Australian novelist Graeme Simsion found unexpected success with his first novel, The Rosie Project, a romantic comedy starring an uptight geneticist and a free-spirited young woman.

In The Rosie Effect, Simsion returns to the life of Rosie and Don as they struggle to turn their marriage into a lifelong love affair.

The Rosie Project was something of a surprise bestseller—had you always planned to continue the story of Don and Rosie?
On the contrary, I had made a firm decision that there would not be a sequel. I had tied up all the loose ends in the tradition of the romantic comedy happy ending, and was well advanced with a new novel when I changed my mind. A number of readers and critics had commented that the happy ending was unrealistic—Don and Rosie would struggle in a marriage. Of course they would! Everyone does at times. I wanted to explore this and show that they could make it through in their own ways. I also felt that we had more to learn about Don: that I hadn’t really plumbed the possibilities of this character. I struggled for a while to find a way into the story—then, one evening at dinner we were celebrating the pregnancy of one of my writers’ group . . .

The book explores what happens after the “happily ever after.” Was it hard for you to put your characters through these difficulties, or exciting to explore what happened next?
Overall it was exciting. Don is a great character to write: you put him in a challenging situation and just ask yourself, honestly, what would he do? But I wanted to take Don and Rosie to a very low point, to where their marriage was in real jeopardy. That meant having both of them lose faith in the relationship. We are in Don’s head, so we understand why he is doing what he does. But we only see Don’s view of Rosie, and if we take this at face value, it’s easy to judge her harshly. I knew some readers would lose their empathy for Rosie, but hoped that most would ask themselves “Really, if I was in her position…?”

Why did you decide to move Don and Rosie to New York, and what challenges came up because of that?
It was a carry-over from The Rosie Project, where Don and Rosie’s visit to New York allows Don to re-invent himself away from his routines and the expectations of others. In a restaurant, a fellow diner tells Don that there are so many weird people in New York that everyone just fits right in. So, at the end of the story, I moved Don and Rosie to New York, to allow him to continue his own re-invention. I didn’t plan a sequel! So when I started writing a sequel, there they were, in New York, and I decided to play the cards I’d dealt myself.

Rosie seems closed off and unapproachable to the reader as well as to Don for much of the book, whereas in the original she was the more accessible character.
Ah! See response to earlier question about putting characters through difficulties.

We are looking at the world through Don’s eyes—and this is how Rosie appears to him. And she’s not in every scene: Don is the protagonist here. We’re all accustomed to the chick-lit genre, which is where we expect to find books that focus on regular domestic relationships, but almost invariably the protagonist is female. I guess we’d not be surprised in the male partner was invisible, at work, closed off, unapproachable when the protagonist was having a drink with her female buddies—but when we reverse the genders, we notice the absence of the woman.

I know some readers are also bothered by what seems to be a change to the bubbly Rosie we saw in The Rosie Project, but let’s remember that (a) the honeymoon is (literally) over; (b) Rosie has taken on a challenging workload and is now pregnant; (c) Rosie’s nemesis, Gene, has moved in with them and Don is spending a lot of time in his company (d) much as we may love Don, he’d also be a difficult guy to live with at times!

I think (a) is pretty important. The Rosie Project was about falling in love. The Rosie Effect is about making a long-term relationship work. The tones of the books reflect these different moods—and different challenges. The psychologists tell us how important communication is to the success of a relationship, but most of us don’t do it as well as we could. Don and Rosie are no exceptions. What the two stories do have in common is that we should see that these guys are fundamentally compatible—and we sometimes want to bang their heads together!

Don interprets deceit differently than many people and can’t stomach even “little white lies.” How does that complicate his relationship with Rosie?
Deceit is a recurring theme in the The Rosie Effect. I think “can’t stomach” is a bit strong: Don just finds these white lies puzzling and unnecessary—as illustrated by Gene’s lie about Don having doggy do on his shoe. I don’t think the small stuff complicates his relationship with Rosie: that’s the sort of thing she can find refreshing and amusing—cute. It’s when Don decides that deception is warranted (in keeping his arrest from Rosie) that complications arise. He’s uncomfortable with what he’s doing, worried he’ll be caught. He withdraws, Rosie senses this, and the downward spiral begins.

It’s clear why people on the autism spectrum might relate to Don, but can you tell us about other readers who relate to him in unexpected ways?
I didn’t expect so many women to “fall in love” with Don. I wanted readers to be sympathetic, empathize, but, “I’d give up being a vegan if I could marry Don”; “Is there a real Don and can I have his email address?”; “Rosie doesn’t deserve Don!”—no, I didn’t expect that. Don, for all his intelligence, decency and “cuteness” would be hard work! Okay, he is a romantic hero, but he’s a long way from a conventional one.

I’ve had very interesting feedback from women married to men on the spectrum. They find the portrayal of Don realistic, but not necessarily funny. Some do, some don’t. All who I’ve spoken to have related to the portrayal of Rosie in The Rosie Effect: “Sometimes you just need space away from the verbal barrage”; “I’ve done extreme things like threaten to leave just to provoke an emotional response.”

I do have a problem with women who seem to relate to Don as a pet rather than an intelligent adult. And they’ll say, “Rosie knew what she was getting herself into (so she should suck it up)”. Said no marriage counselor, ever. These guys are in an adult relationship, and that means negotiation, change, and give-and-take. Don’s quite capable of all of these. 

What made you decide to write about Rosie’s pregnancy instead of writing about Don’s reaction to the baby after it was born, which seems like the more obvious plot choice?
Many reasons! The question that drives the story is, “Can Don and Rosie make their relationship work in the face of the sorts of stresses that couples are likely to encounter?” So I wanted to focus on Don and Rosie, not Don and Rosie plus baby. With a baby in place, Rosie would have been less available (and with good reason).

The pregnancy provided opportunities to explore the theme of how we deal with advice and information (something that causes us all stress, but Don in spades). Yes, I could have done this with child-rearing too, but I’m looking at a third book for that! 

The character of Gene is the opposite of Don—it’s easier for him to fit in with other people, but he makes a lot of decisions that seem unethical. How does his character help you develop Don’s? Why do you think these two very different people have such a strong bond?
I don’t think they’re as different as they look. As Don points out when he confronts Gene about his infidelity in The Rosie Project: “You’re similar to me. That’s why you’re my best friend.”

I see Gene as the dark side of Don—a man who was probably as much of a geek as Don at school, but learned to fake it till he made it. I mean, what sort of man in his mid-fifties is “collecting” women? What’s he trying to prove? Why the interest in collections? I think unusual people have a choice of finding a place that accommodates them or changing to fit it with broader society. Don and Gene represent those two different choices.

One reason Gene likes Don is that Don relies on him for advice. Who else would listen to Gene on social behavior? (Although he’s chosen to study and teach it for a living.) That’s a simple take: I like to think that in The Rosie Effect we see Gene in more depth.

You did a lot of readings and appearances for The Rosie Project. Any fun fan stories? What do you like about meeting readers?
I love meeting readers. It’s affirming to know that my stories are reaching people, and I continue to be amazed about what readers bring to the table—things they find in the book that I perhaps put in unconsciously, or that they simply constructed themselves. Interestingly, I don’t see any differences in how readers in English-speaking countries, at least, respond to the book.

I have lots of stories about people who have family members or close friends on the autism spectrum—some funny, some moving, some uplifting.

“Hi, my name’s Ben and I have Asperger’s. I have a problem with your book (long pause). Page 27, line 23. Don says he doesn’t want a partner who’s mathematically illiterate. The word is innumerate. Don Tillman would not make that mistake.”

“My brother had difficulties all his life, and was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s in his 40s. The family read books and went to seminars to learn to be more supportive, but it was only after he passed away and we read The Rosie Project that we understood what it was like to be him.”

“We always thought my dad had Asperger’s and we thought it’d help if he acknowledged it. We gave him books on the subject and he kept saying, ‘That’s not me.’ Then we gave him The Rosie Project. He read it and announced, ‘I’m coming out!’

 What are you working on next? 
I’m currently writing a novel about a love affair re-ignited after 22 years. 

Carrie Rollwagen is a bookseller and author in Birmingham, Alabama. 

In Dietland, timid Plum Kettle is sure that losing weight is the key that will unlock the life she wants to live. But when she crosses paths with a mysterious young woman, she ends up involved in a full-on riot grrl ride to a feminist awakening. Author Sarai Walker answered a few questions about her edgy, girl-power debut.

It feels like a bit of an understatement to say that this is an unusual premise for a novel! What was your starting point for the story?
I would say it had two starting points. The first was when I saw the film Fight Club many years ago. As soon as the film ended, I knew I wanted to write something for women that had that defiant, punk spirit. (It’s not fair that men get to have all the fun.) But at the time this was nothing more than a vague idea, a gut feeling.

Several years after that, when I was studying for my M.F.A. in creative writing, I wrote a short story about a young fat woman who works at a teen magazine. As a veteran of teen magazines myself, this story was very personal to me.

This short story and the Fight Club idea eventually merged into one, which I think explains the unusual premise of the novel!

The structure is also unusual—Dietland includes book excerpts, complete with footnotes, plus news stories and even a journal. How did you decide to include all these elements?
I wish I could say I invented this, but I was influenced by other novels that use this “pastiche” effect. The one that comes to mind is Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, which includes a book-within-a-book and news articles. I read Atwood’s novel around the time I was first attempting to write Dietland and thought this technique looked like great fun, so decided to try it myself. I adapted it for my own purposes and love what it adds to the novel. Dietland uses an intense first-person voice and I think it benefits from the inclusion of these other voices.

What do you like the most about Plum?
I like that she’s brave. I aspire to be as brave as she is.

In her book, your character Marlowe says that “being a woman is being a faker.” What’s your take on that statement?
She’s really commenting on all the ways that we as women are socialized to pretend to be what we’re not. We wear make-up to appear prettier and younger; we use various techniques to appear thinner and shapelier and bustier; we often deny that we have appetites, pretending not to be hungry and so forth; we’re encouraged to act dumb and weak and helpless sometimes; and the list goes on. Being a woman in our society too often means concealing who we really are. Girls learn this at a young age.

 "Being a woman in our society too often means concealing who we really are. Girls learn this at a young age."

You wrote most of this book while living in Europe. What differences (if any) did you see in women’s lives in Europe vs. the United States?
What was most interesting to me was the difference in my life while I was living there. I spent most of my time living in London and this influenced the novel in key ways. I’ll probably get into trouble for saying this, but the U.K. is the most overtly sexist place I’ve ever experienced, as well as the most fat-shaming. There’s a chapter in the novel that takes place in London and explores the sexist media scene there; I felt compelled to write that chapter as a form of catharsis.

"The U.K. is the most overtly sexist place I’ve ever experienced, as well as the most fat-shaming."

Who are your feminist heroes?
I have way too many to list, but I’ll mention two women who should receive more attention. As I wrote Dietland, I was influenced by feminism of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, both the fiction and nonfiction of that period.

Joanna Russ should not be forgotten. She wrote a wonderfully irreverent work of feminist literary criticism called How to Suppress Women’s Writing. I also love her essay “What Can a Heroine Do? or Why Women Can’t Write.” She is perhaps most known for her science-fiction novel The Female Man.

I also want to mention Dorothy Bryant. Her early feminist novel Ella Price’s Journal is one of my favorites and it deserves to be discovered by many more readers today. It has to be read and considered within the historical context in which it was written, but it is a moving exploration of a woman’s consciousness-raising during the early days of Second Wave feminism.

"It’s important to have kindred spirits however you can find them."

Dietland is something of a manifesto. What would you say to readers who finish the book wanting to change the world?
I’ve actually already been contacted by readers who had this response, which is terrific, but also a lot of pressure for me!

I think one of the things that Dietland can do for certain readers is raise their consciousness, to use an old-school feminist term (which I love). Consciousness-raising is the process of coming to see the personal as the political; after your consciousness is raised, you see the world through a different lens. This is an important first step in creating change.

My advice for readers is to find a like-minded community of people, as Plum does in the novel with the women of Calliope House. An in-person community is great, but online works as well. It’s important to have kindred spirits however you can find them. I also think expanding your knowledge by reading up on the topics you’re interested in is essential. For readers interested in fat acceptance, there are lots of great websites, blogs and books to explore. The insights you gain this way can help you make the change you want to see in the world around you.

Many feminists in the 1970s believed that many small personal “revolutions” have the potential to add up to a large revolution. I really like that idea.

What are you working on next?
I’m researching and thinking about my second novel. I had hoped to be writing it already, but I don’t have the mental space or distance from Dietland yet. I’m also writing essays.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a review of Dietland.

Author photo by Marion Ettlinger.

What if you had everything everyone thought you should want, only to realize it wasn’t what you wanted at all? That’s the dilemma facing Lily Wilder, who is about to marry the perfect man at the beginning of I Take You. However, tying the knot means the end of her romantic freedom—something that fun-loving Lily has always reveled in. Eliza Kennedy answered a few questions about her debut novel and its unconventional heroine.

Can you tell us a bit about your path to publication? Where were you when you found out your book had sold?
Before I queried agents, only two people had seen my manuscript: my husband and my father. So I went into the process having no idea whether my book would be met with eagerness, horror, or—worse—total indifference. Still, out it went, and after a slightly excruciating weekend, a few agents responded. They were enthusiastic, and I was over the moon. I eventually went with the wonderful Suzanne Gluck of William Morris Endeavor. She made some editorial suggestions and came up with a list of editors. The wait was on. A few days later, my husband and I were at the playground with our son when I got a call from Suzanne. Josh says he watched as I sat down under the jungle gym and covered my mouth with my hand. He could tell from my face it was good news.

For a novel about a woman who’s not sure she wants to get married, your book takes on a lot of serious topics. Was this your original intention for the book?
My goal from the outset was to write a fun, funny, lighthearted novel about a free-spirited woman rushing calamitously toward the altar. I wanted it to be the kind of book you race through and don’t want to put down. But describing Lily’s out-there behavior and point of view raised certain questions in my mind—about why monogamy is our romantic norm, how messed up our beliefs about female sexuality are, and the realities of happily-ever-after. I realized that I had things to say, and just so happened to have created a forum for saying them. After that, it was a matter of balancing the froth with the weightier stuff.

"Describing Lily’s out-there behavior and point of view raised certain questions in my mind—about why monogamy is our romantic norm, how messed up our beliefs about female sexuality are, and the realities of happily-ever-after."

The wacky atmosphere of Key West provides a great backdrop for this book—can you tell us a little bit more about why you chose it and what it means to you?
Key West is one of my favorite places in the world. I love its bizarre combination of  lush tropical beauty, gorgeous architecture, swashbuckling piratical history, and unabashed smuttiness. It’s a place with a sense of humor, with light and dark sides—much like my main character.

More to the point, my husband and I got married in Key West, and as I was developing my idea for the book, I realized that it was the perfect setting for the slightly unhinged wedding I had in mind.

Lily isn’t perfect, but she’s a lot of fun to spend time with. What’s your favorite thing about her?
Her outspokenness. She says exactly what’s on her mind, all the time. It never occurs to her to do otherwise, even though it often gets her in trouble. Out here in the real world, women are often taught, in ways subtle and more overt, that we should hold their tongues, defer, be diplomatic. Lily didn’t get the memo.

I Take You questions a lot of the traditions around and beliefs about relationships. Which was the most challenging to explore?
The most challenging was the notion that someone can be a serial cheater but a fundamentally good person. I was trying to question our collective impulse to judge people in terms of their success at monogamy—cheating equals bad, faithfulness equals good—which fails to recognize the extraordinary complications of actual people and the realities of life and coupledom. Lily loves her family, she’s a loyal friend and she works very hard at her job. She also just happens to love to sleep around. I didn’t want to apologize for her conduct any more than I cared to suggest that she was behaving well. But I did want to show someone who is more than the sum of her misbehavior.

Women who cheat typically face more social censure than men. Did you ever worry that readers wouldn’t relate to a character like Lily?
I did wonder whether some readers will be turned off by Lily’s behavior, whether because she’s a woman, because they’ve been personally affected by infidelity or because they simply think it’s wrong. With any luck, those readers will appreciate other aspects of her personality, or enjoy the book enough that relatability becomes beside the point.

But I’m actually not sure I agree with the premise of the question. I feel like men are condemned and excoriated for cheating more often than women are. Although perhaps that’s because they do it more often. Or, I should say, they get caught more often.            

You’re married to the author Joshua Ferris—do your writing routines differ? Are you the first to read each other’s work?
Our routines are pretty similar: We park ourselves at our desks in the morning and work throughout the day. We currently write in adjoining rooms, which has taken some adjustment—apparently I’m an offensively loud typist, and he feels free to call out random questions like I’m his personal Wikipedia. We are each other’s first reader, and have gradually learned how to accept criticism with grace, good humor and only occasional threats of violence.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a review of I Take You.

Kevin Kwan is not where one might expect to find a best-selling, New York City-dwelling author. “I’m taking a little break before the craziness of three solid months of touring,” Kwan says from an undisclosed southwestern location far, far away from Manhattan. “I thought I’d look at rabbits frolicking in a field for a while first.”

The tour is to support China Rich Girlfriend, the raucous sequel to his acclaimed debut, Crazy Rich Asians. In it, we catch up with several familiar faces, as down-to-earth Rachel Chu gets married to professor Nicholas Young, who has given up his inheritance to be with her. Rachel grew up not knowing who her father was, and when she discovers his identity she eagerly hops a plane to China to meet him. Nothing can prepare her for the unbelievable “China rich” culture that awaits her, where an exploding economy allows multibillionaires to look down on regular billionaires.

Kwan, who was raised in a wealthy family in Singapore before moving to the United States at age 11, drew upon his own experiences to color both his novels.

“I grew up with that sort of old world money,” he says. “I was not really conscious of that till I stepped out of it and thought, oh my gosh, that was kind of freaky. You go to houses with sunken pools filled with sharks. It is a world with its own dysfunctions.”

Kwan insists that the over-the-top wealth he describes in China Rich Girlfriend—socialites hopping on their private 747s complete with koi ponds, spending nearly $200 million on a single piece of artwork—is based in reality.

"In many ways, it’s toned down. The truth is so much more fascinating than anything I could fictionalize."

“In many ways, it’s toned down,” he says. “My editor had to step in and say, ‘Kevin, this is bordering on fantasy. It’s like you’re writing Game of Thrones.’ But it was real. The truth is so much more fascinating than anything I could fictionalize. For example, the China rich are importing expensive racecars and killing themselves in these horrible accidents.”

That truth served as the inspiration for Carlton, son of Bao Gaoliang, a prominent politician and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. When Carlton crashes his car in London, his mother, Bao Shaoyen, rushes in to cover up the death of a girl in the passenger’s seat and—seemingly higher on her priority list—to set her son up with the best plastic surgeons. This is the family Rachel comes into when she discovers Bao Gaoliang is her father. Despite their radically different upbringings, Rachel and Carlton form an unlikely friendship, but Bao Shaoyen refuses to acknowledge her husband’s illegitimate daughter, whom she fears will irreparably harm her family’s reputation. 

China Rich Girlfriend is the most fun I’ve had reading a book in quite some time. The vibrantly drawn characters and equally vivid settings in and around Beijing make for a jam-packed, lively story. And it was just as fun to write, Kwan says.

“I found myself laughing out loud at so many sections as I wrote,” he says. “You become like a demon possessed—I had so much fun traveling and doing the research to saturate this world. I did want an element of gravitas but you have to balance that with lightness. This is not an episode of ‘Oprah.’”

Kwan traveled to China to prepare for writing the sequel, and even after several trips overseas, he was surprised by what he found. 

“Every time I go there, it’s almost utterly a different place,” he says. “It never ceases to amaze me. Mainland Chinese are so utterly different from Asian Americans. Here, cultures and traditions are completely intact, things like foods and festivals, whereas in China, the Cultural Revolution erased the Chinese culture completely in many ways. So I would meet these young Chinese, and they don’t know where the root of their belief system comes from—it’s erased from their memory, which is liberating in a way.” 

The result is a cast of characters who are wholly believable and human. But even with meticulous research, Kwan said writing a sequel to a book that did as well as Crazy Rich Asians was daunting. 

“I was very conscious about whether there should even be a book two,” he says. “To me, there was something kind of perfect about the way I ended the [first] book. Some agreed—and of course I also heard the screams from those who didn’t.”

Among those who claim to have no opinion about either of his books are several members of his family.

“There are a lot of people in my family who claim not to have read my books,” he says wryly. “They genuinely may not have read it. They’re too busy nurturing their fortune. I have many cousins who loved it—they get it—they know this world.” 

Kwan is still getting used to the idea that his books could be hotly anticipated. Entertainment Weekly recently named China Rich Girlfriend one of six books to look forward to this summer, along with offerings by the likes of Stephen King and—wait for it—Harper Lee.

“I was kind of flabbergasted,” he says. “Harper Lee is really one of my favorite authors. To Kill a Mockingbird was such a seminal book for me. I read it in college—it’s a disservice to read it when you’re too young. You need to have already come of age. It was an unbelievable kind of thrill to be even mentioned in the same breath as her.”

For now, though, Kwan is focused on his own calm before the storm of what is sure to be another bestseller. The promotion plans include his hosting an interactive guide of New York City’s craziest, richest Asian hotspots. What is yet to be decided is whether this will become a trilogy.

“It really depends on how well this book does,” Kwan says cheerfully, “and whether people want a third.” 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Sometimes a character appears in an author’s imagination fully formed. All the writer needs to do is offer him or her a blank page on which to play.

So it was for British writer Jojo Moyes, who hit the bestseller list in America for the first time with her tear-jerking ninth novel, Me Before You. Will Traynor and Louisa Clark, the central characters in the word-of-mouth hit—which has sold more than 5 million copies since it was published in 2012—came to Moyes fleshed out, ready for action. And as Moyes prepared to revisit Lou in the sequel, After You, that sensation resurfaced. Sometimes, lightning strikes twice.

“It’s the same thing again, where all you have to do is put yourself in a room with a new situation and it’s easy to write,” she says, during a telephone call to her home in London.

This time, the character who hit the ground running is Lily, a teenager who shows up on Lou’s doorstep. Lou has embraced new experiences since Will’s death, including an extended stay in Paris and purchasing a condo in London. But she’s become stuck, unable or unwilling to move forward. 

Lily might provide just the push Lou needs.

“They never left me, those characters. Normally, you move on to something else,” Moyes says. 

This is the first time Moyes, the author of a dozen books, has written a sequel. “I’m wary to be seen as writing [this book] because Me Before You had done so well,” she says. “But literally I had one of those moments where I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and sat bolt upright.”

Even with that epiphany and her so-believable-they-seem-real characters, Moyes says she was well aware of the pressures of writing a sequel as compared to a stand-alone book.

“I felt the weight of expectation. Everything I did in this book, I almost could hear the readers saying, no, I don’t want that to happen!” 

Fear not, readers—Moyes was careful that Lou’s character stayed consistent from the first book to the second. But that means Lou’s decision-making skills remain the same, and she doesn’t always operate in her own best interest.

“Everyone kind of assumed she’d sail off into the sunset and live a new life. But knowing Lou, she’s a sensitive soul. She might do that initially, but what she’d been part of would not be easy to walk away from,” Moyes says.

After You is an immersive experience, inviting readers back into the homes of the characters they fell in love with in Me Before You. They’ll experience the mourning that follows a devastating loss, and the glimmers of hope that propel the brokenhearted forward. And, like Me Before You, After You is a book that is best leapt into without knowing much about the plot, which explains the slight vagueness Moyes uses when discussing it.

“It’s partly a book about what happens when you’re left in the wake of somebody else’s decision, whether that be a divorce or the decision for someone to take their own life,” Moyes says. “I’m always fascinated by the way people are entitled to follow their own path.”

While Lou remains a central character, readers will again visit the Clark and Traynor families in all their glory. The quirky Clarks serve as a lighthearted counterpoint to the grief-laden Traynors, whose marriage has crumbled after the loss of their son. Will’s death weighs heavy, and his presence permeates After You as his loved ones make decisions informed by his life—or their loss.  “[T]he moment you opened the box, let out even a whisper of your sadness, it would mushroom into a cloud that overwhelmed all other conversation,” Lou thinks as she tries to decide how much to tell a new acquaintance about her past.

From that, readers might draw lessons of their own. Moyes is a believer in the power of fiction to change hearts and minds. “Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from fiction,” she says. “One of the greatest things you learn from fiction is empathy. If you can’t empathize with someone else’s position, it makes a rigid adult.”

She’s not concerned with maintaining appearances with regard to what she reads; recent titles include a thriller by fellow Brit Lee Child and Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, a collection of photo essays based on the blog of the same name.

Nor is Moyes worried about how her own work is classified. “I’ve never pretended that my books are literary fiction. But what I do believe is you can write commercial fiction that is quality. I know what I put into my books, how hard I work with the language, to make sure everything has a proper rhythm,” she says.

If sales are anything to go by, Moyes has accomplished that goal. Though her novels are serious page-turners and cover a wide range of topics and time periods, they all contain memorable characters and resonant themes.

Moyes is a hard worker as well; she’s published almost a novel per year since she first started writing in 2002. Now that After You is out in the world, the author is planning on taking a bit of a writing break.

“I’m not going to think about writing another book until the end of the year. I just don’t have the mental space,” she says. 

She’s been busy with movies recently: The film adaptation of Me Before You, which stars Emilia Clark (“Game of Thrones”) as Lou and Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games) as Will, is set to debut next June, and Moyes has a screenwriting credit. 

“I’m also moving house. Before I spoke to you, I spent an hour painting a floor. I thought to myself, oh, the glamorous life of an international bestseller,” Moyes adds, laughing.

In the meantime, she’s looking forward to taking her three children along for the After You American book tour. 

“American audiences are so demonstrative. English audiences are usually not as demonstrative,” Moyes says. (She has carried observations like these into her work; in After You, Moyes writes of Lou’s reaction to Will’s father: “If he had been anybody else I might have hugged him just then, but we were English and he had once been my boss of sorts, so we simply smiled awkwardly at each other.”)

There’s one more national difference that’s pretty important to a best-selling author like Moyes.

“In the United States, if they ask how many books you’ve sold, you say 5 million copies, and they break into applause. In England, they’re like, oh, stop showing off.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Janice Y.K. Lee’s 2009 debut, The Piano Teacher, was beloved by readers and critics for its pitch-perfect portrayal of Hong Kong in the years after World War II. In her second novel, The Expatriates, the author—who was born in Hong Kong and educated in the U.S.—explores modern-day Hong Kong through the eyes of three American women who are all struggling to find their roles in a land far from home. 

Lee answered a few questions about the new novel, her writing process and the reasons that being between cultures can be a good thing for both a writer and her characters. 

It’s been a while since your debut, The Piano Teacher. How long have you been working on this novel, and how did the experience of writing a second novel compare to the first? 
Both books took around five years, which I've come to think of as my normal gestation period, if you can draw any conclusions from a sample of two. When I was writing The Piano Teacher, there were a lot of unknowns for me: Could I finish a novel? Could I sell it? Would it ever see the light of day? So I labored at it, sort of in the dark and without telling most people what I was doing when I disappeared into the library or was at my desk. It was a fraught and anxious time but I've romanticized it in my head as a glorious time of discovery. 

When I started The Expatriates, I also didn't know if I could finish another novel. I always remember a short essay that Jeffrey Eugenides wrote in the New Yorker about how being a novelist is the only profession in which you sign up to be an amateur every single time you start a book (paraphrasing wildly, with apologies to him) and I felt that acutely. I never write with an outline or a plot in mind so it really does feel like fumbling around, looking for a lifeline. This time, though, I felt comfortable saying, "I'm working" when people asked me what I was doing, and the greatest benefit was that I could spend my afternoons reading books and calling it work. 

The book opens with a lovely set piece about the expatriate mindset and the different reasons people try to start a new life somewhere else that immediately establishes the tone of the story and gives insight into the characters. Did you always plan to frame the story that way?
I wish I could say I had had a plan, any plan! I never had an inkling where it would all go. I started The Expatriates with the image of a woman, lying on her bed, unable, unwilling to get up. That's all I had. Then, after I had delved into that character for several dozen pages and found another character for her to interact with, I understood the novel was set in contemporary Hong Kong. After that realization, I wrote the opening passage in a feverish rush, sort of channeling the arrivals that happen every day, trying to get right at the feel of the world the reader would be entering. I wanted the readers to be plunged into this world. 

This story is told from the points of view of three very different women. How did you settle on this structure, and did one voice come more easily than another?
When I was entangled in it, I wished more than once that I had written a simple A to Z timeline with one perspective. I got bogged down in the weeds trying to figure it out but it just worked out that way. I wish I was able to be more deliberate with the way I write, or that I had more control, but I sort of nose around in the dark until it feels right, print it out, read it, and change what feels wrong. It's a very inefficient, laborious process but the only way I know. When I began The Expatriates, it was with this image of the woman in bed. From there, I started to develop a story and eventually another woman came along. A year into it, one of the woman started acting erratically and unlike herself. I could not figure her out. 

It was at this critical juncture that I had coincidentally managed to carve out some time to go to Yaddo, the artist colony. When I was there, away from family obligations and life stresses, I was really able to delve deeply into the women, and I suddenly realized that that odd woman was actually two women. She had been acting oddly because those had not been her actions, her words, her thoughts. The book was about three women. It was such a relief and so obvious when I realized it, and from there the story started to unspool in a much more organic way. 

You grew up in Hong Kong, but you have said that, as a Korean, you didn’t feel at home there. How did that experience shape this novel?
I've always felt more at home in America than in Hong Kong. I love Hong Kong and it's an amazing city and a wonderful place to grow up and raise children but I never saw myself there permanently. So I think you'll see that feeling infused into the novel. Very few expatriates choose to make Hong Kong their permanent home so there's always a temporary feel to their experience. I have never lived in Korea either, so I don't know how that would feel. I always tell people that I am not an expatriate but I'm not a local either. I think being between worlds is a good thing for a writer. 

What is your relationship with Hong Kong these days? Do you think it will continue to inspire as a setting for your fiction?
I'm nostalgic about Hong Kong. We just moved back to the U.S. this summer, and there's a lot we miss about Hong Kong, my children especially. We miss hiking the beautiful mountains, swimming in November, everything being 15 minutes away. Life in Hong Kong is easy, in a way, because it feels like your life is on pause. Hong Kong will always be in my DNA and I love it but I'm not sure that it will be the setting of my next book. I think I'd like to venture further afield. 

Your debut novel was set in Hong Kong in the 1950s, and this book is contemporary. Was it harder to capture the past or the present? 
I did a lot of research for The Piano Teacher, in libraries and universities. I'd have to stop and find out how much a ferry ticket cost in 1950, what movie would have been playing in the theaters, or what people would have worn on an airplane flight, a rare luxury at the time. I loved that process, as it was fun to be a student again. For this book, I didn't have to do any research, just live my life and take from it liberally. So that was very different. Sometimes, I found myself longing for the structure of the library and the materials. But it was also freeing, to know that I was already an expert in the field, as it were. 

For a lifestyle that is outside the norm in many ways, expatriate life can be very traditional, especially for the so-called “trailing spouse.” Could you talk a little bit about this and the way it affects your characters?
It's an odd situation that's hard to describe. Imagine giving up your friends, family, and most likely, job, to follow your spouse halfway around the world. Imagine when you get there, you are given a house, a servant, possibly a driver, and a country club membership. And then imagine that you suddenly have eight more hours in your day. Because that's what it feels like. 

It's hard to generalize because everyone has such a different experience but I saw spouses who ran the gamut from ultra-traditional housewife to globetrotting entrepreneurs. But the stereotype is of the housewife “trailing spouse” because a lot of people do come because of their spouse's job. So people do different things with their new worlds. Some women get very into charities, some get very fit, some start small businesses. What I came away is that everyone is trying to do the best that they can in the situation they find themselves in, so I think that's the positive part of it.

One of the novel’s central themes is forgiveness: how to get it, who deserves it, etc. One of the main characters is even named Mercy. What made you want to explore this topic?
As I get older, I realize that all those tropes you're told when you're younger—Be kind and people will be kind to you; Be open; Be generous; Give without expectation—they are all true. They seem wildly impractical and somewhat insane when presented to you as a child and young adult, not to mention impossible. But to move forward in life, you have to forgive and go on. I don't pretend to be able to keep to these ideals but I like to remember that that is the goal.

The men in the lives of these women don’t seem to struggle with guilt and the need for forgiveness as much as the women do. If the book were told from a male point of view, how would it be different?
Oh, I don't know. Men seem an utterly different species to me, a species that I cherish and adore, but I don't pretend to know anything about how the male mind thinks. I have a wonderful husband and three amazing boys, but their existence on Earth seems to run on a parallel plane to the one women are on. Of course, we interact closely, but what the other takes away from any given situation seems to be wildly different. I have a lot of close girlfriends and we share our experiences. Men don't seem to share their experiences in the same way. They blow off steam by doing physical activities together, and women get closer by exchanging confidences, at least that's what it's been in my experience. I think I know something about motherhood and women but I don't ever claim to know a lot about men. If this book were told from a male perspective, I think it would have been a lot shorter and had a lot more action! I don't know about how men forgive themselves either. I don't think they find it easier, but I think they find it easier to compartmentalize their anger and sorrow. I think that's a skill well worth having and I envy them that. 

What are you working on next? 
I'm working on getting on the pre-publication work done for The Expatriates, so nothing is on my radar yet for next project. I'd like to write for television, and so I get to watch a lot of television and call it work. But also noodling on images and characters, which may then go forth to populate a future novel. 

Author photo by Xue Tan.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of The Expatriates. 

Elizabeth McKenzie’s new novel, The Portable Veblen, is a delightful story about 30-year-old Veblen Amundsen-Hovda, a single woman who makes her own clothes and works as a temp at the Stanford School of Medicine. There, she meets and falls in love with Paul Vreeland, a 34-year-old researcher who has designed a device that will help medics perform emergency craniotomies on the front lines of combat. The book is a humorous, multilayered tale of Veblen and Paul’s engagement, their relationships with their respective families and a pharmaceutical conglomerate of dubious ethics that has expressed interest in the device Paul wants to test.

We recently spoke with McKenzie about her novel, her writing process, and her plans for future projects.

Your female protagonist was named after Thorstein Veblen, the early 20th-century economist who coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption” and, as you state in the novel, “espoused antimateralistic beliefs.” Why did you choose this economist as your protagonist’s namesake?
When I began this novel her name was Jane, but I realized very soon that Thorstein Veblen’s work was informing the atmosphere of the book, as it had for me growing up—my family held very antimaterialistic beliefs, not entirely to the liking of my younger self!  And then I thought about what it would mean if Veblen’s mother bestowed that name on her daughter—which opened up lots of other possibilities.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of The Portable Veblen.

The novel is written with a wonderful light touch, but you also include complicated medical terms and descriptions of medical procedures. Did you need to conduct a lot of research for those aspects of the novel?
Yes, the research took me all over the place—I’d find myself following various leads, very absorbed in veterans issues and news about traumatic brain injury or facts about the workings of the FDA and the Department of Defense or the pharmaceutical industry. I also spent time in a number of locations pertinent to the story, such as the Stanford Hospital (where I once worked as a temp), the Menlo Park VA and a medical device conference.  There was a feeling of timeliness to these subjects, as new things on all fronts kept appearing in the daily paper.  It’s exciting to feel connected that way.

Product marketing comes in for considerable criticism here. Paul’s father cautions him to watch out for the sharks at Hutmacher Pharmaceuticals. At DeviceCON in San Jose, Paul, who is to speak as a “Key Innovator,” learns of a Pre-Wounded Summit and asks, “Is there any limit to the marketing of warfare?” Do you think there should be limits to what is marketed? Do you think it’s possible to use marketing for good?
Definitely for books! (In my opinion, booksellers have the purest motives in sales!) But yes, the medical and defense marketing I stumbled into surprised me. I’d come across a product for some really sobering purpose—such as an air freshener for use around corpses—and the description of it would have exclamation points, as if it was going to be really exciting to buy it and use it. My favorite book about marketing and advertising is Our Masters Voice by James Rorty. He elucidates all this with gleeful disgust.

Another theme that runs through the book is mental illness. Paul’s brother, Justin, has emotional issues. Veblen’s father is in an institution, and her mother, Melanie, is a hypochondriac. You handled these elements of the story with delicacy and discretion. Was it difficult to write about these issues?
Thank you for mentioning this! Mental illness and its effects on others was a really important theme for me in this book, and yes, it was difficult. I’d been wanting to write about the subject for a long time but from an impartial and empathetic vantage point, and with the shield of humor.

That Veblen believes she can communicate with a squirrel suggests that you’re fond of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. You even mention the story in your book. Was the Potter book one of your favorites when you were growing up? And what books, adult as well as children’s, have shaped your sensibility as a writer?
I did love the Potter books as a child, especially the illustrations. But The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin actually scared me. Nutkin’s antics, which were clearly going to lead to no good, filled me with dread. But I did love the riddles and rhymes!  I’ve been shaped and moved by so many books—early on I loved the Beat poets and the comic imagination of Richard Brautigan and Vonnegut and Tom Robbins and John Nichols. Later heroes include Henry James and James Joyce and Edith Wharton and Flannery O’Connor and Flaubert. I could go on and on!

You have written about furry creatures before. In “Savage Breast,” a story published in the New Yorker in December 2014, you wrote about a woman who wakes up one day to discover her house filled with furry beasts. In this novel, squirrels feature prominently. Is it coincidence that some of your recent work features animals? What do you think writing about animals allows you to do that writing about people might not?
You’re right, the furries have been taking over in my stories—I’ve just written one about chinchillas! I’m superstitious about analyzing why because it might make them go away, but there’s something very touching in the way people let down their guards with animals and that’s usually the focus for me.

The Portable Veblen is densely packed with much detail, many characters, and multiple story lines. The book obviously required a lot of preparation and planning. How do you approaching the writing of a novel or short story?
In this case I had diagrams on large sheets of paper and something in my head like a musical score.  I also did more drafts than I can count, and stumbled into many dead ends.  There was a constant back and forth between making practical assessments of the progress (and damage), and writing spontaneously, letting the narrative develop unplanned.

What are you working on now?
I have a few unfinished novel ideas, and about five or six new stories I’m shifting between. The one I’m liking the most right now is about a woman who is about to win an award for service to her company and is growing paranoid as she waits in the audience for the announcement. The situation is really uncomfortable and now I hope to discover what her problem is.

Author photo © Linda Ozaki

Reimagine a book as beloved and timeless as Pride and Prejudice? Inconceivable! Curtis Sittenfeld is probably one of the few modern authors self-assured—and talented—enough to try.

And she succeeds, wonderfully. In Eligible, Liz Bennet is a New York City magazine editor on the verge of turning 40. She’s in a dead-end relationship, but she doesn’t know it yet. When her father suffers a health scare, Liz and her beautiful older sister, Jane, decamp to the family home in Cincinnati for the summer to help care for him. 

None of the five Bennet daughters is married—to their mother’s shame—and only Liz and Jane have actual jobs. Kitty and Lydia spend their days at the local CrossFit, and Mary is a perpetual college student.

When Liz is introduced to the handsome but arrogant Fitzwilliam Darcy, a Cincinnati neurosurgeon, she is immediately put off by his arrogance. But Darcy’s friend Chip Bingley, a recent star of a “Bachelor”-like reality TV show, falls for Jane. Liz and Darcy keep crossing paths (literally—they jog the same route), and their hate-hate relationship slowly transforms into something else.

Eligible sparkles with Austen-esque wit and intelligence and is a pure pleasure to read. How did Sittenfeld, the author of four previous novels, including the bestsellers Prep and American Wife, decide to remake a bona fide classic? She was recruited as part of The Austen Project, in which bestselling authors retell Austen stories in a modern way. 

“When someone offers to pay you to spend a few years in the world of Pride and Prejudice, it’s very hard to say no,” Sittenfeld says during a call to her home in St. Louis. 

Sittenfeld is quick to point out that the project is not meant to improve upon the original.

“I definitely see this as an act of homage and admiration, and it’s not like I thought, well, Pride and Prejudice has gotten stale and it falls to me to make it relevant,” she says. “I think Pride and Prejudice is perfect. I understand different people will have different reactions to Eligible, and I’m OK with that.”

Making Austen-era characters seem modern took some planning on Sittenfeld’s part. 

“I tried to think about how the characters act in Pride and Prejudice, and how they spend their time, and to find present-day equivalents,” she explains. “The characters arose out of that. If you were to describe the characters in Pride and Prejudice, you’d probably use the same or similar adjectives to describe their counterparts in Eligible. I wanted them to be recognizable as themselves but also wanted to make it feel fresh.”

“I tried to think about how the characters act in Pride and Prejudice, and how they spend their time, and to find present-day equivalents. . . . I wanted them to be recognizable as themselves but also wanted to make it feel fresh.”

The first modern twist is positioning Bingley as a reality TV star. 

“Pride and Prejudice starts with this bachelor arriving in town. In the present day in a medium-sized Midwestern city, if a new eligible man arrived, how would everyone know he was single?” Sittenfeld says. “The reality show seems like a plausible explanation.”

Secondly, Liz and Jane are independent professionals, twice as old as the original characters. And Liz (gasp) has a sex life.

“Some readers may not like that she’s sexually active,” Sittenfeld says. “She’s 38, and it’s 2013 in the book, so that seems fairly realistic to me. In no way do I consider her to be trashy; it isn’t meant to be a comment on the fact that people’s morals have fallen.

“I have enormous affection for all my characters in general and in Eligible specifically,” she says. “I actually think the way I can be most generous to them is just by liking them. If I as a writer am condescending to my own characters, it makes them unappealing to the reader and doesn’t make them three–dimensional.”

Though she’s a Cincinnati native, Sittenfeld hasn’t lived in her hometown for years and had never set a novel there before.

“I did have to do research,” she says. “It was fun. I was home with my own family. I was visiting my parents for Christmas and literally walking around with my cell phone trying to decide what apartment building Darcy would live in.”

Her brother, P.G. Sittenfeld, a city councilman, kept close tabs on how she wrote about the city.

“My brother is Mr. Cincinnati,” she says with a laugh. “He’s a little protective of the city and wanted to be sure I depicted the city in a flattering way.”

The busy mother of two children, ages 5 and 7, Sittenfeld has become fiercely mindful of her writing time.

“Because I’m lucky to have flexibility in my schedule, that actually means I need to be more careful. In theory, I could have lunch with friends every day. In practice, it means I would never finish a book.”

As a mom, Sittenfeld says she has a whole new respect for reading as a source of pleasure as well as food for thought.

“After I became a parent, I developed a greater appreciation for a book or TV show or movie that is light or fun but still smart,” she says. “Maybe I’m tired at the end of the day and I have half an hour before bed to devote to pure entertainment, so I want something that doesn’t make me feel incredibly depressed. I feel like Eligible is supposed to be that thing for people. There are very few books that are engrossing and smart but not depressing. It was a fun challenge to write a fun, fizzy, but still intelligent book.”

“My other books—I’m proud of them, but I don’t know if ‘fun’ is the first word I would use to describe any of them,” she says. “I feel like this is fun. It’s good to learn to be fun at 40—it’s never too late!”

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.