by Zoe Fishman
Hazel looked at Sylvie, her eyes calm. This was not the feral beast of before. This was a sweet horse in the present of Sylvie’s life, in the very sober reckoning of her now.
With her hand much steadier than she would have imagined, Sylvie reached out.
Acknowledgments
When I started writing this book, I was living a charmed life. I had known grief on a certain level—the deaths of my grandparents and father-in-law and aunt, for example, but I wasn’t intimately acquainted with it. But then that all changed. My beloved husband of eight years, Ronen Shacham, the father of our two very young sons, left for work one morning in June and never came home. He suffered an AVM brain aneurysm and after a week in a coma, died.
As I was in the final stages of copyediting—another thunderbolt of sadness struck. My father, Ethan Fishman, died of heart failure.
The outpouring of love and support from my family, friends and community here in Decatur and Atlanta, as well as in Mobile, Boston and New York, was and continues to be astounding—truly the most humbling experience of my life thus far. The food; the transportation of the boys; the visits; the kindness; the complete selflessness of so many. As a single mother, there is no way I could have written this book or taught my classes without it.
Thank you to my mother, Sue Fishman, and my brother, Brenner Fishman, for uprooting their entire lives and moving to Atlanta. It’s astounding, this kind of familial support, and I am so lucky to have it. Thank you as well to my aunt and uncle, Alice Fishman and Michael Dipietro.
I want to thank the Shachams, Nurit, Karen, Michelle, Yaniv and Melissa, for the empathy they’ve shown me, Ari and Lev despite their own burden of grief in losing a son and brother.
Thank you to Kareen Bronstein and Rainer Madigan for so bravely sharing their stories with me. Sylvie’s grief is much more realized as a result of your candor and generosity.
Thank you to my agent, Jessica Regel, whose guidance and support is invaluable. And to my editor, Lucia Macro, whose patience and keen eye are most appreciated.
And finally, to my sons, Ari and Lev: your resilience is spectacular; your big hearts unrivaled. I am so proud of you every single day. Thank you for loving me.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
* * *
Meet Zoe Fishman
About the Book
* * *
A Conversation with Zoe Fishman
Reading Group Guide
Read On
* * *
Have You Read? More by Zoe Fishman
About the Author
Meet Zoe Fishman
ZOE FISHMAN is the bestselling author of Inheriting Edith, Driving Lessons, Saving Ruth and Balancing Acts. She’s the recipient of myriad awards, including a New York Post Pick. She’s been profiled in Publishers Weekly and The Huffington Post, among other publications. Her writing has been published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as part of their moving Personal Journeys series. Zoe worked in the New York publishing industry for thirteen years. She was recently the visiting writer at SCAD Atlanta and currently teaches at Emory Continuing Education and the Decatur Writers Studio, at which she is also the executive director. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her family.
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About the Book
A Conversation with Zoe Fishman
Q: Opioid addiction is such a crisis today, yet most people likely think of it as either cosmopolitan or rural problems. What made you consider making Sylvie, an upper-middle-class working mother, an addict?
A: The opioid crisis was actually my starting point when the idea for Invisible as Air took shape. It’s both fascinating and terrifying to me, because this is an addiction that knows no class or race boundaries. And so many stories I read and heard about began with a doctor’s prescription. It’s a class of drugs that erases physical pain, yes, but it’s also an opioid that erases mental anguish.
I chose Sylvie not only because of her significant anguish but because she’s the perfect invisible victim. Here’s a woman who knows better, who has access to the best psychotherapy around, and yet the ease by which this powerful pill arrives in her life and then takes complete hold of it is astounding and ultimately very true to its danger.
Q: Was it difficult for you to maintain your sympathy toward her?
A: There were moments while I was writing when I thought, Damnit, Sylvie! You are such a self-involved mess! How low can you go? And I would be sad for Teddy, mostly. But then I would be sad for her too, because she is so broken and so incapable of fixing herself in any remotely healthy way. The huge void her grief has created within her longs to be filled, preferably by instant gratification. That void is what turns her into an addict. Because an instant is only an instant, and then you’re chasing it again, no matter what the cost.
Q: How did Sylvie, Teddy and Paul change or confirm what you might already have known about grief?
A: When I began thinking about this novel, I zeroed in on the idea of a stillbirth. I have always been in awe of the strength of women in this position and heartbroken at just the idea of enduring such an experience, both during and after.
At the time, I was living a pretty charmed life. I had known grief on a certain level—the deaths of my grandparents and my aunt, for example. And I had been party to the grief of close friends and tried my best to be there for them. Around the time my publisher was considering my proposal for this novel, however, that all changed. My beloved husband of eight years, the father of our two very young sons, left for work one morning and never came home. He suffered an AVM brain aneurysm, and after a week in the hospital on life support, he died.
He died.
It still stuns me to type that sentence, even as it is the reality of my everyday existence.
And then, while I was writing Invisible as Air, my father fell ill. As I was in the final stages of copyediting, he died as well, from heart failure.
When death happens so close to you, to people you love with every ounce of your being, you are never the same. Every word you speak or write, every interaction you have, every breath you take, is tinted by that loss. The loss of that person, yes, but also the loss of yourself, the you before that.
So although Sylvie and the Snow family’s situation is different than mine, it’s my hope that by writing myself through grief, I was at least somehow able to write them authentically through it too.
Q: Can you talk a bit about the magic and history of Cumberland Island?
A: Cumberland Island, Georgia, is the largest of the Sea Islands of the southeastern United States, with thirty-six thousand acres of Atlantic beaches, salt marshes and inland forests filled with giant live oaks and palmettos, as well as a vast array of wildlife. A National Seashore, it’s probably most known for its feral horses. It also has a very rich history.
Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, arrived at the island in 1736, and he built forts and a hunting lodge he named Dungeness. Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene bought land on Cumberland Island in 1783, and after he died, his widow, Catherine, built her own Dungeness, which was later destroyed by a fire. In the late 1800s came Lucy and Thomas Carnegie, brother of the steel tycoon, who built a grand Dungeness Mansion in 1886. In 1900, the couple built another home, Greyfield, which is an inn today.
Other than the inn and the First African Baptist Church, most famously known for the place where John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were secretly married in 1996, almost all of the formerly opulent buildings are in shambles. Wild horses, almost two hundred in all, roam the island and are believed to be the ancestors of horses abandoned by Spanish settlers over five hundred years ago.
Cumberland Island can only be accessed by boat or ferry from St. Marys, Georgia. No driving is allowed.
I visited Cumberland Island with my husband in April 2015. It was a babymoon of sorts, as our second son was due that June. To say that the is
land is magical is a gross understatement. Though there are no human inhabitants, you can feel the grandness of what once was in the ruins of Dungeness and the spirit that lives on there. The trees have stories to tell, the marsh and beaches feel somehow frozen in time and the horses, oh, the horses. I remember sitting on the beach and just watching them trot by, completely unfazed by us. I will never forget it.
While I was there, I wanted very much to write about the experience in a book one day. And so, I did.
Q: What’s next?
A: Since the death of my husband, I’ve been thinking a lot about the soul and where it goes once the body’s time as a vessel expires. I’ve also thought a lot about fate and what-ifs. Pretty standard grief thoughts, I suppose. I’d love to explore these themes in a way that perhaps incorporates a little magical realism, but I haven’t figured out quite how yet. Or if I’m even ready at this point. Time will tell.
Reading Group Guide
What do you think makes Sylvie take her first pill? While only she made that decision, what were factors that went into it?
Do you have sympathy for Paul’s role in their marital situation? Why or why not?
In what ways does Paul’s exercise addiction mirror Sylvie’s own situation?
Teddy is making his Bar Mitzvah, and in doing so, he technically becomes a man. In what ways does he act more like an adult than his own parents?
It’s never clearly stated in the book, but do you see moments where Sylvie’s friends and coworkers are on to her sooner than she thinks?
Discuss the symbolism of Teddy’s trip to Cumberland Island.
At one point Sylvie’s friend Ellen says she herself drinks a bottle of wine every day. No one seems to think much of this. Why do you think so many women live lives of quiet desperation?
What do you think the future holds for Paul and Sylvie?
Sylvie was in denial about her baby’s health and continued to be in denial of both her grief and the depth of her addiction. What in her background might have made Sylvie such a world-class avoider?
Read On
Have You Read? More by Zoe Fishman
INHERITING EDITH
A poignant breakout novel, for fans of J. Courtney Sullivan and Elin Hilderbrand, about a single mother who inherits a beautiful beach house with a caveat—she must take care of the ornery elderly woman who lives in it.
For years, Maggie Sheets has been an invisible hand in the glittering homes of wealthy New York City clients, scrubbing, dusting, mopping and doing all she can to keep her head above water as a single mother. Everything changes when a former employer dies, leaving Maggie a staggering inheritance. A house in Sag Harbor. The catch? It comes with an inhabitant: the deceased’s eighty-two-year-old mother, Edith.
Edith has Alzheimer’s—or so the doctors tell her—but she remembers exactly how her daughter, Liza, could light up a room or bring dark clouds in her wake. And now Liza’s gone, by her own hand, and Edith has been left—like a chaise or a strand of pearls—to a poorly dressed young woman with a toddler in tow.
Maggie and Edith are both certain this arrangement will be an utter disaster. But as summer days wane, a tenuous bond forms, and Edith, who feels the urgency of her diagnosis, shares a secret that she’s held close for five decades, launching Maggie on a mission that might just lead them each to what they are looking for.
DRIVING LESSONS
Sometimes life’s most fulfilling journeys begin without a map.
As an executive at a New York cosmetics firm, Sarah has had her fill of the interminable hustle of the big city. When her husband, Josh, is offered a new job in suburban Virginia, it feels like the perfect chance to shift gears.
While Josh quickly adapts to their new life, Sarah discovers that having time on her hands is a mixed blessing. Without her everyday urban struggles, who is she? And how can she explain to Josh, who assumes they are on the same page, her ambivalence about starting a family?
It doesn’t help that the idea of getting behind the wheel—an absolute necessity of her new life—makes it hard for Sarah to breathe. It’s been almost twenty years since she’s driven, and just the thought of merging is enough to make her teeth chatter with anxiety. When she signs up for lessons, she begins to feel a bit more like her old self again, but she’s still unsure of where she wants to go.
Then a crisis involving her best friend lands Sarah back in New York—a trip to the past filled with unexpected truths about herself, her dear friend and her seemingly perfect sister-in-law . . . and an astonishing surprise that will help her see the way ahead.
SAVING RUTH
Southern fiction with a pungent twist, Saving Ruth is a wonderfully evocative, delightfully engaging tale that, nonetheless, seriously addresses provocative issues like anorexia, family dynamics and the racial and ethnic tensions of the Deep South.
Ruth Wasserman has always felt like an outsider in her Alabama town. Being a curly-haired Jewish girl among blond Southern Baptists was never easy, and within her own family she has always played second fiddle to her older brother, a star athlete and student whom her parents adore. So when it came to college, she went as far away as she could get, attending the University of Michigan, a Yankee school that she hoped would open up a new world to her.
But now she’s back home for the summer, and though she may look like a new, wiser woman on the outside, she is struggling with low self-esteem after a dead-end relationship at school and what could quite possibly be the beginnings of a serious eating disorder. And now having experienced a world beyond her muggy, Kool-Aid-soaked hometown, she feels even more removed from her family and friends. She’s hoping time at the same summer job as a pool lifeguard and swim coach that she’s had for the last few years will center her again. But when one day a child almost drowns on her watch, she discovers the repercussions will push her to confront truths about her parents, her brother and herself that she’s been trying to ignore.
BALANCING ACTS
A must for fans of The Friday Night Knitting Club, The Reading Group, The Jane Austen Book Club and Girls in Trucks, Balancing Acts brims with wit, sensitivity and wisdom—with characters women readers can really relate to and take into their hearts.
Charlie was a woman who seemed to have it all—beauty and brains that led her to a high-paying Wall Street job far away from her simple Midwest upbringing. But in the middle of a “quarter-life crisis,” she decided a banker’s life wasn’t what she wanted, quit her job and opened her own yoga studio. But like any new business, finding customers is an uphill battle.
When she hears about her college’s alumni night, she decides this will be the perfect place to drum up some business. At the alumni night she reconnects with three college classmates—women who, like Charlie before, haven’t ended up quite where they wanted to in life. Sabine, a romance book editor, still longs to write the novel brewing inside her. Naomi, a child of the Upper East Side, was an up-and-coming photographer and social darling but now is a single mom who hasn’t picked up her camera in years. And Bess dreamed of being the next Christiane Amanpour, but instead finds herself writing snarky captions for a gossip mag, which is neither satisfying nor rewarding.
When Charlie invites all three to a weekly yoga class, they all are looking for something new in their lives. The class, and especially the bonds that form there, help each woman find the life they were looking for as they fall in love, struggle in their careers and come face-to-face with haunting realities.
Praise
Invisible as Air
“With psychological acuity, Fishman . . . takes us to the place where there is beauty in brokenness, where there is light in the dark, and where we can find intimacy in our honesty. . . . From the first stunning choice to the last, I could not put this novel down.”
—Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Becoming Mrs. Lewis
“Though it speaks to one of the most difficult issues facing our nation with wisdom and deep grace, thi
s is not an ‘issue’ book. This is a book about people, flawed but striving, broken but hopeful. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.”
—Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Never Have I Ever
“Zoe Fishman writes with tenderness and urgency, with an ear attuned to all the silences, secrets and strain that frequently capsize modern family life. Invisible as Air is a memorable and compelling read about slipping into darkness and trying to find the light.”
—Kristen Iskandrian, author of Motherest
Inheriting Edith
“A tragicomic delight. . . . Fishman deftly explores the intricate territory of mother-daughter relationships as well as the haunting specter of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis . . . a delicious literary chicken soup for the soul.”
—Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of Sunset Beach
“Inheriting Edith is a beautifully written story about what it means to remember and what it means to forget. Fishman masterfully portrays both a single mother and an older woman with Alzheimer’s, as they are both struggling to come to terms with their pasts, their futures and each other. I loved this compelling and achingly real novel about friendship, family and second chances.”
—Jillian Cantor, USA Today bestselling author of In Another Time
“A beautifully crafted story about second chances and life’s big surprises. Warm-spirited and emotionally rich, Inheriting Edith celebrates the fine line between friendship and family. These characters will tug at your heart.”
—Jamie Brenner, USA Today bestselling author of Drawing Home
“Fishman (Saving Ruth) combines relatable circumstances and delightful dialogue in this character-driven tale about forgiveness and acceptance, making it a quick read that’s hard to put down.”