|
| Annabel Monaghan (credit: Jo Bryan Photography) |
|
Annabel Monaghan is the author of the novels Nora Goes Off Script and Same Time Next Summer. Her third novel for adults, Summer Romance (Putnam, $19 paperback; reviewed in this issue), follows a single mother who finds herself caught up in a fling as she's struggling to balance parenthood, her impending divorce, and grieving her mother's death.
Tell us about the inspiration behind Summer Romance.
This book began in a messier way than most of my books. I knew I wanted to have a professional organizer whose life was a mess. And I wanted her to have an affair with her divorce attorney. But that didn't really work for the story, so he morphed into this "alternative" skateboarding guy. By the third page, I realized that she was also grieving her mother's death. It turned into a book about grief and quick romances, and the ways we present ourselves to the world.
We tend to think of summer flings as the province of the young. But Ali and Ethan are grown adults with careers, mortgages, and (in Ali's case) children. What makes a summer romance appealing to them?
I've been thinking about the nature of summer romance since I was a young person having a summer romance. There's this appeal to diving into a relationship without having to think about practical things. (Does this guy have health insurance? Does he file his tax returns on time?) You open yourself up to somebody without any strings or worries. As the summer goes, it gets more intense, and then there's the goodbye. It's a perfect relationship with so little expectation, and there's no big breakup, no tears at the end. I wanted to run Ali through that process as an adult, and see how you can suspend disbelief in the way things are going to end, and just enjoy it for a while. But, of course, you can't ultimately do that--because eventually there are real feelings.
I also wanted Ali to have some joy. She's stuck, and feeling low. I've been there: stuck, thinking, I don't know what to do now. Joy can get you unstuck--laughter can get you unstuck. The fun of a new experience can be enough to get the energy flowing, and move things around.
Ethan definitely brings Ali joy, but it's more than that. What does his presence do for her?
First of all: romance is never going to rescue you, ever. But another person can turn a mirror on you, so you see yourself in a different way and decide to make changes. I think that's what happens in all my books. I hate a book where the guy calls and everything is fine, and all your problems are solved. But I do think somebody seeing you for who you are--nurturing you and bringing you joy--can change your perspective. You can think, I feel good, and I want more of this.
Ali can organize anyone else's life, but even opening her own mail proves much more difficult. Why is that?
I think this is really common. When my friends call me with a problem, I give them the best advice. It's so much easier to give someone else advice about their situation or their relationship, because you're not sitting in all those feelings. You're so connected to your own stuff--the stuff in your house, your emotional stuff--that sometimes you can't see your way out of it. I tried to move Ali through that process--getting rid of stuff, like her mother's soup tureen, that holds these expectations of the person she did not become.
Ali holds frequent one-sided conversations with her mother, Nancy, who died two years ago. Tell us about that.
My mom passed away when I was 39. We were very close: I spoke to her on the phone every single day. I ran everything by her. When she passed away, I was so sad. Then, about five years later, without her standing next to me, I started thinking about things differently. I started re-processing our relationship differently, from a distance.
Sometimes your parents have expectations of you. For example: my children are adults, and I have an expectation of how they should be spending their time that has nothing to do with how they're spending their time. I think we do this with our parents, our children, even our friends: we expect them to act a certain way. And there's the act of letting go of people you love, learning to say, Live your life exactly how you want to live it, and I'll love you anyway--rather than saying, Please redo everything to fulfill my dreams for you.
As she grieves her mother's death, Ali also realizes she wants to be a different mother than the mother she had.
At one point, Ali comforts her daughter Greer after a seventh-grade crisis, but chooses not to agree with her that it's the end of the world. This is a shift from how Ali's own mother parented her. Nancy just wanted to protect Ali from the pain. The truth is that as we move through this life, we're going to have lots of pain--disappointments and heartbreak and all that. If we always try to protect each other from the pain, we create a whole generation of people who are terrified of anything ever going wrong. What we need to do is sit with someone in their pain and acknowledge that it is hard, and that you will get to the other side, and you'll be all right.
This book wrestles with learning to let go: of our own expectations, of people we love, of other things. Can you talk about that?
So I just got my first dog five years ago. I didn't have a dog before that because I think it's crazy! You buy the dog, you fall in love with the dog, and you know the dog is going to die. The first week we had the dog, that's all I could think about. But what I learned is: if something's not going to last forever, the joy is still worth it. You might have a dog; you might befriend an elderly person, the way Ali befriends her neighbor Phyllis, and the joy is worth it. I think I've learned that over the last few years, and I definitely re-learned that while writing this book.
For years, Nancy and Ali would perform a wishing ritual at the beginning of summer. What would you wish for in your own "champagne summer" ritual?
I have a lot of transitions coming up this summer. I'm moving out of my house; my son's going to college; I'm launching this book. So my wish for this summer is not to race through it. I want moments of pause and stillness. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams