Lihi Lapid, I WANTED TO BE WONDERFUL: A Novel

[1:29]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow on Instagram zibby owens. Leahy Lapide is the author of I Wanted to Be Wonderful, a novel. And by the way, we are publishing this book because of my last podcast with her, which you can go back and listen to. Leahy Lapide is an author and journalist whose books deal with contemporary women's issues. She is the author of the bestselling novel in Israel, Secrets From Within and On Her Own, a cookbook entitled Leahy Lapide's Favorite Recipes, and a bestselling children's book, The Magic Whisper. Prior to becoming a writer, Lihi was a professional photographer. Educated at the prestigious Kamra Obscura School of Art and Tel Aviv University, she served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a photographer for its Bamahain magazine. She lives in Tel Aviv with her husband, Yair Lapid, the former prime minister of Israel, and their two children. Hi, Lihee. Thanks for coming back on Totally Booked to talk about your new novel. I want it to be wonderful. Congratulations.

[3:05]Lihi Lapid: Thank you. And I wanna thank you for falling in love with this book. I think you read it before our last podcast and and you fell in love with it. I I think it was such a wonderful, amazing surprise for me that you reached out to this book and now it's being published. It's your publishing house and in America it's really great. Thank you. You're

[3:33]Zibby Owens: welcome. Yes. So for those listening, you may have heard my episode with Lihee, when was it? A year ago or so? Not even? Something like that. Even less. Even less. Yeah. We work we work quickly. And I was supposed to be preparing for your other book, but I was like, oh, what's this book? Let me try reading Woman of Valor as my way of prepping for the podcast. And I absolutely, as you said, fell in love with the book, and maybe I'll put a little clip or something in this episode to when I was, like, freaking out about it. And then somehow convinced you to let us have US rights, and now we're bringing it out with a new title called I Wanted to Be Wonderful

[4:10]Lihi Lapid: in The US, and we could not be more thrilled. And I think a new a new a little bit of editing that we did together, all of us, and and and the editor, Kathleen, and and you, and with a lot of thoughts about making it even a bit new, I think. And very different, but with the heart and soul

[4:36]Zibby Owens: of the original book. Yeah. It's Yeah. It's like the book two point o, a new, for the American audience. For those who didn't listen to the other podcast where we discussed that book even more in-depth than perhaps you had wanted at the time, why don't you tell listeners what I Wanted To Be Wonderful is is really about and and the whole journey behind it? I think most of the stories

[4:59]Lihi Lapid: are being told like romantic stories. And at the end, they're getting married and live happily ever after. And the thing that we know as adults, as married people, is that the journey starts there. After you found a great guy, he found a wonderful woman. It can be also men and men and woman and woman. And and at the end, you stay home. Everybody goes to the party and and and now it's real life. It's like becoming a family, moving from being too young adults to being parents. This apartment of yours is suddenly needs to be a home. How do you do it? And I realized that they talk to us a lot about, you know, from dating to falling in love and and and, you know, even empowering women and things like that. But but no one talks about this thing that we need to work at home to be a couple, to be parents, to to see our kids growing up and sometimes they are not so perfect as as we want or as they were supposed to be or how much can we give them and how much it's what they are. And what happened to me was that I was a news photographer, before, before I was a mother. And and motherhood, being a mother, kept me out of being a news photographer because the news photographer needs to go everywhere with a motorbike, which doesn't have place for kids sit and and and to breastfeed every four hours doesn't work with going on assignments and everything. And I lost my job and I needed to find something else. And and the first book that I wrote was about the fact that they told us we can be everything. And as women, if we build a family, we realize that we need to change. We need to slow down. We need to give. We want to give to our kids, to our family. We want to dedicate a lot of time for them, a lot of thoughts, a lot of, I don't know, thinking about them, putting them first place before us. And when I got to this book tour, I wanted to be wonderful. It was already at the point that I struggled and say, wow, wow, wow, I gave up so much. I gave up so much for my man to succeed and to have his career. I gave up so much for my kids. Where am I in all this? And can I say, now it's my turn? Can I save it? So I think that's the situation that I I wrote the book in. Wow.

[8:17]Zibby Owens: Well, I think that raw emotion absolutely finds its way through your characters into the book. And you wrote it in such a unique way, where there are two narratives. One is really you. So if the other half wasn't there, it could have been almost a memoir ish book, you know, with some liberties. And then the other thread is a completely fictitious family, and you braid it together in such an interesting way. And both show us and teach us something very important about motherhood and about marriage. It's not the same story because, of course, we all have very different stories. But by showing the two in parallel until they sort of intersect, you're showing us a lot. You're exposing the underside, if you will, of both marriage and motherhood and what doesn't often get said, not only from the wife's point of view, but also

[9:15]Lihi Lapid: the husband's point of view and those sort of deflated expectations as well. I think one of the things that jumps to my head when I when you talk about the man in the story is this thing that I write there, and it comes from from my life that my husband stands next to the door, and he waits a minute before he opens the door and come back to his home because he doesn't know which woman he will find there. If his wife will be smiling or angry, what things she will have to say against him or with what will he need to struggle. And so so it's it's a bit of of the angle of the man. I do think that I chose it's like it's like a fairy tale. We said, have living happily ever after. So it's it's it's a prince and a princess. And I think most of us call our kids princess and prince and and in in a sweet way. But growing up realizing, okay, I was the princess of my father or I was the prince of my mother. But now I live in this house and no one is not prince and not queen. And and and so it was like they were the thing I was supposed to be. They were the good story of of and even in the good story that they really that they love each other and they want to help each other. She's giving up so much, the princess, since she she is, becoming a mother. And on the other hand, I told my story. I want to tell you something about this book on Behind the Scenes. While I was writing it, I felt I'm exposing my exposing myself too much. That it's too much. It's too personal. It's too real. And I went to my mother-in-law that she's a very famous writer in Israel, Shulamit Alpideh, her name. And I asked her, just for a little advice, and it's a wonderful advice for anyone. She looked at me and she said, when you write a book, I asked her, when I write a book, do I write the whole truth? She looked at me and she said, when you write a book, you write the whole truth, and then you erase a little bit. And it's such an amazing advice because we don't know how much we censor ourselves between our head and and soul and the paper or the computer. We we we take out things because someone will know that it's about him and they will get insulted and someone will be angry that we said it and everything. And this advice allowed me to write everything. I really took the liberty of really, really writing everything, and then I will erase. And when I came to erase, when I read at the end, I said, wow, it's too personal. It's too much. And I erased, erased, and I left with one paragraph that I couldn't. I couldn't take it out because I felt that it's not the truth anymore if I'm taking it out. And if I'm publishing it like that, it's really too much. It's exposing myself too much. And I decided not to publish the book. And it stayed ready, wrapped after after being edited. It stayed for more than a year in my computer and in the publishing house computer, and I didn't publish it. And after more than a year, I sat with my with my husband, my man, and I I told him, it needs to go out. It it needs to be published. I need it it's burning inside of me. And I can read you the paragraph that I was so hesitating about. I come one day to pick up my daughter from kindergarten. Her teacher says that she thinks something is wrong. She doesn't respond like all the other kids. I tell her we paid attention and we already have an exam with the doctor. While waiting for the exam, we are surrounding our daughter, making noise and she doesn't respond, throwing things and making huge noise and she doesn't respond. We start asking everybody that knows things and realize maybe it's not just the ears. At the night before the crucial exam, I hold my husband and he holds me and none of us is falling asleep. And I pray that night, I pray, please let my daughter be deaf because all other possibilities are so much more frightening. I want a deaf child. And I want to say about so that it took me so long to we gathered the whole family and decided that we do publish this book Yael was, I think, 11 or 12. Yael is now 27. She's a young woman with autism. She's not deaf. She doesn't talk. She has classic severe autism. And she changed our lives. And she changed me definitely and the whole family. And in publishing, the book was also talking about it. And and I think that until now, a lot of people are hiding. A lot of people are not talking about it. Some of them just because they don't want people to pity them. Some of them won't believe that their kids and a lot of times it happens that their kids are advancing and and that they can be normal or regular adults. But with Yael, it was the time that we realized it's a journey forever, that she will be special for all her life and need our our support. So it's like this you you call it bridal. Right? Bridal Braided. Novel? Braided. Yep. Braided novel. Yeah. Braided. You called it braided novel, and I think it's exactly that. I could be the princess if my daughter was okay, but at the end, we are all struggling. We all know it. It's like we can have the best husband, house, job and family is something that demands so much of our soul and mind. And so so the book is I think about that. Today's

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[19:39]Lihi Lapid: I remember one time, and maybe that's the essence, and maybe that's why you fell in love with this book. I remember one day that I was I was I was a total wreck. I was, like, devastated. I I I stayed home with my daughter for a few years, and I was, like, giving all all of me to her. And, you know, we are in a in a era that everybody tells us if we'll try hard enough, it will work. And we don't know what to do when we try hard enough, the hardest that we can, and it's not okay. And we can't fix. And sometimes we can't fix things. And realizing that there is something so important in your life that you can't fix is a devastating thing. So I was in Iraq. And one day, it was nighttime, and you said, I wanna talk to you. And he said, listen. It's a journey for for the rest of our lives. And there are other kids here in the family that needs you, and I need you. And you need the strength to to continue because Yael needs you also. And then at the end, said, and this house needs to be a happy home again. And he said that and it was, wow, being happy, having a happy home. And I think that's the essence of of my I'm dealing with the question, how can we continue having our house and our home and our family happy together. And also our marriage, yeah. Which is not easy.

[21:36]Zibby Owens: Well, the way you sort of excavate all of it and process it and show us a path forward that's not necessarily roses and sunshine, that is complicated and could very well go in directions we don't want. I think it's profoundly moving, and the way you write is so beautiful. And I'm just it's just so moving. The way you you tell your stories is so moving. And I wanted to hear more about after you wrote this book, which now is coming out again years later, tell me about the other books you wrote, the other ways you pursued your creative life, and what has happened since. I know there's a movie project. Like, talk about, like, once you got that very deeply personal project out there, how you thought about what you should release next and all of that. I I think

[22:38]Lihi Lapid: Yair, my husband, he told me when I was hesitating and he told me, are you sure you wanna publish this book? Are you sure you have that that that that that the ability to stand in front of what will happen. I thought he's exaggerating, but he didn't. He didn't. Like I said before, not many people talk about being a special parent and talking about if we leave that aside, talking about being married to a very successful successful husband and and trying to find who you are in this world. And my husband was then a a a movies, a TV star, and he had a huge talk show and he was like and I was struggling at home to realize how how can I breastfeed or not? And so Wait. How did you meet your husband? How did I meet him? I was I was a news photographer in the army newspaper, and he was a correspondent in the like, he came to do reserve, and and I I met him. Two people said before we met that we will get married. And and I remember my my boss in the in the newspaper, my commander, someone told him, don't meet them because he's married. And if she will meet him, they will fall in love. I don't know how come, but and then he said, he's being separated from his wife. If he wouldn't, I would never met met them. Let them work together. And so, you know what? I can say another thing that I don't think it's in the book, but I was 20 and I was 25 on the way to be divorced with a two year old kid. And all my friends told me, you are crazy. Get away. Run for your life. You don't need to do it. It's it's it's a problem. Why do you need a stepson in such an early age? I looked at him and I found him amusing and smart. And we are like thirty five years later still. So I'm still the second young wife, like

[25:11]Zibby Owens: Oh, that's funny. Then at some point, what happened when he went into politics? Did you want that to happen? Was that, like, a team decision?

[25:22]Lihi Lapid: You know, when we talk about it now in in in our talk, so I think that, like, we gathered the family when we decided we wanted to tell them or to tell them and ask their opinion about publishing the book that will expose the whole family. And we gathered everybody. And so few years later, we gathered everybody, and Yair said, I wanna go to politics, and and it will change everything here. I can say that maybe because Yair was very famous before, maybe because his father was a public figure. We kind of succeeded in having our house clean from all the noise. Mhmm. It's something that I want to tell myself because I I know that our kids are struggling with that. And it's not easy. You know, many, many times when they talk about it, they say, Oh, you know, I met this girl or I met this. She doesn't know whose son I am. And she's like, and so I don't know. It's actually it's so many years that Jaeger is a public figure. I I I do say that I'm really into his journey. I'm really fighting for him to succeed. I'm not and if you know, when you read the book, it's kind of there even though he wasn't in politics yet, but we were dealing with these issues. There are so many I don't think there's a type of a politician's wife. Okay? And and even when I was the wife of the prime minister, it was like, there's no textbook about how you do it. And and you need to trust yourself. It was a huge privilege to be and to to to serve as as the wife of the prime minister. It was very it wasn't long, but it was very quick the moment it happened. But I'm I'm totally when whenever there is elections, I stop everything and I stand outside the mall and I'm heading leaflets and I'm telling Vow to my husband, he's the best, he's the best, he's the one most wonderful. So it made the whole family, we're sharing it, we're talking about it a lot, but our kids chose not to be in Twitter and not to not to be part of the whole thing. Yael of course is different. But also Yael, like when we have a campaign bus, she comes with us in the campaign bus and and she helps and she sees her father's pictures. So it's weird for her, but she's I think Yael understands much more than we thought. She now started writing a little bit with witches and magic. So I think besides the whole book talking about really being married to a successful man, building a family, wanting to succeed by yourself and be the person you wanted to be, it was very, very strong. And it is a book that until now, women that realize that they are special mothers really embrace this book to their hearts.

[29:00]Zibby Owens: Wow. Well, thank you for sharing all of that. I do think it's although other people's spouses may not succeed on the scale of yours, I think when you start out and you don't know where your life is going with your spouse or where their life is going, who's gonna be more successful, at which time, when, and of course things can go back and forth. But I think navigating that and all the stuff with the kids, I mean, really a miracle that anybody stays married. Yeah.

[29:29]Lihi Lapid: Actually, it is. It demands a lot of yeah. A lot of love, I think. Yes. But yeah. You know, I I was thinking about it not long ago that if I knew what I know now, if I knew then what I know now, when the kids were so small, and I felt that everything I worked for, everything I studied, everything. And at the end, I'm just with diapers and staying at the playground with the swing. And I'm like, why did I study? Why did I tried so hard? And if someone would take me and say, look, twenty five years from now, you'll have a book being published in The United States by someone that really loved it, that you will be able to travel and your daughter can wait, would be able to wait for you and not be totally destroyed from the fact that where are you? And if someone would tell me, so so I do want to say it's a bumpy road having small kids, trying to make it you and him. After a while, suddenly they're growing up. And then you have time really to fulfill so many dreams and so many things. So in that sense, I think that men are doing things step by step, like the book. And women, I call us kangaroos because we do something and then we're really into it, into mother womb and then we have a huge jump and then we do something else and we do it wonderful, wonderful. And then we do another jump.

[31:27]Zibby Owens: I love that. Oh my gosh. Well, Leahy, I could talk to you for hours. I'm so excited that we have so many events that we're doing together that you're going to be doing in The States around the book and everything. Many more opportunities for conversation, but thank you so much for coming on today. And I'm just so honored to be on this journey with you. So thank you.

[31:47]Lihi Lapid: And thank you for being my publisher really and for choosing this book. Wow, it's a wonderful gift for me. Thank you. Look chose me. Let's say it that

[31:58]Zibby Owens: Okay. Okay. Alright. Bye, Leahy. Talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.