Claire Lombardo Discusses her Inspiration, Oak Park’s Response to Her Novel, and More
By Allison Yates
Interview with Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
Want to run a route inspired by The Most Fun We Ever Had in Oak Park this summer?
Transcript
[ 00:00:00 ]Don't worry, I'll cut out. Okay, well, so I'm Allison, as you know. And do we want to go around and just say hi, like our names, just so you know who you're talking to? Sure. Hi, I'm Robin. I've enjoyed your book. Oh, thanks. Hi, George. Hi. Hi, I'm Jessica. Hi there. I'm Grace. I'm Xavier. Fernanda. Yeah and yeah, so that's everyone and um, like I told you, so we did a three-mile route. We started here at Sleepy Hollow which I did confirm used to be the competitive right honey, the competitive something competitive foot, yes okay, my memory didn't fail me, okay. Um, and then we ran down, um, Chicago up Faro up Fair Oaks around Augusta back down Forest. We spotted some Frank Lloyd Wright homes.
[ 00:00:59 ]We saw the Frank Lloyd Wright studio and museum where Violet was a volunteer. We maybe silently envisioned which house on Fair Oaks was the family's. Okay, the colonial man. Oh, yeah. Well, we were wondering. So, you know, there's a line where Wendy's like, 'I want to go to prom or homecoming or something like with that one guy because he lives in a colonial on Euclid.' so we were wondering like which one maybe that would be I have an idea oh okay you have more of an idea than I do I strangely was not envisioning any actual sorry my dog is doing something very odd um um your dog's Renee right her name is Renee yeah she might make it on here if you want her to be yeah she's she's she may come over in a moment but um It's really hot out.
[ 00:01:51 ]So she's like feral today. Yeah, I wasn't envisioning any real houses. Like I sort of had a general idea of, you know, types of houses in Oak Park. Are you guys okay? Oh, no. I've done that before where I've like spilled an entire cup of coffee in my lap on Zoom. I'm just, don't worry guys. I don't want to make you anxious. I'm going to move eventually. It's exciting. Sorry, what were you saying? Oh no, just that I, you know, I've had people write to me and say like, oh, I found the house where the Sorensons live. And I'm like, really? Because I, you know, it doesn't actually exist. And I chose, I actually, my publisher made me change it. Initially had them living on, I don't know what's, I called it like Oak Street or some, you know, Midwestern name.
[ 00:02:51 ]And my copy editor who was from Evanston was like, that street is not an Oak Park. And I was like, no, I know, but I didn't want anyone to associate. But anyway, because everything else in the book is rooted in realism, they made me change it. But, and I liked Fair Oaks. I grew up near Fair Oaks, a nice street. Anyway, it wasn't a good answer, but. No, it was a great answer. Thank you. It's the truth. Yes. Right, right, right. Well, I have like a lot of questions, but I always want to make sure that I give some space and time to you guys. So I'll just start it off. So I read in, I wanted to ask you to like, I read in one interview that you were really interested by human dynamics.
[ 00:03:30 ]And I know like your background is in social work, right? It is. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm sure you've seen like a lot, you explore a lot about human behavior. And I was really curious to know, like there's so many times when I was reading the book that, like, some parts were like I wanted to go there but they were painful because they reminded me so much of, like, my upbringing or the way like I related to my mom and I felt so much like shame thinking about maybe the positions like I put my mom in kind of like how Wendy has but I wanted to ask you like in writing so much about people and like in a really, really real way like were there any of those human dynamics even though you're fascinated by them that were like the most difficult for you to write and if so like which ones?
[ 00:04:12 ]Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think when you get to know your characters really well, it's hard to make them endure difficult things. So I think I confronted that a lot in this. Sorry, my dog is building a nest over there or something. I confronted that a lot with this book because a lot of. I mean, a lot of human things, but a lot of bad things happen to these characters who I had come to really care about and feel like I knew. Wendy's backstory, I think, was particularly difficult because she's just, you know, sort of put through the ringer so many, so many times. And there were a few of Wendy's scenes that I just put off writing until pretty much like the 11th hour because I just, I knew they needed to happen, but I didn't want to.
[ 00:05:04 ]Make them happen, I didn't want to, sort of, do that, to, this person, who I had spent, you know, several years with, whether or not they were real, um, so I would say yeah, Wendy was difficult, um, and I think too the sort of teenage that you mentioned, Allison, the sort of teenage now she's on the run, uh, come here buddy, um The teenage arc is a painful one to revisit. And I, you know, I'm, I'm very close with my mom now, but I was not when I was 16 and I was horrible to my mom and to sort of think about that. And to think about, I have, I have sisters and a brother too. And to sort of think about just the different things that we put our parents through is hard.
[ 00:05:48 ]It's hard to sort of think about yourself in that light. True as it, as it may be. So I think those were the most difficult. I wrote a lot of backstory for both Marilyn and David that was hard, that didn't make it into the book. So that was challenging, I guess. But yeah, really any of them, making any of them go through something difficult was hard just because I grew to feel like I knew them and I cared about them. So yeah. Sorry, she's fine. She's just on the floor behind me now. I don't. Yeah, it's all good. Before I jump to my next one, does anybody want to say anything? Yeah, you can keep thinking. Okay, so in a lot of the reviews of the book, I had a lot of fun reading like how people interpreted the characters
[ 00:06:39 ]So like there's one NPR article that called Wendy caustic, tough, difficult, flawed, self-destructive, fightingly funny, and ultimately sympathetic, for example. So like, you know, there's a lot like the way people viewed the book and I wanted to ask you like when you read those things or like when you saw those things is that in the same way that you would have identified the characters and did you feel like anybody misinterpreted the way the characters were or how you wanted them to be yeah, that's a really good question too um I would say overwhelmingly the sympathy that people felt for Wendy and the affection that I think a lot of at least readers that I've heard from felt for Wendy was really satisfying for me because I found her really difficult but I also really loved her.
[ 00:07:28 ]One thing that has surprised me, and I don’t know, I am not the only writer who has said this, and I’ve talked to friends about this, and I don’t know if it’s a social media thing or a, I don’t think it’s a COVID thing, but there is this tendency to I don’t know, people sort of make these value judgments on the behaviors of characters in novels as though they’re real people, which in a way is flattering, because it means that people are reading characters as if they’re three-dimensional beings. But there’s also a kind of, you know, well, Violet did this, therefore she’s a terrible person, and therefore the person who wrote Violet must also be a terrible person.
[ 00:08:07 ]So I think there’s that I get more of on Instagram, which is why I almost never go on Instagram. But I think, you know, people get fired up and particularly about Wendy and Violet. And, you know, I’ve talked to book clubs before where people are like mad about, you know, I just don’t understand why Violet did that. And she’s so terrible to this. And again, part of that is flattering, but it's also sort of like, whoa. But so that I have found interesting because I ultimately did come to feel. Empathy and sometimes sympathy for all of the characters in this book even when they're making bad decisions, which happens a lot. Um, no character in this in this book is without you know, without flaws and without um, lapses in judgment.
[ 00:08:54 ]But yeah, that has been interesting, and ultimately I'm I'm glad for it. Like, I think there's nothing more wonderful to hear as a writer that someone is emoting because of something or someone feels you know, attached to something you wrote, even if they're mad at it or or don't like it. Um, but yeah, that has been that has been strange. Otherwise, there hasn't been too much that was surprising to me, I don't think, in the way that people reacted. But I have been heartened. Wendy is someone who very much is a sort of tragic hero to me. And she's someone who, again, makes a lot of bad choices and says a lot of things that she shouldn't say. But it's all sort of rooted in pain. And that was something that I wanted to explore in this book was that, you know, just why we are the way that we are and the ways that different things can kind of shape who we become as adults. Yeah.
[ 00:10:02 ]Well, okay. So you obviously have a soft spot for Wendy, but is there any character that you actually really don't like that you were like, I can't believe I wrote this. Violet is difficult. Violet took me a really long time to sort of come around to. And I actually had a moment with my editor who's so good at her job. And she came to me sort of at the 11th, not at the 11th hour, but late, you know, not. Late in the editorial game and she said, 'I don't know who Violet is, like I don't know this character and I've read this book eight times and I sort of thought about it and realized,
[ 00:10:41 ]like I don't really know who she is either and I wrote it and so I had to spend a lot more time with her to understand where she was coming from and to not be writing her from a place of judgment because she does make a lot of decisions that I'm sort of like, 'oh, I probably wouldn't have made that decision if I were you' or 'I might have treated someone differently had I encountered them in my life. So she was someone who I definitely had to come around to. And now she's someone who, if readers don't like her, I will like ardently defend her. Even though I wouldn't want to hang out with her. Like, I don't know that I would want to hang out with a lot of the people in this book.
[ 00:11:18 ]I don't like most people just by default, but in this book, like there's a lot of big personalities in this book. selfish person, I don't know, there's just you know, I don't know that I would necessarily want to like have dinner with all of the Sorensons, um, I have my own big family to contend with, but um, but yeah, I think you know, one of the my sort of tenets of writing plot that I I stole from one of my professors in grad school is that in order to make plot happen, you just have to make your characters misbehave. So that's all that happens in this book is people make bad decisions or they lie or they, you know, betray each other or they make, you know, at the last minute they decide to do something that's not the quote unquote right thing.
[ 00:12:07 ]So there's a lot of people in this book that I'm sort of, you know, I would question some of their choices. And that's difficult, but I did ultimately have a great deal of affection for them. But I think one of the benefits of writing a novel that has seven points of view is that if you ever get tired of someone, you just get to go hang out with someone else, which I did liberally when I was working on this book. And in my new book, my new book just has one point of view, and that has been really difficult to spend, you know, hundreds of pages with just one person. So, yeah. Well, really quick before I keep going back to this novel, will you segue into talking about the new book really quick, just so we know?
[ 00:12:46 ]It's also Winky Face Chicago based, right? Not explicitly. Yes. Yeah. My new book is set in Chicago and an unnamed suburb of Chicago. It's coming out next summer. It does not have a title at the moment, which is annoying for me. It is about a woman who is in her 50s and has found herself, despite being a fairly prickly and misanthropic person for most of her life, she's kind of found herself in this. you know, a loving marriage with kids who are doing well and a career that she likes. And she's kind of found herself in probably very happy after a lot of things that have not been not so happy. And so it is her life story, sort of, but it's told as if most fun; it moves back and forth in time, and ultimately is sort of looking at.
[ 00:13:50 ]Yeah, just sort of how the person came to be the way that she is um how she you know sort of the the origins and then the development of her marriage um so very very similar similar themes similar preoccupations to the most fun we ever had I would say very different characters um in some ways but uh but yeah it's set in Chicago um where I hope to return when it comes out I haven't been back to Chicago since I guess I've been back since the pandemic, but it's been a long time and I miss it. So I'm hoping I'll get to head back there. Where are you? I'm in Iowa City. Not too far, but. And that's definitely why Iowa makes an appearance, right? No, actually. It was said in Iowa before.
[ 00:14:42 ]So I came to Iowa for graduate school and I had applied there when I was working on Most Fun and I sort of wrote it in. I needed a Midwestern college town that would have been easy for them to drive to. But I wrote it in, I think, sort of like hopefully or cosmically. And then then I got in and moved here. So I had to change details about street names, things like that. There's a lot of really pedantic minutiae that you have to do when you're writing a book, which I actually find really fun. But yeah. You mean like like all the fact-checking all like the exact details of like it's a quarter mile this way and like yes, you can't get any of that wrong or people would like you know put yes I got a very angry email and so again I had like the most wonderful copy editor um who had lived in Evanston and Hyde Park and Evanston so she knew the city well um
[ 00:15:37 ]And she knew the suburbs well, and she was so smart and she was a gardener. So I got this like last minute horticultural edit about how the lilacs wouldn't have been blue. I mean, it was, it was, this woman was wonderful, but I got this really angry email a couple of years ago from a woman who I don't know where she said she lived somewhere in Illinois. And she said, I was reading and I was enjoying it. And then I completely stood up out of the book because the route that the Sorensons take to the airport, no one would ever take that route to the airport. And I was like, that's the route that I used to take to the airport. But also like, who would ever, if it was any of you, I doubt it was.
[ 00:16:18 ]I'm sorry if I'm- Yeah, we're an angry bunch. Yeah, you seem really upset. That was weird. That was a strange-and she gave me the route that she would have taken instead. But I was like, well, that was not what my dad taught me. Sorry. Yeah, people get real, real territorial. And I've had that experience as a reader, too, where I'm like, oh, that's not, you know, that's a place where I've lived. And that's not what it looks like at all. So I get it to some degree. But yeah, there were a few things. I'm trying to think if there were any Chicago-esque details, I mean, Prentice, well it's not called Print it's Children's now right?
[ 00:17:02 ]I don't know, like the hospital in Chicago used to be Prentice and now it's is it Children's Memorial whatever it that had changed there were certain things that like you can't Google necessarily but you need to find someone who lived there at the time um so things like that but I again it's sort of like nerdy things like that that I'm they're easier yeah oh so I was gonna say well like speaking of there's one part I meant to read you guys in the beginning it's a I won't read the whole thing but it's talking about when um David and Marilyn are still living in Iowa, Marilyn's dad passes away and then she's like 'the real or the lawyer called' and now we're homeowners and then it goes through Like David's internal monologue about like how he hates Oak Park, yes, and it’s really funny and I really love the way you describe it so I’ll
[ 00:17:49 ]like point it out if anybody wants to read it after, but it’s basically like it says um Oak Park is the land of wide lawns and narrow minds, the birthplace of Hemingway and Ray Crock, and home then to a bunch of walking contradictions afflicted with what his equally conflicted social liberal fiscal conservative father-in-law had referred to as a mean case of NIMBY syndrome, yeah, which is such a fun like and it goes on and it's still very very colorful and really fun to read but I'm wondering If like anybody specifically had thoughts about that or did you have thoughts about was this cathartic for you like what was that like, yeah well so I will say I did my I guess no it was one of my first book events um is the beer shop still next door to where you guys are right now, yes, yes, I'm seeing nods okay I did an event there, like the week the book came out with Rebecca McKay, another Chicago writer.
[ 00:18:45 ]And she opened the event by reading that passage aloud to a packed room full of Oak Parkers, which was completely fair game because I wrote it. But yeah, people do get, I have a complicated relationship with Oak Park. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in Oak Park. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I went to wonderful public schools. I, you know, was exposed to books and people who revered books from the, I grew up just down the block from the Hemingway birthplace. Like, and it's, it's a beautiful place to live and it's, but my parents lived in the historic district and there was just, I mean, the sort of hypocrisy and the money and the sort of haves and have nots are, yeah, I was very aware of.
[ 00:19:36 ]As in any suburb, though, it's not, you know, by any means specific to Oak Park, but people have gotten, you know, again, people get territorial about the places that they live and that they love, which I completely understand. So people have sort of been like, well, why is South Oak Park portrayed this way and North Oak Park? But it's, you know, I chalk it all up to point of view. This is ultimately the characters. And David is someone who. grew up in the city, you know, just sort of across Austin Boulevard, as did my father. Um, and has a very different relationship with the suburbs than, you know, someone who's lived there their whole life. Um, so that was it was fun for me to play with.
[ 00:20:16 ]And it's also, you know, Oak Park changed a lot while I was I have much older siblings, it was a very different place in the 1990s than it was in the 2000s. My high school, OPRF, my high school, you know, changed a lot. Um, and it's become prohibitively more expensive to live there than it used to be, so it's it's it's you know, um, it's a complicated place; not any more complicated than anywhere else, but that was something that i I've said before in interviews and I've said to readers who have said, 'You seem to hate Oak Park and I don't hate Oak Park at all. I feel very lucky that I grew up there. But I think, like anywhere else, like Iowa City where I live now, is complicated because people are complicated and places are always changing.
[ 00:21:00 ]And, you know, depending on where you live within a particular city or town or whatever, you're going to have a different perspective. And so David very much does not like Oak Park. You know, he feels very differently about it than, than Marilyn. And Wendy, who has this sort of, you know, massive wealth aspiration feels like she's growing up in a place that's not super highbrow, whereas most people in the world would look at this life that they're living and think that they're incredibly privileged. So it's all, it's all about perspective. And I find that stuff really interesting. So it was fun for me to play with and sort of cathartic also, because I grew up in, I guess, the sort of wealthy part of Oak Park, but I did not grow up with money.
[ 00:21:48 ]And so there were a lot of like exorbitantly wealthy people living around me. And I had this sort of big motley family with two parents who worked full time. You know, I never wanted for anything, but I certainly didn't grow up with a lot of money. And there were people with these kind of over the top lifestyles living around me. I just find it really interesting. So it was, that was something that was fun to explore and that, you know, hopefully I didn't offend anyone too much, but I also think, yeah, I think if you live there, if you live in any suburb or any neighborhood, you have to be aware that there's, you know, different perceptions and that there's weird idiosyncrasies or weird hypocrisy or whatever.
[ 00:22:33 ]So in Iowa City, it's, you know, if you live on, I do not live on the right side of the river, but if you live on the other side of the river, you're like fancy. And if you live on, I literally live on the wrong side of the tracks in Iowa City, but it doesn't mean anything. And so I find things like that just sort of funny and interesting. So it was a fun thing to explore in the book for better or worse, I guess. Could you ever have imagined writing this story set anywhere else than Oak Park? You know, I tell my students, if you want to avoid being asked if your work is autobiographical, which mine is not, you have not asked me that.
[ 00:23:11 ]I will tell you this is not an autobiographical novel, but I tell them to change every possible detail that they can. And I did not take my own advice. I think this book very easily could have been set in Evanston or in, you know, some other suburb or some other suburb. Not in Chicago, some other Midwestern suburb. There's plenty of places, you know, like Oak Park, very much like Oak Park. And I did, I can't remember if I, I think I did try to get away with not setting it anywhere and that they just, it didn't fly. And I think people like my publisher in New York really liked that this novel was set in Chicago or Chicago adjacent, because there's not that many books set in Chicago. Yeah, I know.
[ 00:23:55 ]It's so hard. What else have you guys read? In New York, really? You go to a book for everything. I'm like, I'm so done with New York. Right, right. What else have you read for your, what's that? I said, it's a great place if, you know, anybody sees us online later when I put it on our website. No disrespect for New York, but yeah. But what else have we read? You guys can help me out. Literally, it's like one of those things when they're like, what's your favorite movie? And you're like, I've never seen a movie in my life. Three Girls from Brownsville, which is a memoir. It's beautiful. We love it. We cry. Clark and Division. Japanese American History. What else? Oh, I've heard of that. Warmth of Other Sons.
[ 00:24:38 ]Isabel Wilkerson. Warmth of Other Sons. The Beauty of Your Face. Zahar Mustafa. Oh, cool. So I guess we've really, we really try to get all of them. That's awesome. Yeah. Yes. We will do the Great Believers in September. Oh yeah. I've been dreaming of that for a while, but so yeah, so we find some good ones, but there's just not like, to your point, there's just not so many like, right. You know? And I feel like they're not always like, this is Chicago. It's kind of like, this is a story about that and it's in Chicago, you know? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's not not as prevalent, I'm trying to now, I'm trying to think of others as we're talking about it, but um, anyway, that's cool.
[ 00:25:21 ]Yeah, well, I have a question too about speaking just last thing about Oak Park though, like in writing this was there any parts that like you personally feel really nostalgic about and you wanted to include? Like is the Ginkgo tree a big thing? Like Ginkgo trees are that a big thing for you? We passed them today, thank you, Grace, who pointed them out um, and like things like different smells or like sights or like moments during the day, you know. Clark, that you really wanted to include that you miss, yeah, you know I love Ginkgo trees. Um, I had two Ginkgo trees in my front yard when I was growing up and it was I believe this is in the book that I wrote but often cannot remember things that are in it um, that they shed their leaves pretty much in span of a day so there would be like one day a year when it would just be raining leaves in our yard.
[ 00:26:09 ]It was So magical, um, and so that was, that's something I, you know, it's a very fond sensory memory from my childhood, so that was, um, something I definitely included for a reason. But I also, you know, I don't have family in Oak Park anymore, I have a couple of good friends who still live there, so I was there, I don't know, not that long ago, just walking around with one of my friends. And it is a really lovely place. Like, it's a really lovely place to wander around. And it's quiet and it's, you know, beautiful. And there's this fabulous architecture and cool stuff to look at everywhere. And so I do very much feel nostalgic for that and the fact that I grew up in a place that was pretty idyllic.
[ 00:26:57 ]And I remember, you know, being a kid and I lived on a pretty quiet street and just sort of being able to run free most of the time. And I feel very lucky that that was, you know, the life I got to live as a kid. And so I, yeah, I have very fond memories of it. And the same with the city. I went to UIC. I worked in the South Loop for several years and then I, our office moved to the loop. So, the river and the lake and certain streets and the, even I, I said this recently to someone that I missed the blue line; someone was like, 'I don't think anyone has ever in their life said that they missed the CTA,' but I do.
[ 00:27:40 ]There's, you know, very specific, not always pleasant, but like smells that I associate with the CTA or, you know, just, you know, things about about my life. I mean, I lived there until I was 24 um and so it's very much a place that I love and miss, and so it was fun um you know to think about. I think the Chaney Mansion gets mentioned like there were just certain things that were just, you know, I walked by it on my way to school every day or whatever um that were that were fun to insert because it's a way to that's what books are, you know. For a lot of us, they're a way
[ 00:28:17 ]to travel when you can't um and sometimes that travel is more exotic than others, and sometimes it's, you know, traveling just back to a place where you haven't been for a while so um so yeah that was that was a really, really pleasant and very, very favorable, you know, reason for setting an oak park I at least for me um yeah that's a good question though thank you. Yeah, well, speaking of like, you know, showcasing Chicago too, like you do, sprinkle in all those real places and I think it is cool that you do mention real places because then it exposes it to people all around the country and world right? You got just got published in Sweden recently. I did yes just so fun now they're gonna know about the Cheney Mansion.
[ 00:28:58 ]I know exactly what they mean right there and they can recognize somewhere they know yeah or somewhere they grew up yeah, totally yeah. We're not going to upgrade tonight. Does anybody have any other questions? Yes, George, you too. I was curious when the, or at what point, as you talked about putting some of the Wendy's down law, at what point the structure of the book came to you? I guess that struck me some, because I sometimes struggle with these kinds of multi-generational family stories. I think it helped that it wasn't linear. Helped a lot reading it so here's how that came to me yeah well I'm I'm glad to hear you say that, first
[ 00:29:48 ]of all um yeah you know I I would I guess I could, well I can show you sort of my office is a mess right now but I do these things on my wall um that's a very rudimentary version but um I wrote this book completely out of order I would just sort of write the scene I was interested in on the day I was interested in it um and so I ended up with you know, at its peak, I think this book was like 900 pages long and it was, you know, just a series of non-consecutive vignettes told from all these points of view. And there wasn't really a through line for the plot. And it's, it took many different forms, but I had a moment when I was, it's the week after I graduated from graduate school and I was meeting with my thesis advisor for the last time.
[ 00:30:34 ]And the book at that time, all the characters and the plot lines sort of existed, but there wasn't an occasion for the book and there wasn't really a formal structure. And he said, you need a reason to be telling us this story at the moment that you're telling it. And Jonah was our entry into the novel. So Jonah kind of became the I picture it as a clothesline on which we got to hang everything else. So once you sort of had that, forward thrust you were kind of able to I felt like we were able to move back and I say we I did right but it was a collaborative effort um certainly the structural stuff I got lots of good insight about um.
[ 00:31:18 ]But once you, once I, you know, I sort of had the Jonah line, I was able to move around in time. And it was so much fun to figure out, you know, how to do that in a way that maximized tension and how to sort of, it was difficult too. There was also, you know, a lot of 11th hour like oh wait we need to know this about Liza you know now and we don't know it yet. So how do we move this flashback that needs to be here up there and but without confusing readers and. And things like that, I love that as the part of fiction, right? I mean, it's; I love many parts of fiction writing, but that's the; my brain is not mathematical in any other way, but it is in that way.
[ 00:31:55 ]And so it's sort of; it's like a puzzle you have to figure out. So yeah, that was; that was the; the; the gist we kind of. I decided to have this present arc that would sort of orient the reader and give them something to keep returning to. And then the trick is making sure that you're always leaving the reader at a point of tension. And so you never want the reader to feel mad that they're coming back to a certain plot line. So that was something that I had to play around with, too, was, you know, we just left this really dramatic Wendy scene and we're jumping into this flashback where Grace is graduating from kindergarten. Like, it's not that interesting. So you sort of have to, you know, balance out the quotidian and the very plotty.
[ 00:32:42 ]But it was a lot of fun. And I do the Post-it thing for every project. And I have a, this is my. Former post-it board it's blank at the moment because I'm starting a new book but uh but yeah it's a it's a sort of fun tactile way to approach writing I guess yeah before I'll let anybody answer any questions but before we lose you because the Zoom will end can I have you just smile and I'm gonna take a picture of you with with everybody sure okay i'll tell i'll tell you when to smile this is really fun to do one two three one two oh this is gorgeous does anybody have any other i was curious and i hope this question doesn't take too long um this is not autobiographical but for the various characters were you inspired by real people are they amalgamations of real people or just completely from your imagination yeah that's a great question no I would say I definitely draw from my own life.
[ 00:34:06 ]And I draw from, I was just talking to a kid I work with earlier today about I eavesdrop so much. So, some you know, certain things from my characters will be something I overheard a stranger saying at, you know, whatever. But for this book in particular, I do have sisters and I am a woman in the vague demographic of most of the female characters in this book. So I absolutely pulled from, you know, fights I overheard my sisters having or just even my own you know Grace Grace's apartment is very much the apartment that I lived in as a graduate student the very depressing apartment I lived in as a graduate student in Champaign so there were there were absolutely things like that and things I didn't even realize that I was pulling from my life I remember my mom my mom has read the book several times and been incredibly supportive but one of the first things she said was
[ 00:35:01 ]She was reading it for the first time and she said, that's our kitchen table. And I was like, what? But she recognized some, you know, in some way that I had described. And I, you know, if I did that for inanimate objects, I absolutely did it for real people too. So there were, yeah, many, many things. And just, I don't know, I find female friendships or sister relationships are so fraught and messy. So there, you know, I had plenty of, of a deep well for that to, to draw from. So there are certainly, you know, I don't think any of my sisters would look at the book and say, 'that's me', but they certainly, you know, noticed, you know, probably found lines from a fight that they had that I was listening to or, yeah.
[ 00:35:49 ]So I appropriated for sure, aware of it or not. So, yeah. And you haven't heard from anyone saying like, 'that person is me'. No, you know, I've heard other writers say that that never happens with unfavorable portrayals of characters. Like no one will ever say like, 'oh, that villain in your novel is me'. People recognize aspirationally like, 'oh, that really beautiful person was based on me', right? So yeah, that has not happened that I'm aware of. Though I have had people say, like, you know Wendy is my cousin and like I can't believe that they're the same person, and I'm like, all right, that's you know which is cool, it you know it's, I, it's I love that experience as a reader when you sort of recognize someone um so but yeah, I have not no one has come to me at least, they might be whispering behind my back, but yeah, thank you well, thank you, I like I like I told you before, I'm just obsessed with this book.
[ 00:36:51 ] And I was telling them, I was like, I don't have anything really eloquent to say because I'm obsessed with it. And I love it. And it's so funny. And I love all your lines. And I recommend it to everyone I know. So thank you for doing this work. Thank you. This, no thank you; this is so lovely and I love the idea of this, so yeah, and let me know if you're reading any good good Chicago books and thank you if you have any recs for us please let us know I'm sure I'll think of, yeah, Saul Bellow is always a good one, but yeah, any of his short stories are, yeah, you could find, yeah, yeah; I'll look into it. Okay. Thank you so much for your time and wonderful evening. And I cannot wait to read your forthcoming book and run around somewhere. Somewhere. Yeah. Somewhere on the earth. Yeah. Thank you. It was really nice to meet all of you. Thank you for giving me your time. All right. Well, have a wonderful night. See you soon.