Sarah McCraw Crow

FictionLiterary Fiction

How secrets fray the ties that bind

Interview by Sarah McCraw Crow

In Mothers and Sons, Adam Haslett offers a family story, though it’s a fraught one. Peter Fischer, a gay immigration lawyer, is haunted by a secret he carries from his teen years. His mother, Ann, left behind her life as an Episcopal priest to build a women’s retreat center in Vermont. Their struggle to reconnect after years of estrangement unfolds as a closely observed character study. Haslett shares with BookPage how being a lawyer has impacted his writing, and what it was like to write about the long shadow of the AIDS epidemic.

 

Though the novel is set in 2011, both Peter’s work—the often-hopeless work of trying to help asylum seekers—and his isolation feel very timely. How did you decide to write about that moment in time?

I think I needed, for my own reasons, to describe in fiction the social isolation that is so common now, and which so many of us respond to by burying ourselves in work. Of course, the causality runs in the other direction, too: Capitalism and precarity force people to overwork, which creates isolation. But either way, it’s a defining fact of contemporary life, which was true before the COVID-19 pandemic and has only been exacerbated by it. And then, if you look around the world, you can’t help but see that mass migration caused by war and climate and oppression, and the demagoguery that enshrouds it, is controlling our politics. Rather than trying to chase headlines, it seemed right to set the novel at a time when these forces were beginning to emerge.

You have a law degree and have done legal volunteer work with asylum seekers. Many novelists are former lawyers, turning to fiction later in their careers, but you went to law school after you’d begun writing fiction, and after earning an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. How did going to law school affect your outlook as a writer?

I got into law school and then ended up deferring to go to Iowa, so going to law school wasn’t as much a swerve as just me in my 20s trying to figure out how to put together a life where I could write as well as support myself. As for the effect of law school on my writing, for a long time I thought it hadn’t had any, that it was simply learning a foreign language. But over time I realized it did instill a kind of hypervigilance about accuracy. When you write a contract, you’re trying to write impregnable sentences, ones that no one can disagree about the meaning of. There’s value in that for a fiction writer—to be precise—but also a danger: You tighten up when what you really need to do is be open.

Ann, Peter’s mother, is a former Episcopal priest who let her pastoral work take over her life when her kids were younger, and who now runs a spiritual retreat in Vermont with her longtime partner, Clare. When did you know that Ann was going to be a main character? 

I knew Ann would be central from the beginning, but for a long while I thought she could be described and encountered through Peter’s point of view. Yet, however hard I tried to make those scenes work, they just didn’t, because there was so much Peter couldn’t see about his mother that I wanted the reader to see. So eventually I just started writing scenes from her point of view, which was a huge relief, and ultimately a pleasure.

“There’s a lot of cargo on the ship of good intentions, and not all of it is aid to the people in need.”

This novel is in part about the stories we tell ourselves, the secrets we keep and how those narratives can keep us apart from others. Can you talk about those stories we tell ourselves, often about ourselves? 

My interest in fiction has always been about getting at the interior lives of my characters, and so much of that interiority consists of barely conscious thoughts, judgments, desires, aversions, etc. that together add up, as you say, to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves—for better, or all too frequently, for ill. No doubt, this “interest” was driven by my own need to make peace with some of the less than charitable stories I told myself about myself. In that, I’ve been immeasurably helped by meditation, something I’ve done a lot of over the last 25 years, which has become integral to my writing practice.

Both Peter and Ann are ministering to the world, in their own ways. But both have failed each other, and they’ve failed others. As a parent, I couldn’t help but think about the ways we fail our children even as we’re trying hard to help them. Can you talk about this paradox?

The more I wrote each of Peter’s and Ann’s scenes, the more I came to realize I was trying to get at what you might call the psychic economy of liberalism—the way helping others can so often involve a kind of condescension and distance, and also be a place for the person helping to avoid themselves. Which is just to say that there’s a lot of cargo on the ship of good intentions, and not all of it is aid to the people in need. That’s the paradox.

While Peter’s sections are written in first-person present tense, which seems suited to his stalled place in his life, Ann’s sections are in a different mode: third-person past tense. How did you arrive at these two styles for these two characters?

I’m usually suspicious of first-person present tense because it’s a straitjacket for the writer in terms of moving the narrative forward, but in this case it was the only tense and point of view that made sense for Peter. Precisely because he is so buried in his work, and in many ways doesn’t even realize that he is, he can’t see into the future, or much into the past either. He spends his days assembling other people’s narratives—his clients’—but is inattentive to his own. His mother, Ann, is in many ways the opposite. She prizes intimacy, fellowship and spiritual discernment, and so has the kind of settled quality that lends itself to the more knowing voice of third-person past tense.

Ann and Peter are the novel’s main mother and son. But there are others, as the title suggests, like the young Albanian immigrant Vasel and his mother. Can you talk about them?

Vasel is the client of Peter’s who features most prominently in the novel, and his mother’s actions and decisions are central to him getting to the U.S. in the first place. Like a lot of asylum seekers, he feels guilt about his mother still being caught in the situation he fled. Peter has another client, Sandra Moya, whose son Felipe is very anxious at the prospect of his mother being deported. Finally, there is Peter’s sister, Liz, whose son Charlie is just a toddler. To be honest, I didn’t realize just how many sets of mothers and sons I was writing about until about halfway through the novel, but once I saw the pattern that was apparently drawing me forward, I got to play with the patterning more consciously.

The novel’s scenes of Peter’s teen years in the late ’80s vividly evoke teenage uncertainty, and Peter’s anxiety and shame about his sexuality. How did you access the young Peter and that time period?

That’s simple! I lived it—not in the details of this particular plot, but in the sense of having been a teenager at that time, when the virulence of homophobia and the specter of AIDS were so deeply ingrained in American culture that it was next to impossible for a young person to experience desire without fear and loathing. In my first two books, You Are Not a Stranger Here and Union Atlantic, I wrote about some of this, but Mothers and Sons is the first time I’ve allowed myself to write about its long term sequela, as it were. Its effects on adult life.

You’ve written both short stories and novels. Are you continuing to write in both forms? What do you like and dislike about each?

I enjoy them both, and admire anyone who does either of them well. Of late—as in a couple of decades—I’ve been mostly drawn to novels because they let me explore characters and the worlds they inhabit at length. But I have missed the lyric concision short stories allow, and in writing Mothers and Sons, part of me was aiming for that tightness of construction, that close holding of the reader’s anticipatory attention, which made it harder to write but in the end more satisfying to complete.

Can you tell us what you’re working on now?

Alas, I’m a very slow writer. Ideas take a long time to germinate and develop. So mostly what I’m doing is allowing that process to unfold by reading widely, taking notes and paying attention to the world. Technology companies have quite deliberately addicted us to speed in nearly every aspect of our lives, so for me the first real task is to disenchant myself from that forced distraction regularly enough to sense my own intuitions.

Read our starred review of Mothers and Sons.

Adam Haslett’s emotionally complex third novel, Mothers and Sons, examines the way past pain hovers over our closest relationships.
NonfictionSelf-Help

How to be imperfect

Interview by Sarah McCraw Crow

In How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists, clinical psychologist Ellen Hendriksen tackles an issue that many might not consider a problem at all: perfectionism. In fact, Hendriksen concludes, the overly high standards, harsh inner voices, fear of judgment and other factors behind perfectionism interfere with our well-being and happiness, leaving us burned out and lonely. BookPage asked Hendriksen about her research, her understanding of her own perfectionism, and tips for how those of us with harsh inner critics can ease up on ourselves.

You cite the findings of researchers Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill that perfectionism—the tendency to demand of oneself a higher level of performance than a situation actually requires—is on the rise. What are some of the factors leading to that rise?

Perfectionism is hypothesized to be on the rise because the world is becoming more crowded, competitive and demanding. There are three types of perfectionism: self-oriented, where we’re hard on ourselves; other-oriented, where we’re hard on the people we think reflect on us like our partner, kids or direct reports; and socially prescribed, where we think others will be harsh and critical toward us. The research of Dr. Curran and Dr. Hill has shown us that socially prescribed perfectionism is rising the fastest. There’s a quote from Dr. Curran I think is particularly telling: “Perfectionism is the defining psychology of an economic system that’s hell-bent on overshooting human thresholds.” Essentially, the never-enough standards set by capitalism, competition, advertising and social media make us feel we need to achieve and consume ever more, simply to be adequate as a person.

“I like to say perfectionism makes us look like we’re hitting it out of the park, but we feel like we’re striking out.”

You note that you were surprised to discover your own perfectionism through your research. After all, perfectionists get things done, and their lives often look pretty great from the outside. Can you talk about this contrast, and your own experience with perfectionism?

I did a deep dive into perfectionism for my last book, How to Be Yourself, and the light bulb went off above my head—that was the first time the word perfectionism resonated with me. Perfectionism can lie at the heart of social anxiety because we set personally demanding standards for our social behavior—I have to sound smart, I can’t be awkward, I have to be chill and nonproblematic—and then criticize ourselves when we don’t reach those standards because we’re human.

But I think the term didn’t resonate with me before that—just like sometimes it doesn’t resonate with my perfectionistic therapy clients—because “perfectionism” is a bit of a misnomer. Perfectionism isn’t necessarily about striving to be perfect; it’s feeling like things are never good enough. People with perfectionism tend to set higher than necessary, personally demanding standards for themselves, focus on flaws when evaluating their performance, and feel particularly mortified when they find them. All these tendencies set us up for some pretty impressive showings: a spotless house, an enviable workout streak, promotions, being well liked. But internally, we’re focused on all the ways we’re falling short. It’s the equivalent of homing in on the one frowning face in the crowd full of smiles. I like to say perfectionism makes us look like we’re hitting it out of the park, but we feel like we’re striking out.

How can we recognize when perfectionism is getting in the way? And if this is difficult for a psychologist to recognize, is it even more difficult for the rest of us? 

Sometimes perfectionism doesn’t get in the way. The adaptive form of perfectionism—where we strive for excellence for the sake of excellence but don’t stake our personal character on our performance—can buy us a lot. The healthy heart of perfectionism is a trait called conscientiousness, a tendency to do things well and thoroughly, which has been shown to be a strong predictor for both objective and subjective success in life. It predicts nothing less than life satisfaction.

But perfectionism does get in the way when it costs us more than it buys us. Clinical perfectionism, according to Roz Shafran, Zafra Cooper and Christopher Fairburn when they were colleagues at Oxford University, has two pillars. The first is a phenomenon called overevaluation, where our self-evaluation is overly dependent on striving to meet personally demanding standards. In other words, our character or worth hinges on our performance. We can overevaluate any kind of personal performance—our academic grades, job reviews, body weight or fitness, parenting or, in the case of social anxiety, social behavior. The second pillar is self-criticism, which is a harsh personal evaluation of ourselves. It saps motivation, drags us down and makes us feel like we’re under attack—because we are.

Read our review ‘How to Be Enough’ by Ellen Hendriksen.

Once we’ve begun to see that perfectionism might not be serving us well, what are some simple first steps to take?

I’m so glad you said “simple first steps” because those of us with perfectionism tend to default to all-or-nothing overhauls. But we can make some small shifts that help a lot. One helpful shift is to take some of the proverbial eggs out of the basket of performance and redistribute them to other parts of our lives that defy performance, like connection and enjoyment. Instead of focusing squarely on our outcomes, we can focus on more qualitative experiences: Rather than striving to be entertaining during dinner out with friends, we can attend to the conversation. Rather than aiming for certain metrics on a run, we can enjoy the motion of our limbs. Rather than striving to follow the recipe exactly, we can notice that the kitchen smells amazing. Rather than focusing on how well we’re doing (or not doing), we can enjoy and connect in the moment.

You explain how perfectionism can arise from both inside (the inner critic) and outside (cultural expectations, anxious parents, etc.). Many, if not most, readers will relate to the concept of a harsh inner critic and negative self-talk. What do you suggest for managing that inner critic?

Yes, sometimes we’ll even get down on ourselves for being self-critical, and end up criticizing our self-criticism! “Why can’t I be kinder to myself—what is wrong with me?” “I have to be nicer to myself.” It’s exhausting. So rather than judging self-criticism as yet another perceived fault we have to fix, we can simply see it as something our brain naturally does. Just like some people are wired to be a little more optimistic or pessimistic, or introverted or extroverted, people with perfectionism are wired to be more self-critical than average. But that doesn’t mean we have to listen closely to our self-criticism or believe everything it says. It can just run in the background, like the conversation two tables over at the coffee shop. If we notice ourselves going down a rabbit hole of self-criticism, inadequacy or dissatisfaction, we can chalk it up to, “Oh, this is that thing my brain does,” and then refocus on what we want to be doing. In short, we don’t have to stop criticizing ourselves to feel better. Instead, we can change our relationship to self-criticism.

Is it possible that perfectionism doesn’t always look the same? For instance, if perfectionism leads to decision paralysis or procrastination on a project, could it actually look like inattentiveness or even slacking off?

Absolutely. Line up 100 people with perfectionism, and I’ll show you 100 different ways to manifest perfectionism, often in ways we least expect. For example, we might expect a stereotypical person with perfectionism to keep their home spotlessly clean. But a friend whose home is a disaster area may actually hold those high standards, too. But because they experience their standards as overwhelming or unattainable, they throw up their hands, say “Why try?” and live in a mess. That doesn’t look like the result of perfectionism, but it is.

In another example, the syndrome colloquially known as “failure to launch” can have perfectionism at its root: Overwhelmed by the demands of adulthood and self-imposed expectations of high achievement, affected young adults may be afraid to set even a low bar for themselves because of the negative personal implications if they can’t clear it. If they can’t achieve “all,” they find themselves stuck at “nothing.” That may look like laziness or slacking, but it’s the result, in part, of perfectionism.

And likewise, what lessons does your book offer to those who don’t consider themselves perfectionists, or who might even wish they were a little more perfectionistic?

One of my favorite techniques from the book is for comparing ourselves to others, which can certainly happen independently of perfectionism. Indeed, comparison is hardwired. It’s inevitable; we can’t even know if we’re tall or short without comparing ourselves to others. But it can become problematic if we use comparison to others to answer the questions, “Am I OK?” or “Am I good enough?” Then we’ve outsourced our self-worth to others.

We’ll usually compare on a variable that we’re insecure about. For example, a client we’ll call Abby compared herself to her boss. She was the same age as him, and the comparison made her feel like she was falling behind. To remedy this, she broadened her comparison points to include many other variables, both known, like education and years at the company, and unknown, like personal history, drives, vices, ambition, setbacks. The goal is not to tear the other person down or reassure yourself that you’re amazing; instead, it’s to include so many comparison points that we simply can’t answer the question, “Am I good enough?” by comparing ourselves to this person. The comparison concludes that you’re both incomparable individuals in all your complexity.

The book mostly draws on the experiences of composite clients. But it also includes the backstories of more well-known people, including two famous innovators, Walt Disney and Fred Rogers. They make a fascinating contrast. How did you come to include their stories?

It was truly fun to learn and write about them. Their stories come from my own organic reading. I had read each of their biographies for fun: The Good Neighbor by Maxwell King and Walt Disney by Neal Gabler, and I thought the two men made excellent foils for each other. Both Rogers and Disney were perfectionistic, but, as you say, they are a fascinating contrast of helpful and unhelpful perfectionism, respectively. I love biography and memoir for the same reasons I love being a therapist—I get to know people on a deeper level, learn their stories and experience aha moments of empathic insight as to what shaped them and their lives.

Line up 100 people with perfectionism, and I’ll show you 100 different ways to manifest perfectionism, often in ways we least expect.

What’s changed in your own life since writing How to Be Enough?

This will sound contradictory: Nothing has changed and, simultaneously, so much has changed. Nothing has changed because on the surface, everything looks the same: I am still conscientious and responsible. I still work hard and plan ahead. I still take care of my family and my clients. But at the same time, so much has changed. I’m driven less by self-imposed rules (“I have to . . . I should . . . ”) and more by what’s important or meaningful to me. I take mistakes and setbacks less personally and therefore am less down on myself when life doesn’t go according to plan (which is pretty much every day!). And socially, I focus more on connecting with people and less on whether I’m doing something wrong.

The titles of your two books are wonderful. We all want to be ourselves, and we all want to feel like we’re enough, just as we are. Is there a through line for these two books?

Yes! Ultimately, both books are about human connection. Social anxiety gets in the way of connecting with others in obvious ways: We think we need to hide our perceived flaws in order to avoid being judged or rejected, and we do that by opting out or hiding in plain sight. Perfectionism is a little more subtle, but also gets in the way of connection. Perfectionism is what researchers describe as “interpersonally motivated.” It convinces us we have to earn connection through performance—by being good at things. But think about why your friends are your friends. Is it because they got a good quarterly review, reached their goal weight or have a lot of social media followers? More likely, you’re friends because of how you make each other feel: understood, supported, known. They get you. You have a good time together. It’s not about performance at all. Each book questions the false promises of anxiety and perfectionism so we can connect with our true selves and the people in our lives.

Ellen Hendriksen author photo by Matthew Guillory.

 

Ellen Hendriksen offers ways to tune out your inner critic and tune in to your true self in her insightful self-help book, How to Be Enough.
NonfictionSelf-Help

How to Be Enough

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

In the follow-up to Ellen Hendriksen’s helpful guide to working through social anxiety, How to Be Yourself, the clinical psychologist takes on another common psychological challenge: perfectionism. “Demanding a lot of yourself has probably gotten you a long way. I know it’s bought me a lot,” she writes in How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists. But holding very high, perfectionistic standards can lead to isolation, burnout, loneliness and general dissatisfaction. Hendriksen notes that perfectionism—defined, in a nutshell, as generally demanding more of yourself than a situation requires—is on the rise, especially among young people.

Hendriksen covers elements of perfectionism, like being overly self-critical: “We are our own worst critics. We focus on flaws rather than what’s going well.” Perfectionists also overidentify with their own and others’ standards; their sense of self is always tied to meeting high expectations. “A mistake or shortcoming means we’ve failed, even if our standards were unrealistic,” she writes. Hendriksen describes herself as a perfectionist, and draws on her own experiences, as well as those of disguised, composite clients, to explain the sources of perfectionism and its effects. While not a diagnosis, she notes, perfectionism is closely linked to a host of issues—depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, even suicide.

Read our interview with Ellen Hendriksen, author of ‘How to Be Enough.’

The bulk of How to Be Enough is devoted to seven shifts in thought and behavior to push back against perfectionism, like learning to be kinder to ourselves, being more flexible, releasing past mistakes, comparing less and letting go of control. Hendriksen illustrates each of these shifts with the story of a struggling client, along with research to back up her advice. She also incorporates anecdotes and lessons from celebrities, like legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, and a not-so-great performance that Jon Bon Jovi and billionaire Warren Buffet once gave. Throughout, Hendriksen refers to two entertainment titans, Walt Disney and Fred Rogers, to show the difference between unhealthy, isolating perfectionism and high but healthy standards. (Spoiler: Mr. Rogers is the one to emulate.)

The book incorporates plenty of research—it contains 36 pages’ worth of endnotes—but Hendriksen’s chatty style keeps the narrative accessible. How to Be Enough shows how to quit being your own toughest critic, and is a great addition to the self-help bookshelf.

Ellen Hendriksen’s chatty, accessible How to Be Enough shows how to quit being your own toughest critic, and is a great addition to the self-help bookshelf.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Seeking common ground, from Cape Cod to the Catskills

Interview by Sarah McCraw Crow

In her third novel, Weike Wang follows married couple Keru and Nate on two vacations: the first on Cape Cod, the second five years later, in the Catskills. Keru, a Chinese American woman, and Nate, a white man who grew up in Appalachia, grapple not only with the usual challenges of marriage and careers, but also with two very different sets of parental expectations and hopes. Wang shares her thoughts on parents and in-laws, bringing humor to the heavy stuff and coming of age in midlife.

 

Rental House uses Keru and Nate’s vacation time as its lens and structure, featuring a vacation that they take around age 35, during the peak of COVID-19 restrictions, and another they take around 40. During both trips, family members intrude, both invited and uninvited. Can you tell us why vacations, especially with family, make good fodder for fiction? When did you know that the novel was going to be made up almost entirely of these two vacations?

Vacations are prime moments for things to go awry. Travel is generally always stressful. Routines shift, and then there is the added pressure of having to spend “quality” time together and make “good” memories. On vacation you are not always yourself. You try to be a better version of yourself, or at least I do, but when the trip hits a snag (always happens), you and whoever you’re on this vacation with have to problem-solve together and that can be a mess.

I knew immediately the story would be a vacation. I wrote the first part with their parents as a standalone. Then I thought what would happen to this couple a few more years down the line, especially since they wouldn’t have kids. The natural transition for couples is to have kids and then to go camping or to Disneyland or on a cruise with other families with kids. I was interested in exploring the tensions of a couple who didn’t have any of that going on.

Speaking of family, many (maybe all!) married readers will relate to Keru and Nate’s bafflement at their in-laws’ contrasting family cultures. This makes for some funny scenes (like Keru’s dad gravely washing the paws of Keru and Nate’s big dog, Mantou, only minutes after arriving at their rented Cape Cod house). I suspect that you may have had similarly confusing or startling interactions in your own life—could you talk about that?

I live at the junction of two worlds. Culturally, linguistically, I’m still trying to navigate it and I have persistent cognitive dissonance from that friction. I am a realist, though. I can see clearly the gap between my parents and me, my in-laws and me, my parents and my husband, my parents and my in-laws (oh boy). But I can’t change these people—nor should I want to, really. They are a product of their circumstances and upbringing, as am I. Friction and emotional turmoil/ambivalence can make for great material. So, in that way, my families, both given and chosen, are a gift.

“I still feel guilt and grief for the person I was supposed to become. Most of this is a result of how much I love my parents and what we went through together.”

Rental House also focuses on the pressure that grown children feel as they navigate between their parents’ long-held expectations and their own needs and desires. Both Keru and Nate resist their parents’ directives, yet they also feel guilty, like they’re not measuring up. Do you think any grown child is ever free of those expectations?

No. I teach a lot of undergraduates, and they always come to me with questions about how I overcame X, Y, Z. The honest answer is that I didn’t really overcome it . . . the feelings are still there, and I imagine they always will be. Regardless of how good I feel about myself presently, I still feel guilt and grief for the person I was supposed to become. Most of this is a result of how much I love my parents and what we went through together. I often wish I could clone myself and have that clone be the one who fulfills all the expectations while I go off and do my own thing.

The novel moves back and forth between Keru’s perspective and Nate’s perspective. Which character’s voice was more fun to write?

Nate’s. A character like Keru will always be familiar to me and in that way, she is actually harder to write because I have to find ways to make her different. Nate’s perspective was just fun. I could hide a lot of myself in him without a reader later asking me, “How much of Nate is yourself?” as many readers will assume that Keru is just me (She is not!).

Mantou, the dog, is a wonderful character, both a shared project for Keru and Nate and a beloved family member. Tell us about the dog or dogs in your own life!

My current dog is my first and he has been a joy. Every morning, we walk to Central Park to see other dogs. We bond with couples who have dogs and my social media is populated with cute images/videos of dogs. I wouldn’t say he’s my pseudo-child, though. For one, I don’t have to educate him or teach him morals, and if all goes as planned, I will outlive him =(. But my dog has helped me in so many ways. He is my companion and friend, my reason to go outside, to stay inside and have a conversation with myself (hoping he will respond). Sometimes I will read in a chair because I know he will come cuddle with me. He is the best.

“I wouldn’t have survived my childhood without humor.”

As an undergraduate, you studied fiction with Amy Hempel, and there’s an echo of Hempel in your writing, with its mix of humor and bleakness. How do you bring humor into scenes that could otherwise be heavy? 

Humor is my coping mechanism. Even in conversation, when I think the topic is heading for a deep dive, I’ll make a joke. I wouldn’t have survived my childhood without humor. Chinese people, or at least the ones I grew up around, are quite sardonic. Wit is so much a part of the language and culture. Trading barbs, zingers, one-upping each other, not getting too sentimental about anything, and being blunt, sometimes to a fault. I hate it and I love it. Maybe I love to hate it. But I have all of that in me.

You were working on two graduate degrees (a doctorate in public health at Harvard and an MFA in fiction at Boston University) when you wrote your first novel, Chemistry. That must have made for an intense writing process. You’ve since published two more novels. How has your process changed since then?

Not much, actually. People always ask me, “Do you write full time?” I don’t know any writer who does. Even if I tried, I couldn’t. Sit at my desk from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and just write? I couldn’t. I have always needed other avenues to occupy my mind. My brain thrives on intensity. I don’t (can’t) write every day. So when I’m not writing, I teach a lot, at different colleges. I still tutor. I study languages. Recently, I started playing piano.

You now teach writing to undergraduates. How do you balance helping students improve their craft while not discouraging them? Can you still see yourself in these newbie writers?

I don’t discourage any of them. Publishing is such a grind that if any of these kids ever become a writer, there will be plenty of things out in the “real world” to discourage them. In class, I do focus on craft and being a good reader, a good observer, but as a writing instructor, I am a softie. I try to give and spread love, and above all I just want them to show up! I can definitely see myself in new writers, not the confident ones, but the doubtful ones. I am still doubtful of the whole endeavor. You can’t think anything you write is too precious. When I teach science, I am totally different. I am harsher, more exacting, more demanding. This was how I learned science, and there are just certain things you need to know in STEM to be a doctor or to do basic science research. It’s nonnegotiable.

I have a theory that while we’re always evolving throughout our lives, midlife is when we truly come of age. Do you think this is true for Keru and Nate?

Yes. I am loving my 30s and I think I will love my 40s too. I have a clearer sense of who I was, who I am and what I want my future to be. I am also way more open-minded now than I was in my 20s. Gosh, in my 20s, I had this checklist and a timeline and this burning drive to prove myself. The drive is still there but transformed. I am nicer to myself now. I give myself some grace.

Will we see Keru and Nate again in another novel or short story, maybe on another vacation?

I’m not sure. Maybe in a short story? I do like to give characters a rest afterward. Being with me and in my head can be such a drag. Keru and Nate deserve a vacation from their creator.

Read our review of Rental House.

Author photo of Weike Wang by Amanda Petersen.

 

“Family vacation” takes on a new meaning for grown children without kids of their own—like the couple trying their best to keep both sets of in-laws happy in Weike Wang’s Rental House.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Rental House

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Weike Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, followed a struggling 20-something doctoral student; her second, Joan Is Okay, depicted a lonely 30-something scientist. Rental House, Wang’s ode to marriage and early midlife, expands the view to two main characters: Keru and Nate, who are 35, and five years married.

As Rental House opens, Keru, Nate and their sheepdog Mantou have begun a monthlong stay in a rental on Cape Cod; they’ve invited both sets of parents to visit, though not at the same time. Chinese-American Keru is concerned about her parents’ rigid standards of safety and cleanliness; and the Appalachian-born Nate worries about his parents’ xenophobia and racism. Nate and Keru are both bemused and aggravated by their parents’ expectations for the vacation, and by their in-laws’ beliefs about work, marriage and family.

The novel then zooms forward five years to another rented house in another vacation spot, an interlude that’s soon interrupted by odd new acquaintances, along with other family members. Nate and Keru are now 40, their relationship with each other both steady and fraught, and their relationships with some of their family fractured. But if this vacation leads to a breakdown, it also leads to a new beginning for Keru and Nate, and a bold step into the future.

Wang brings a dry humor to the narrative, which moves seamlessly between Nate’s and Keru’s perspectives as the two try to balance the mix of emotions they feel about their parents—love, ambivalence, guilt and embarrassment. Wang is especially good with dialogue, most notably in scenes with in-laws (and in each character’s remembered dialogue with parents), scenes that made me laugh out loud. And though the novel might be called quiet, Wang threads elements of surprise throughout, with unexpected actions from Keru, Nate and other characters that move the story forward.

Rental House is brief, only around 200 pages, and Wang’s writing tends toward the spare. But within this short space, the novel reports on a host of issues: the mingled comfort and uncertainty of marriage in midlife, the intricacies of class and culture differences, how one generation’s attempt to make a better life for their children can both inspire and infuriate the next generation, and what grown children and aging parents owe one another.

Read our Q&A with Weike Wang about Rental House.

Weike Wang’s excellent dialogue, especially in scenes with in-laws, will make you laugh out loud as her third novel, Rental House, examines what grown children and aging parents owe one another.
NonfictionSocial ScienceHistory

Custodians of Wonder

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

“So often, we hear stories about the first person to do something: the innovators, the pioneers,” Eliot Stein writes in his introduction to Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive. “But rarely is there a whisper for the last person to carry on a tradition, or a pause to look back and consider how these rites have shaped us and the places we come from.” Stein offers more than a whisper as he highlights 10 such customs around the world, profiling the women and men who preserve them.

Some of these customs are food- or craft-based, like the rare Sardinian pasta so fine that it’s called su filindeu (threads of God); and an ancient West African percussion instrument called a balafon that has been protected by a tiny village for 800 years. Others are rituals or jobs, like that of the night watchman in Ystad, Sweden, who every night climbs 14 stories of a 13th-century church to a bell tower to keep watch over the village, blowing a horn every 15 minutes to declare that all is well.

Stein sets his scenes in vividly painted settings. Introducing the temple village of Aranmula, on India’s southwestern coast, he writes, “Coconut trees swooped low like Nike swooshes over the water’s edge. . . . The night before, hot, heavy raindrops the size of nickels had fallen sideways in sheets.” Each chapter offers an in-depth profile of a practitioner, like Sudhammal J., Aranmula’s 48-year-old “Secret Lady Keeper,” who carries on her family’s ancient craft of melting tin, copper and other metals to make a highly reflective mirror believed to reveal one’s true self. Throughout these profiles, Stein threads cultural, geographic and political history, drawing out a few key details, and compressing centuries of history into a few paragraphs.

Despite the subtitle, not all the book’s customs are ancient. Asia’s last film poster painter practices a 20th-century craft. Nor are all the customs disappearing: The Japanese maker of traditional fermented soy sauce has seen demand grow, and he’s committed to helping others learn traditional techniques. Ultimately, Custodians of Wonder is a hopeful book, making the case that seemingly idiosyncratic and antiquated practices in distant corners of the world still matter; they reveal a particular place’s identity, and offer comfort, community and beauty even through centuries of change.

Eliot Stein’s vivid Custodians of Wonder documents the last people maintaining some of the world’s ancient cultural traditions, and proves that comfort, community and beauty never get old.
NonfictionLiteratureBiography

Didion and Babitz

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

In her introduction to Didion and Babitz, Lili Anolik lays out her plan: “What this book attempts to do: See Joan Didion plainly; see Eve Babitz plainly. Except Joan Didion can’t be seen plainly,” only “through a glass darkly. Eve Babitz is that glass.”

Babitz, born in 1943, was a child of Hollywood. Her father was a violinist for movie studios, her godfather was Igor Stravinsky. At 20, she made waves for posing nude with Marcel Duchamp as the two played chess. Though she wanted to be an artist and design album covers, she’s remembered for her memoir and short stories recounting the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll scene of early-1970s Los Angeles. But Babitz’s drug-fueled lifestyle got in her way, and her writing was largely forgotten until Anolik got to know her in 2012. Anolik’s profile for Vanity Fair and a 2019 biography, Hollywood’s Eve, sparked a resurgence of interest in Babitz’s writing. 

After Babitz died in 2021, Anolik stayed in touch with Babitz’s sister, Mirandi, who invited Anolik to examine the writer’s collection of letters. Anolik found one of particular interest: an unsent 1972 letter from Babitz to her friend Joan Didion. By turns earnest and angry, it sets up Babitz and Didion not as merely friends but as writerly rivals; Babitz chides Didion for dismissing Virginia Woolf and, Babitz claims, wanting to write like a man. The revelation led Anolik to begin another book about Babitz, this time including Didion.

The resulting book draws on copious interviews with Babitz’s and Didion’s networks, and the archives of Didion, Babitz and a host of others. Didion and Babitz situates the two in the 1970s LA scene that both wrote about, following them to the end of their lives—they died within days of one another. It’s a lively recounting of freewheeling partier Babitz and ambitious “cool customer” Didion. Despite the title, the narrative is notably tilted towards Babitz, more grounded in her work and life than in Didion’s. Still, the book captures a period and a vibe, and the celebrity gossip alone will entertain any ’70s-curious reader. Like Babitz herself, Didion and Babitz is an engaging narrative that Didion fans may quibble with, but that situates the two writers as the prime chroniclers of 1970s LA. 

Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz is a freewheeling and engaging narrative about two iconic literary rivals and their world in 1970s Los Angeles.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Wildes

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) is known for his comedic plays (The Importance of Being Earnest), fiction (The Picture of Dorian Gray) and for his trial and imprisonment for his homosexuality. Less well known is that he had a family: his wife Constance, who advocated for more practical dress for women, and their sons Cyril and Vyvyan. In The Wildes, novelist Louis Bayard focuses on Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan.

Like a play, The Wildes is structured in five acts. Act 1 opens in 1892 at a farm in the Norfolk countryside, where Constance and Oscar; their son Cyril; Oscar’s larger-than-life mother, Lady Jane Wilde; and their friends Arthur and Florence Clifton are spending a holiday. Soon, they are interrupted by the arrival of young Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie. The spoiled Bosie, a student at Oxford, seems to be one of Oscar’s “poets”—young, literary men eager to spend time with the great writer. This section, the longest in the novel, often feels like a drawing-room comedy—both Constance and Lady Jane Wilde are wits—but woven throughout is the slow dawning of Constance’s understanding about Oscar and her marriage, as she pieces together the reality of Oscar and Bosie’s relationship.  

Act 2 leaps forward five years, to a villa in Italy where Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan are living. The scandal of Oscar’s trial for gross indecency and homosexual acts, and his imprisonment, have forced Constance and the boys into exile, and they are hiding unhappily under a new last name. Acts 3 and 4 leap forward again, skipping over the tragedy of Oscar and Constance’s early deaths to episodes in Cyril and Vyvyan’s adulthoods—for Cyril, a pivotal day in the trenches in World War I France, and for Vyvyan, a theater outing with a family friend, on a night in 1925. Act 5 circles back to 1892 in that farmhouse in Norfolk, with a hopeful reimagining of this family’s life.

Although Bayard’s ending asks a little too much of Constance, the novel gives its heart to her; she’s a believable, loving, heartbroken character. In The Wildes, Bayard has built a story beyond the well-known tragedy, and though the novel never gives us Oscar’s perspective, we see him through Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan’s eyes—as an engaged father, loving but distant husband, self-absorbed keeper of secrets, and a terrified man unable to love openly.

 

In The Wildes, novelist Louis Bayard shows us Oscar Wilde through the eyes of his wife and sons—presenting a portrait of the poet and playwright as engaged father, loving but distant husband, self-absorbed keeper of secrets and a terrified man unable to love openly.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Volcano Daughters

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Gina Maria Balibrera’s debut novel, The Volcano Daughters, offers the epic early 20th-century tale of sisters Graciela and Consuelo, born into poverty and servitude on a coffee finca (plantation) on the side of a volcano in El Salvador.

In 1923, Graciela and her mother, Socorrito, are summoned to San Salvador for the funeral of the father that Graciela never knew: a peasant who rose to become the advisor to El Gran Pendejo, the strongman ruling El Salvador. There Graciela meets her sister, Consuelo, who was taken from the finca as a 4-year-old, and lives in luxury with her adoptive mother, Perlita. Soon, Graciela learns that El Gran Pendejo intends for her to advise him as her father did, though she’s only 9. Every morning Graciela is driven to the presidential palace, where she listens to the nonsense El Gran Pendejo spouts, repeating it back to him. Meanwhile, the teenage Consuelo, who failed at the same job, stays busy falling in love with her young art teacher.

That’s only the beginning of The Volcano Daughters, which spans 30 years and multiple settings, including Paris, San Francisco and Hollywood. As El Gran Pendejo’s pronouncements grow more bizarre, he lands on the idea of killing the country’s Indigenous people, who he claims are communists. The massacre that follows separates Graciela and Consuelo, as each flees the country thinking the other dead.

The Volcano Daughters is also a ghost story, as the ghosts of Graciela’s and Consuelo’s best friends from the finca—Lourdes, Maria, Cora and Lucia—share the novel’s first person-plural narration, sometimes disappearing into the story, other times butting in with commentary. 

Because The Volcano Daughters covers so much ground (both literally and narratively), and has a large cast of characters, including the ghost narrators, parts of the story slip by almost too quickly for the reader to connect with them emotionally. Still, Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances.

With its depictions of the 1930s Hollywood scene and Paris art world, and its imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history, The Volcano Daughters stands out. 

Gina María Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances, an imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Tell Me Everything

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Elizabeth Strout’s 10th novel, Tell Me Everything, brings together Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge and Bob Burgess, all characters from Strout’s previous novels, following their lives and others’ in the small town of Crosby, Maine.

Tell Me Everything traces the interactions between Bob and Lucy, who’ve built a friendship from their weekly walks along the river. (Lucy and her ex-husband, William, left New York for good when COVID-19 cases surged; and Bob is now married to Margaret, a minister.) Bob and Lucy share confidences and old puzzling stories, and after Bob introduces Lucy to Olive Kitteridge, Lucy visits Olive in her apartment, where they trade stories too. Olive plays a supporting role in the novel, but she gives voice to one of the novel’s themes: “Everywhere in the world people led their lives unrecorded.”

Though the point of view dips into and out of many characters, the heart of Tell Me Everything is Bob Burgess. Bob faces late-midlife reckonings with his difficult brother, who blames Bob for a family tragedy; his troubled ex-wife, Pam; and Lucy, the friend who knows his secrets. When Bob, a lawyer, agrees to take on the case of a lonely man charged with murdering his mother (a woman that Bob, Olive and other characters remember from childhood, and not fondly), he lets this case take over his life. This murder mystery runs through the novel, adding a layer of darkness and propelling the action forward.

At the same time, Tell Me Everything is also a novel about all those unrecorded lives that Bob, Lucy, Olive and others share stories about, trying to find meaning and purpose in them. The narrative combines two of Strout’s preoccupations: the reverberating, intergenerational effects of poverty, and the power of connection and empathy, demonstrating how stories can illuminate our worst moments and commemorate our best.

Because it returns to beloved characters from My Name Is Lucy Barton, The Burgess Boys and Olive Kitteridge, and even includes cameos from Strout’s first two novels, Tell Me Everything may be most gratifying for Strout’s longtime fans. But these very human characters, with their specific yet universal questions about others’ lives and their own, are also sure to win over those who haven’t read her before.

Elizabeth Strout’s longtime fans will be delighted by the return of beloved characters in Tell Me Everything, but these very human characters are also sure to win over those who haven’t read her before.
NonfictionSelf-Help

Hope for Cynics

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Psychologist Jamil Zaki, who studies kindness and empathy as the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, begins his book with an unexpected confession: “In private, I’m a cynic, prone to seeing the worst in people.” The book is inspired by his colleague and friend Emile Bruneau, a psychologist who built a study of the “neuroscience of peace.” Bruneau believed that hope could change the world, and maintained that belief up until his death from terminal brain cancer in 2020, at age 47. Bruneau “diagnosed triggers that inspire hatred, and then designed psychological treatments to reduce conflict and build compassion.”

Bruneau died during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Zaki lost all hope. He realized, to his chagrin, that he had become cynical. Being a scientist, he began to take a hard look at this outlook. In Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Zaki shows how and why cynicism is a harmful social disease, and what we can do about it.

In the first illuminating section, “Unlearning Cynicism,” Zaki identifies key differences between a cynical mindset, which is invariably negative, and a skeptical mindset, which allows room for hope. This section also lays out the conditions for today’s high levels of cynicism, noting that corruption and inequality can leave people feeling helpless and like they are unable to make a difference. And it offers persuasive research on perception, noting how often we misperceive others’ motivations (for instance, research shows that most people like helping others, though most of us think otherwise) and shares historical episodes that illustrate how overly negative assumptions can lead to catastrophic decisions.

Later sections offer narratives of people whose hopeful mindsets have led them to change their communities for the better. Throughout, Zaki shares his own failures to stay hopeful, recounting his conversations with Bruneau and Bruneau’s widow, and he explores the factors that may have contributed to Bruneau’s optimistic outlook. Hope for Cynics is a timely guide, and Zaki’s tribute to his radically hopeful friend adds an endearing, personal layer to this book.

 

Psychologist Jamil Zaki’s illuminating Hope for Cynics shows how and why cynicism is a harmful social disease, and what we can do about it.
FictionLiterary FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

Pearl

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Sian Hughes’ debut novel, Pearl, offers a coming-of-age story set in rural England, one that reverberates with grief and longing, but also a wry humor.

As the novel opens, narrator Marianne and her teenage daughter, Susannah, are taking part in an ancient mourning ceremony and fair called the Wakes, in Marianne’s home village in Cheshire. It’s a ceremony that Marianne always attends, one that leads her to ponder the loss of her mother. When Marianne was 8, her mother walked out into the rain one fall day, forever leaving behind Marianne and the rest of their family.

Her mother’s unexplained disappearance has colored Marianne’s entire life—a mystery that she can’t move beyond. Marianne recounts her idyllic, idiosyncratic rural childhood in an old farmhouse with her creative mother, who sang folk songs and shared ancient stories. Later, during the bumpy, sad years after the disappearance, Marianne’s father Edward, a history professor, tries to patch together a life for Marianne and her younger brother, Joe. The adult Marianne narrates in an episodic, not-quite-linear fashion, looking back from early middle age to circle the mystery of her mother. The narrative is particularly strong in conveying the younger Marianne’s self-absorbed, mishap-filled adolescence, and her lurch into young adulthood.

Pearl was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, and is based in part on a medieval poem of the same title. Hughes, who is a poet herself, brings an attention to language and to the natural world that lends a beautiful vibrancy to her sentences and images. But there’s a droll sensibility here, too: Humor brightens grief-filled and difficult moments, such as an episode of postpartum psychosis. Pearl is also full of the gentle landscape and hallowed folklore of English village life, sometimes with a slightly gothic cast. To that end, each chapter opens with part of a nursery rhyme or nonsense poem (“As I went over the water, / The water went over me. I saw two little blackbirds / Sitting in a tree”). Throughout, the spirit of Marianne’s missing mother hovers, and this underlying mystery pulls the reader forward, though the story remains more immersive than propulsive.

Hughes has written a tender debut novel which, at its end, brings the reader back around to the grown Marianne at the Wakes, imbuing the festival with a lovely, redemptive new meaning.

Poet Sian Hughes brings vibrant language and a droll sensibility to her debut novel, Pearl, which explores a woman’s grief after losing her mother at 8 years old, set against the gentle landscape of English village life.
NonfictionScience

Do I Know You?

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Science journalist Sadie Dingfelder has known since childhood that she isn’t great at remembering people or faces. But for decades, she failed to notice that other people didn’t make the mistakes that she did, like hopping into strangers’ cars, or getting lost in her brother’s small house. After she mistook another man for her husband in a grocery store, Dingfelder began to wonder if her quirks indicated something larger. She decided to undergo a test and learned that she’s faceblind: She truly doesn’t remember faces. 

But that’s only the beginning of what she learned over the next year. “Welcome to my midlife crisis,” she writes in her charming debut, Do I Know You?: A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination. “There will be no fast cars or sexy pool boys, but there will be answers to questions that have dogged me my entire life. Mysteries like: Why didn’t I ever learn how to drive? Why hasn’t anyone ever asked me out on a date? Why was I so lonely as a kid, and how did I manage to make so many friends as an adult? (And why, despite having so many friends, do I still feel lonely?)” Dingfelder soon learned that along with faceblindness, she’s stereoblind—the world she sees is flat, not three-dimensional. She also learned that her brain doesn’t create its own mental imagery; when she reads a novel, her brain doesn’t create pictures or scenes. 

Dingfelder weaves her story into the science of how brains process information like faces and names, and how one type of neurodiversity, like faceblindness, is often linked to another. Throughout Do I Know You?, she’s both cleareyed and vulnerable, and though her mishaps and misunderstandings are often comical, she also conveys the losses that she’s only recently begun to mourn. 

Do I Know You? offers a specific story about one woman’s neurodiverse brain (and the book’s appendix offers practical resources for parents who think their child might be faceblind or stereoblind), but Dingfelder makes the specific universal, showing readers both the remarkable diversity in how our brains encounter the world, and how much more we still have to learn about ourselves.

In Do I Know You?, faceblind journalist Sadie Dingfelder explores her condition and reveals the remarkable neural diversity of humans.

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