Why set the novel in California? What was important about placing these characters in the Golden State?
I’ve lived in the Bay Area for about twenty years and I love its diversity—from the population to the topography, the Bay Area has a bit of everything. And the tech industry and high cost of living make it a roller coaster of a place to live. People weather highs and lows that are unique to the area.
Even if Rudy’s work playing piano began as temporary, it becomes a vital part of his day-to-day existence following Bethany’s death, and he clearly loves music. Do you have a similar love for piano or classical music? Do you play an instrument, or was his passion inspired by someone in your life?
I did play the piano as a kid. But, like Sasha, I veered away from Bartók toward Elton John (and I wanted to be David Bowie), and thus was a poor piano student. And dang if I don’t wish now I’d kept up with my lessons. I have a friend who teaches piano, and she incorporates modern music into the lessons. I’ll bet this helps kids stick with it! As a writer, I was inspired by department store pianists and that dang PA lady at Nordstrom. Who is she? Where does she live? Is she real or automated? I can imagine that if you worked there hour after hour, day in and day out, she might start to get to you in one way or another. For Rudy, she seeps into his mind as a manifestation of grief. As a shopper, I always thought it would be funny if she just started making random two-word pages: “Chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding.”
In your previous novel Good Grief, a widow was a main character, and now one of your key characters is a widower. What was different about writing from a man’s perspective?
In my second book, Happiness Sold Separately, one of the main characters is a man and the story is told in part from his point of view. I really worked at making him sympathetic. When I first fell in love with literature, it didn’t matter to me if the character was male or female—I loved the main male character in The Moviegoer. I also loved Flannery O’Connor’s male characters. As an English major, I decided it didn’t matter if the characters were male or female—it was their universal experiences that resonated with me. Also, my parents were divorced and I grew up with my dad and had three older brothers. When your brothers are shooting their BB guns at squirrels out the second-story window, smashing caps on the fireplace hearth, and breaking bottles behind the garage for kicks, a bit of boy is imprinted on your brain. But I have to say that the guys in my writers’ group really, really helped me. Saved me. They would point out little details and say, “Oh, a guy would never do that.” Having male readers along the way always helped.
This isn’t the first time you’ve written from the perspective of a grieving spouse, and you capture the absurdity of heartbreak so vividly that readers might wonder if you’ve undergone a similar loss. Did you have to do much research into grieving? Where did you find material and inspiration for illustrating this inimitable experience?
Well, I can’t seem to shake grief in my life. My dad died of cancer when I was twenty-eight; my mom of a brain tumor when I was thirty-three. One of my brothers was drowned. My closest sister-in-law, who was like an older sister to me, died of breast cancer when she was only forty-seven. While I was working on this book my closest auntie died of ALS, and my cousin, a year younger than me, died of breast cancer. Every time my family gets together it seems we’re spreading ashes! But my brothers are so funny that there is always some dark humor involved—maybe it’s a defense mechanism. And that’s part of the lunacy of grief. I’ve learned that grief is a universal experience—especially during and after the terminal illness of a loved one. Grief is odd in that it’s delayed: There’s the numb taking-care-of-business you go through first. And then there are periods during which it makes you plain crazy. While writing Good Grief, I did read Dr. Joyce Brothers lovely book on grief written after she lost her husband. And Joan Didion’s gorgeous book The Year of Magical Thinking later. Also, for me, infertility, a late miscarriage, the inability to have children, then divorce, was a great source of grief. Ultimately, I think the experience of grief is so universal that we can apply it to characters who’ve lost other family members in their lives—such as Rudy losing his wife, Bethany.
This is your third novel, on top of your work as a journalist and short-story writer. What advice do you have for any aspiring novelists?
Oh, boy. It isn’t easy, is it? I think the number one thing is to just show up. Whether you feel like it or not, show up and write for a limited time. Set an egg timer or alarm and give yourself a limit for how long you’ll write for. It’s easier to write for a limited amount of time than to think you need to lock yourself in a room for an entire day or weekend and pump out War and Peace. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott gives the life-saving advice of committing to short assignments and shitty first drafts. So obvious, but there you have the three shs, which can become a mantra: show up, short assignments, shitty first drafts. It always helps to have a little assignment for yourself before you dive in: “I’m just going to write about George visiting Lucy at the store where she works and what it sounds and smells like, what he’s apprehensive about, what he’s excited about, and what her reaction to seeing him there is.” If you can’t come up with a short assignment for yourself, you can search the internet for writing prompts. They might seem silly, but they can evolve into a story. Also, you can make your assignment rewriting and go over what you wrote yesterday and one, make sure the five senses are included; two, make the nouns more specific; and three, make the verbs more interesting. I think fiction writing can be the most difficult, as it is the most open-ended. Feature stories and essays have a template that I can hold in my mind as I’m working. A novel is bigger and more unwieldy. Also, fiction allows room for so many possibilities and you feel like you want to choose just the right direction and tone. To me, the first most important thing to develop for a story or novel is the story’s voice. And that voice comes from a character. To me, all the best novels and short stories (and even TV shows—we live in a TV renaissance!) are character-driven.
If Me for You were adapted into a film, who would you want to play each character? Do you have individuals in mind when you’re picturing the main characters?
I don’t. I love so many actors and actresses. Honestly, I’d be grateful for anyone who took the time to read the story and took an interest. I’d be delighted just for it to be optioned.
What do you hope people will take away from the novel? What’s the lesson you hope they’ll carry from it?
You’re not alone, and you’re not crazy. I feel that’s what we all need to hear, and that the best books put forth some sort of universal theme that tells us that. Whether you’re single, living alone, widowed, dumped, divorced, ill, disabled, grieving, an immigrant, or feeling like an outsider—you’re not alone and you’re not crazy.
Are you working on anything now? Can you tell us about it?
I’m noodling my way into a new story expanding on divorce and my few trips to the loony bin. But in a funny, poignant way. Think . . . Maria Bamford! (I love her.)
About the Author
AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY LISA PONGRACE
Born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Lolly Winston holds an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College, where she wrote a collection of short stories as her thesis. She is the author of New York Times bestselling novels Good Grief and Happiness Sold Separately, which is being developed as a film. Her short stories have appeared in The Sun, The Southeast Review, The Third Berkshire Anthology, Girls’ Night Out, and others. She’s contributed essays to the anthologies Kiss Tomorrow Hello and Bad Girls.
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Good Grief
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Lolly Winston
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition March 2019
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Interior design by Jill Putorti
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-5011-7912-9
ISBN 978-1-5011-7914-3 (ebook)
Me for You Page 24