Anna Quindlen’s Book Club

[1:40]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 me on Instagram at zibby owens. Anna Quinlan is back on the podcast talking about More Than Enough, a novel. I did two live events with her recently, both at the Stryker Center and at Totally Book Live. She has been my book club pig. She has been someone I've idolized for many years and have become friendly with, which is such a joy. And now we get to talk about more than enough, which is absolutely lovely and touches on themes like love and loss, friendship, book clubs, and how to really appreciate the people in our lives while they're still here. If you don't know about Anna Quinlan, which you must, she's a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self help bestseller lists. Some of her books include Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue, Blessings, Rise and Shine, Every Last One, Still Life with Breadcrumbs, and Miller's Valley. Her memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, was a number one New York Times bestseller, and her book, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, has sold more than a million copies. Her book, After Annie, was my book club pick. While she was a journalist at the New York Times, she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections of essays, which I loved, called Living Out Loud and Thinking Out Loud. Her Newsweek columns were collected in loud and clear. And Anna, thank you for coming on the show again, for doing the live events with me, and for being such an ally in a crazy world. Welcome to Totally Booked Live at the Whitby. I'm so excited to be here with Anna Quinlan, who's here to talk about More Than Enough. Welcome. I actually just interviewed Anna about this book for the Temple Emanuel Stryker Center earlier this week, so we're gonna have a brand new conversation about it. Right? Gonna just were supposed to do it in person, but the snow intervened.

[4:12]Anna Quindlen: Yes. So we had a great time with about 1,800 people online. Yeah. So

[4:18]Zibby Owens: this is like nothing.

[4:20]Anna Quindlen: No, but these are real folks. That's fantastic. Okay. Anna, tell us about this book. More than enough. Well, it's the story of Polly Goodman who is in her early forties and is an English teacher at a girls school in New York City. And she tells the story. It's a first person novel. And her three closest friends were the members of her book club. I should pause here to mention the specifics of the book club. They pick the book, they buy the book, but they are not allowed to read the book. That's the deal with this book club because early on, one of their members said, I'm never reading the book. And also many book clubs on tour have said to me, well, one member has taken me aside and said of one of her friends, she never really reads the book. So that's where I got the idea.

[5:16]Zibby Owens: Her brother many people here are in a book club?

[5:20]Anna Quindlen: Okay. How many people here are not in a book club?

[5:24]Zibby Owens: Well, you are now. Do you read the book? Who who yes? Do you read the book? Okay. They read the books. Well Now, for the people who aren't in a book club, you can now just start buying the books.

[5:36]Anna Quindlen: Anyhow, her her three closest friends from the book club buy her one of those DNA kits, as they say it's a goof, but Polly actually takes it and discovers that there are things in her family that she didn't know about. And that sort of was the initial impulse of the book and then it sort of turned into something else, something that I write about all the time. It turned into a novel about family and the complications of family

[6:08]Zibby Owens: and about female friendship and how the bedrock of so many of our lives are our female friends. See how this is expertly linked to the ones from this morning? We got the teaching, we got the friendship. I didn't do that on purpose. I wish I did. Okay. Let's start with the friendship of the women in this book club and how they lift each other up. How did you figure out who these characters were, all the different things that happened within the group, the illness, like just how did you figure all that out? Or did it just happen as you started plotting? Oh, I have such a problem with this question because

[6:46]Anna Quindlen: I don't ever want to make what I do seem easy or natural because it's never easy and it doesn't feel at all natural. But at some level it just kind of happens. I mean, I always start thinking about the protagonist. So I start fleshing her out in my mind. And the more I know about her, the more I know about the kind of people who'll be her friends and the kind of family she'll have and the birth order that she has and the profession that she has. You know, sometimes people say to me, Her name's Polly Goodman. Did I choose that because she's the daughter of Jack Goodman, who is in fact a good man? The answer is my characters come with their names. From the moment I started thinking about her, I knew her name was Polly Goodman and I have no idea why. And I know, again, this makes it either seem easy or crazy. And the easy part is not true. Who knows about the crazy part? So it's a weird subconscious process writing fiction because I'm not a particularly plot driven writer and, in terms of style, that's been baked in for so many years that I scarcely think about it. I'm completely character driven, and the characters sort of come to me over time. I love how in this one there is more of a highlight on the adult sibling relationship,

[8:21]Zibby Owens: particularly between Polly and her brother. I have a brother and so I just was seeing shades of that. Talk a little bit about that and having Polly as daughter, sister, mother, the whole shebang.

[8:36]Anna Quindlen: It's so interesting that Well, you mentioned not mother, but, you know. So as you know, there's a fairly long runway between having a finished manuscript of a book and having an actual book. It's usually between twelve and eighteen months most of the time. So, this book has been locked and loaded for a while and I started another one. Now, this makes me sound like I'm driven. I'm the least driven person you'll ever meet. But what happened was this was all locked and loaded and I said to myself, I'm going to take the summer off. It was the best feeling. I'm going to take the summer off. I'm just going to read stuff and walk around the pond and hang out with the Labrador and make meals when the kids come. And then about two weeks in, like, these people started to appear in my mind and I and I literally thought to myself, stay there until October. I'm taking this summer off. And about two weeks later I started writing again. And it's three adult siblings, two brothers and a sister, who are planning their mother's eightieth birthday party as a surprise. And it really goes into the sibling relationship and also that pinball ping ping of each sibling against the mother and the father and then how that makes the other siblings feel, you know, that kind of thing. And maybe it was inspired by the fact that Polly and Garrison have such a great relationship in this book. And one of the reasons they have such a great relationship is because she takes his counsel seriously. So when the DNA thing looks like it's gonna turn into something, he's the first person that she goes to and he tells her that this is nonsense and that there's obviously been a mistake and and over the the year of the book, he becomes more and more concerned that somehow this has become important to her because he's not as important to her as he'd like to be. And that's where the title comes from. Near the end of the book, he's concerned about that and she says, Oh, Gary, you're so much more than enough. And I think that that's true of the siblings who really help and support us and who sometimes drive us crazy, and who sometimes we want to ignore, but who have been with us from the very beginning. I mean, except for our parents, they're the only people who have and there's a power to that relationship that's so important.

[11:17]Zibby Owens: I should know this, but tell us about your siblings. I'm the oldest of five.

[11:23]Anna Quindlen: If you look up oldest child in the dictionary, my picture is right there. That's the kind of person I But you said you weren't driven, so I don't know. I'm an eldest daughter too. I'm the oldest of five. I have three brothers and then the youngest is my sister who is ten years younger than I am. And I have kind of a peculiar kind of sibling relationship because I was kind of an alternate parent to my siblings from my teen years on. But again, my brother Bob, who is so wonderful and is less than a year younger than I am, at one point said to me, Anna, we're grown ups now. You don't have to do that anymore. Aw. And you know, that's the kind of guy Garrison is to Polly too. He will always have her back. I mean, it's like parenting. You're not supposed to stop just because everybody gets older. Yeah, but when you're parenting you need to change when everybody gets older and maybe back off a little bit when everybody gets older. I mean, I'm not planning on backing off. Well, believe me, when you have a 42, a 40 and a 37 year old, your plans will not be as important as theirs. Is anyone else in your family and the siblings a writer? No. But I am from a very large Irish Catholic family that told stories all the time. And one of the things that was so noticeable was that the stories got better and better and different and more richly ornamented and it sort of made me think, well, yeah, there are facts and then there are facts with ruffles. I mean, and so, I really feel like growing up, there weren't writers but there were storytellers and the writers were all on the shelves. I mean, I started reading when I was really little and, I sort of felt like it was a time and a place where there really was no room for a person like me. I mean, my career choices were either mom or none and I didn't think either of those would suit my skill set. And so what I found in books was kind of my real ancestral home. I always felt that way. Amazing. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[16:36]Zibby Owens: And with your siblings, what was it like? I know we've spoken a little bit, but becoming a surrogate parent at such a young age yourself, how did that change things? What was that like in your career? Oh, it was horrible. I mean, you know, nobody

[16:50]Anna Quindlen: should ever be placed in a position where they have to do it even though a lot of women and girls are placed in the position where they have to do it. And it changes the relationship in that to some extent you have power that they don't have. But luckily it sort of smoothed itself out over the years. But I remember when my daughter was a toddler and my sister was coming around, my daughter was really bothered by her and I realized that it was because Maria couldn't figure out whether I was Teresa's sister or Teresa's mom, which is what happens when, you know, you're 19 and your sister's eight and, you know, all hell breaks loose. Oh my gosh. Well, you have more than enough material

[17:35]Zibby Owens: to mine for your for your work as well. Talk a little bit more about the DNA piece of the story. You found yourself fascinated. You didn't realize so many people had these surprises come up. It's now more and more frequent. It affects all the relationships in the family, obviously, as one person tries to find out the the hidden you know, pull the hidden threads. I didn't expect to encounter it in real life.

[18:04]Anna Quindlen: And I was doing a signing the other night and this woman came up and I signed for her and she went to turn away and she turned back to me and said, I have a pop up nephew. And I thought, I wish I had heard that term before I finished this book, a pop up nephew. But it goes to a deeper question which is, what does DNA really mean? Is blood thicker than water? And, you know, part of the answer to that is embedded in her friendship with these three women who are her created family. I mean, she doesn't have any sisters, but she does. She has three sisters to whom she's very, very close. They just don't happen to be related by blood. And so I think the results of these tests and how people feel about them reveal the fact that sometimes it's relationships that make family and not DNA that makes family. And I think that's a thread throughout the book that the DNA test becomes very important to Polly in a variety of ways in part because she has some thorny family relationships, but ultimately it's a family she's embraced and the family that she's built that really is the bedrock of her life.

[19:25]Zibby Owens: Yeah. Talk a little bit about Polly's mom because that's a complicated relationship. Yes, very complicated.

[19:30]Anna Quindlen: And actually, I realized as I was working on the book, I tend to write novels in which the mother and daughter have a very positive, not necessarily uncomplicated, but warm relationship in in After Annie, for example, or in Miller's Valley. And I realized that it isn't since One True Thing that I've written a novel in which the mother and daughter have kind of this kind of relationship. But the difference between when I was writing One True Thing, which is very much told from the point of view of Ellen Golden, who's the daughter, observing her mother, Kate, who is dying of cancer. The difference is that I'm very sympathetic to Polly's mother, Mary Goodman, because she's very much of my generation. She's around my age and she's done the thing that some women of my generation did, which is to go back to school, to get a terrific job as a lawyer, to eventually become a judge, a very esteemed judge. And Polly can't quite articulate the fact that that's one of the reasons why she resents her mother. They're very different people and that's part of the push and pull, but part of it is because of that. And there's that moment when Polly is talking to her sister-in-law, Emily, who's a therapist and is really hilarious and is the one who sort of says the thing that most people won't say. Polly, for example, very much wants to have children but hasn't so far been able to. Emily has three of them and she's watching them like raise hell on the beach and says to Polly, Oh, it's so magical. Isn't it magical about motherhood? But Polly says to her about her mother, I felt that maybe Garrison and I weren't enough for her. And Emily says, What if you weren't? You know, and it raises that question about how motherhood gets ahold of you in your life. You know, will it be the only thing? Will it be the biggest thing? Will it be among your things? There's all different kinds of ways to be a mother, to see yourself as a mother. And Polly hasn't had that experience yet, but at some level she feels like she wasn't enough for her own mother in a way that has really gotten under her skin. And what kind of mother do you feel like you have been? Oof. I gave it my best shot every day. But I do have to say, you know, you disappear into this world. If you don't, then the book's a failure because you're asking the reader to disappear into this world. And so sometimes when I was writing, I was pretty abstracted, you know. I once said in public while my kids were there that I knocked off writing it every day when I was still doing a column at 02:30 so that by the time I got to school pickup at 03:00, my mind had shifted completely from writer person to mother person. And as I said this, I looked at my three kids and they had such expressions of incredulity on their faces that I realized I had totally blown it on on. So, but but you know, the bottom line is I have these three people who are fantastic humans and I think that's the best you can say to yourself. Three people that I would wanna hang out with even if I wasn't related to them. Aw. That's so nice. I love that. Yeah. Let's give that.

[23:38]Zibby Owens: Gonna applaud the three humans. I am always struck by how funny you are about writing and how you

[23:48]Anna Quindlen: always make it sound You mean about how much I hate it? Yes. Yes.

[23:52]Zibby Owens: You can't possibly hate it as much as you say because you keep doing it.

[23:57]Anna Quindlen: I have one skill set. I have bills to pay. No, no. Look, I don't mean to denigrate what I do that way except that people talk all the time about inspiration and passion and so on and so forth And all of those things are true, but for all of us at a certain level, this is how we make a living. And it's really important not to lose sight of that because I think there are sometimes when you don't feel like pushing the rock uphill, when you just think, I have a family, I have these homes, I have this Labrador who wants to eat twice a day. Actually, she wants to eat all the time, but twice a day is how much I feed her. So that there's this weird balance in what I do and what you do between, I suppose, kind of an art, a craft and a job that that you sort of have to balance all the time. And the reason that I say I hate writing and I and every day I would prefer not to trudge to that table with that laptop is because, as I say to students all the time, and this is so important talking to kids who are doubting themselves all the time, Writing is not an exercise in putting words together. Writing is an exercise in confidence so that every time you're putting the words together you have to look at them and say, This is good. I have something to say. People should pay attention to it. And that's a huge leap to make constantly. And I emphasize that to kids because it makes it makes clear what I'm asking of them. And the other thing that I do with kids that's so important is I now have a new editor for the first time in my professional life, which is a little challenging for me, but I think it's going to be great. But my old editor used to edit on paper, so I have paper manuscripts and I always try to take one to a high school or college because there is stuff written all over them and I want students to understand that if they get back a paper that has writing all over it, it doesn't mean they can't write because I get back one every time. It means they can write better. And that's so important to communicate to them because I think most of them look at red marks on the page and think, I'm not good at this. And I want them to know that someone who is considered good at this gets all the red marks on the page.

[26:37]Zibby Owens: Amazing. When you think about your career, I know you said something last time you were here a couple years ago about the manuscripts you leave in your kids' closets and the legacy of that. Can you just say that again because it made me cry? Well, there was that time I pulled together first editions of all of the books and put a tote bag in each of their closets with first editions of all of the books.

[27:04]Anna Quindlen: And Christopher, who's my most puckish child, my second child who's a young adult novelist, he's the one who used to call a short guide to a happy life, a short guide to a big tuition check, came to me and said, What's the deal with the books? And I said, Well, I just really felt like, you know, you all ought and he sort of looked at me skeptically and then I realized, you know, Martin Amos once said to Salman Rushdie allegedly, What you want is to look at a shelf and from here to here, it's you. Okay? If I look at a shelf now, from here to here, it's me. But more important, from here to here, when I'm gone, if my children want to access me, they would all argue that there is an omnipresent voice in their heads which will not shut up even after death, but they can also pull any of those books out and over and over again they can be told who I was and what I really cared about, and that's important to me. Love that. Anna, congratulations on more than enough. Thank you so much for being here today. And, Sabine, thank you, first of all, for how supportive you've been of my work, but also what a gift you've been to readers in terms of producing books, producing bookstores, producing podcasts. You just really you've been such a friend at such an enormous level to readers. Thank you. Thank

[28:43]Zibby Owens: you for listening to Totally Booked with Sibby, 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 Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.