Poured Over: Eleanor Brown on Any Other Family
“I just had so many questions about adoption and motherhood. And you know, you’ve read my books, you know that I’m very interested in what makes a family and how does our family influence us. And that’s all part of this book, too.” From her sparkling debut, The Weird Sisters, to her latest, Any Other Family, Eleanor Brown writes big-hearted novels with hopeful endings about family and finding ourselves. She joins us on the show to talk about the story behind her latest novel, how questions and character drive her novels, capturing children’s voices on the page, how she approaches the writing process, what she’s been reading and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.
Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.
Featured Titles (episode)
Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown
The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian
The Foundling by Ann Leary
Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley
On Writing by Stephen King
Featured Titles (TBR Topoff)
Run by Ann Patchett
The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
Full transcript for this episode:
B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and I am so happy to see Eleanor Brown’s face this week, she is exactly the person I need to see. Any Other Family is out now. But you may know her from the B&N Discover pick The Weird Sisters, which was more than a minute ago. And then there was also The Light of Paris. And then there was the anthology set in Paris. But we are going to talk about one of the best books I’ve read this year. It is hilarious. It is big hearted. I love these women, I love their kids, I love their house, I love everything about this book. And I’m gonna let you set it up, though, I wonder because I have no connection to this book, other than you wrote it, and I loved it. And I think this is going to be really important when people hear what it’s about.
Eleanor Brown: I hope so. Um, so thank you so much for having me. So here’s the short the short pitch: Any Other Family is the story of three sets of parents who become a family of their own when they adopt biological siblings. They are on what one of them likes to call the first annual family vacation, the others aren’t so sure, where they’re going to be in a house together for two weeks, all the parents and all the kids and they get a call from the children’s birth mother saying that she’s pregnant again. And she wants them to find the parents for this child.
B&N: So when did this novel start for you?
EB: I think this novel started for me on February 15, 2018, when I was watching the Olympics with my husband, and I got a phone call from my OBGYN. And she said, Hey, listen, I had a woman come in yesterday for her annual exam. And it turns out, she’s six months pregnant, and she wants to make a plan for adoption. Do you want a baby? This was not a call I was expecting. But we were just sort of launched into this world of adoption and adoptive parenting. And you know, the way that I write my books is that I come with questions. So with this book, I just had so many questions about adoption and motherhood. And you know, you’ve read my books, you know that I’m very interested in what makes a family and how does our family influence us. And that’s all part of this book, too. So I just had all these questions, and I give them to the characters. So I created this family. And I said, you figure it out, because I can’t do it.
B&N: One of the things I love about your novels too, though, is that anyone can have a coming of age, you don’t have to be a kid, you don’t have to be a teenager, you don’t have to be a young adult. Anyone can work through where they need to be. And we’ve got three women who are really the heart of the story. There’s Tabitha, there’s Ginger, and there’s Elizabeth. And I like to think of Tabitha is sort of the bossy big sister. And Ginger is kind of a little passive, but she’s a little more sensible. And Elizabeth has some growing up to do. And she’s a little overwhelmed, because she has an infant and she was not fully prepared for what that means. And for some of us who are very happy to be aunties, Elizabeth may have proved out some stuff for us. But can we talk about how these women came to you and how you figured out that they were going to be able to tell this story that you hadn’t figured out how to tell?
EB: That’s a really good question. So I think, if we go back to The Weird Sisters, I’m very interested in family dynamics. I’m very interested in birth order. And like you said, there is a little bit of that birth order structure happening here. Even though these women are not actually sisters, they kind of are sisters. They say they’re only two stories, right? Like, you go on a journey or a stranger comes to town, right? So I think I like to squish those together, I really liked the ship of full story, I’m gonna put all these people together. And so at that point, you just kind of have to ask yourself, like, who’s gonna drive each other the most crazy. One of the things I think I thought about was the way that we bring our personal baggage to parenting. You don’t automatically become just like when you turn 18, you don’t automatically become an adult and figure everything out. Right? When you become a parent, you don’t automatically become an a whole, unbroken, competent person, you’re still the same hot mess that you always were, you know, so you have Tabitha who comes from this background where she was an only child and she was a very lonely only right, not all children are like that but she was. So she has determined that this is going to be like a big happy family. And then there’s Ginger, who had a little more chaotic of a childhood and so she really wants to keep everybody at arm’s length. And you can guess how Tabitha feels about that. And then Elizabeth, who as you mentioned, for multiple reasons is just completely overwhelmed by motherhood and maybe a little bit surprised and disappointed by it, you know, this thing that you’ve hungered after for so long, and then all of a sudden, you actually have a little person you have to take care of. That’s a little overwhelming. So, it’s kind of like who is going to cause each other the most problems. So that was kind of how I set up how they were going to come into conflict with each other.
B&N: And I will say, it’s fun. I mean, they’re all piled into a big house and Tabitha’s husband Perry’s with them. And Elizabeth’s husband, John is with them. And Ginger is a single mom, and she’s doing fine as a single mom, her dynamic with her fellow mom, Tabitha, and Elizabeth is really interesting, because she does sort of see both of their points of view. But then, occasionally will diminish her own simply because it’s easier. I mean, it’s classic middle child stuff.
EB: So middle child, right. I’m gonna be haunted like that forever. Yeah, she’s, she’s kind of the peacemaker, although she would never define herself that way. But it’s just so exhausting. And one of the things that you know, that I kind of thought about a lot when I was writing this book, and before I came into it, one of the things I want people to take away from it is adoptive families are just like any other family, right? Family is complicated. This family is no different just because they are not genetically related. And so yeah, sometimes you just have to kind of grit your teeth and say, I’m gonna pick my battles. And this is not the battle I’m gonna fight if we’re all going to be trapped in the house together for two weeks.
B&N: I’m a big believer in found family, I think you can find so much joy in making your own way when you need to. But did one of the women show up first? Or did they sort of show up as a contingent you sort of knew? I don’t want to really lean on the phrase archetype, but you sort of did know that you needed representations of these different POVs. But did someone show up before the others?
EB: That is a good question. I think Tabitha showed up first. Because, you know, she’s in charge of everything in Sharon’s everything. And I think she, you know, people with The Weird Sisters, people would always ask me, which sister was me? And I would always say, they’re all me, right? Because they are. And it’s very much the same with these three women. But Tabitha, I think was maybe the part of motherhood that I was wrestling with that like Pinterest mom, perfect, controlling, I have to get my child every wonderful experience, you know, and everything else to be amazing. So maybe that’s why she showed up first. And then Elizabeth showed up, I think after that, because you know, one of the things that is tied very tightly to adoption, although this is not the story of every adoptive parent. One of the things that is tied very tightly is fertility issue, right. And that’s something that Elizabeth deals with, and so, I knew I wanted to sort of find some expression with that. Ginger, I wrestled with for a long time. Kind of like what was her issue she had, she had a sort of new boyfriend’s like first serious relationship very late in her life kind of showed up for a while. And then he had to go sorry. RIP. Nice, man. I don’t remember what your name was. So yeah, that’s kind of the order they came to me.
B&N: Let’s step back from them for a second and look at the siblings. There’s Phoebe. There’s a set of twins, Taylor and Tate. And then there’s also an infant, Violet. So Violet, she has more to do less to say. The twins have quite a lot to do and say. And Phoebe seems to say more because she is the oldest. So can we just talk about these kids for a second and how they ended up with their respective parents.
EB: So, what happened was they were being raised by their birth mother’s mother, so their grandmother, and she, she died somewhat suddenly, the kids were going into foster care, which is what happens their birth mother was not ready to parent she was not comfortable with it. And so Phoebe knew Ginger. Ginger was a volunteer to school. And so she basically requested that ginger, be her be her mom. And then Tabitha and Perry had been looking to adopt and they were willing to take on twins, which not everybody is willing to do. And then Elizabeth and John, I won’t to tell the story of how they come into the family because I kind of love that story. And I walked over it. Well, they read it, but they come in later. And I gotta tell you, I was super reluctant about the kids for a couple of reasons. One, okay, but you but I feel like kids are so hard to nail in fiction. Like it’s so hard to get a good voice for them. They either sound too young or too old. They don’t sound real. And also, what is it that performer said? You never act, you never perform with kids or dogs because they always steal the stage. So, they can eat up a lot of space. And there’s nine characters in this book, right? Just this family is nine character, so it was a little nervous about it. But yeah, so Phoebe is kind of on the border of tweenhood. So she is sort of wrestling with some issues. The twins are younger. And so they do have questions, but mostly they are just still that young kind of force of nature, that tornado that kids are kind of, you know, first grade. So Phoebe is really the one who I think articulates most but the twins have questions too, especially when they find out their birth is mother again, and again. They have questions about this, as kids who have been adopted, do have questions about their family.
B&N: And it’s interesting to see the parents concerns, I mean, more specifically, the mothers concerns because I will say Perry is possibly one of the most relaxed normal dads in fiction. John’s finding his way and that’s okay. But you know, Perry is just kind of like that dad, where just like, oh, I don’t have to worry like, everything’s fine.
EB: Well, if you were married to Tabitha, you wouldn’t have to worry because it would all be taken care of.
B&N: And that’s exactly it. But these kids too, they do represent in a lot of ways their parents concerns her parents fears about themselves, not necessarily about the tiny. I mean, the tiny people seem fine. Granted, it’s fiction, but they do all seem fine. And in the grand scheme of things, they have people who love them, and feed them and clothe them and raise them and all of that, but it’s interesting to see how these women are sort of projecting their own stuff into the worlds of the tiny people.
EB: Right? Well, this is what we do. As parents and as adults, I think generally, we have some lens that we see the world through. And we just bestow that on our children. And it’s funny because you know, especially, we feel like we’re going to resolve all the issues, right? Like everything that I didn’t have as a child I’m going to ensure my child has, but that’s almost a way of guaranteeing that they’re going to have that issue. And so that absolutely comes out. You know, Tabitha’s control. Ginger’s also got control issues, but in a very different way. And I think it’s a little early to see what’s going to happen with Violet, you know, kind of walking around with Elizabeth’s issues. But I do think about that. And then the other thing that happens here is that because they are family and not family, they’re kind of parenting each other’s children, right, and thrusting their own issues onto the kids. And I’m sure you know, if I gave this book to my therapist, she would have all kinds of things to point out about how they’re, they’re manifesting my issues on these poor children.
B&N: But it’s fiction. It’s okay, we can work these things through. But I do want to talk about the structure because it’s so obvious this story moves so fluidly forward. And it’s great it is it is actually a domestic page turner, even though no one nothing bad happens. It’s just, I was really, really stuck in the story and all of the best ways. But it’s pretty clear that each woman needed to tell her own peace. But did you know you were going to work with this particular structure? How were you thinking about it when you sat down to start the book?
EB: Well, I did know that I was going to tell it in the structure. It’s funny. So just to kind of like go writerly for a second. I wrote this book, I read this book in Scrivener. And so those people who are not familiar, if you write in a Word document, right, you’re writing this sort of like long linear thing. Scrivener has a view where you’re kind of looking at the contents over on the left hand side. Now that’s fabulous if you’re writing a novel, because you can jump back and forth, you can move things around really easily. But one of the things I realized when I was writing this book was that it also sort of puts your mind in this place where things are discrete. There are discrete little parts. And it made me wonder is the next project I started I actually I wrote it in Word. Sorry, there’s my cat again. I wrote it in Word because I wanted kind of that that linear flow. So I wonder when I think back on it now, had I been using different software, if I were a writer who has legible handwriting, which I am not, and I were writing by hand, how would this have worked differently, but it was very important to me that each of these women because they come from such different backgrounds, they have such different views of motherhood and parenting. That is very important to me that they each get a voice. So it’s it’s third person, but it’s alternating perspectives, and I did try to get very, very close to them. So you know, Elizabeth, I gave her my sense of humor. So she’s kind of the smart aleck one and you’ll hear that in the chapters. And yeah, I kind of set it out that way.
B&N: But you do break up each of these chapters with the stories for families who are looking to adopt?
EB: So you know, as I mentioned, the children’s birth mother in this book asks this family to find parents for this child that she’s expecting, because she is still not comfortable parenting. So what I did was I decided to give kind of those a voice, because one of the things that happened was, you know, we have an open adoption, a very open adoption with our son’s birth family, his entire birth family, not just his birth parents. And as I would talk to people about that, I got very strange, shocked reactions. And also just people sort of make a lot of assumptions, kind of based on their own experiences or on popular culture. And I really wanted to open up, that was really, the purpose of this book is like, let’s open up the conversation about adoption and adoptive families. Let’s talk about all the ways in which this looks different. And I know there’s a phrase and I think maybe Elizabeth talks about this in the book, or somebody talks about this in the book, like just adopt, why don’t you just adopt, as though it’s like an easy thing to do, you just go down to the baby store on the corner and pick out a baby. And it’s so much more complicated than that. For everybody involved, right for the for the biological family, for hopeful adoptive parents, for adoptive parents, and, of course, absolutely for the adoptees on many, many levels. So I sort of wanted to give voice and I just generated this huge list of reasons people come to adoption. And my hope is that when people read it, they will have strong opinions one way or the other about whether these little glimpses they get of people, whether they think these people would be good parents or the right parents. And I think that reveals a lot about the way we think about adoption, you know, when we kind of make those choices.
B&N: And I appreciated Sunny, who is the family’s social worker, she’s assigned to the children, the children are her priority. But it’s clear that she likes these women, she likes their husband, she likes everything about this weird little setup, but and when I say weird, I should say unconventional, that’s it’s just I have The Weird Sisters stuck in my head. Because I can’t think of you separate from that novel. And I realized it was your debut. It was a while ago, I mean, but I still, you know, we came home because we had no choice. Let’s talk about Sunny for a second because you do need someone who knows this family, who’s a little reserved, and a little pullback, but also understands who they are and what they’re trying to do. So when did she sort of show up and the narrative for you?
EB: She showed up very early on, and she was somebody who, because that is part of your life, if you are going through the adoptive process, you know, you’re going to have social workers of some kind involved with you because these, these kids, the older kids were adopted by foster care, absolutely their social workers involved. And it’s a very interesting dynamic, right? Because you know, if you have, if you’re going to have biological kids, you just have the right nobody comes to your house and checks whether you have fire extinguishers and looks at three years of financial statements and asks you deeply personal questions about your sex life. And that’s what happens when you adopt. And that’s not to say that it’s not appropriate, but it’s just like, they are intimately involved with your life and the life of the children. And so I wanted that, absolutely to be part of this. And also, this question of found family and the question of like, one of the things I think about my son is that he is so lucky that from the second we found out he existed, he has had more people who love him than some people do in their whole life. And that’s just such a blessing. And so that’s part of what Sunny does here too. Like, she genuinely enjoys her job. And that’s a hard job to do. She loves these kids. And she, I think sees everybody for who they are because she has that objective perspective. So she can call them on their issues the way they can’t.
B&N: She has a really excellent exchange with ginger. And by the end of it ginger is like, oh, and it’s just it’s done in a really loving but smart way. And it’s clearly it’s just it’s nice to be able to see outside of these folks for just a minute, in a way that isn’t just bound by family. I mean, Elizabeth has a very big family. John has a very big traditional family. And so just to be able to see this other perspective is just really kind of a treat. But Did anything surprise you while you’re writing Any Other Family?
EB: You know,this isn’t a funny question to ask because like this was my COVID novel. I wrote this in 2020. So that whole year is kind of is kind of a blur. I don’t think so because I’d like I said, I come to novels with questions. And by the end, I don’t walk away with answers, right? It would be really nice if I walked away from this book and was like, I can totally explain adoption and parenting now, and motherhood. I can’t I think I walk away having made peace with things. And so I think that’s where I walked away from it, you know? And really, I was like, I’m gonna write this novel, and I’m gonna explain adoption and adoptive families to everybody. No, you can’t do that. Because adoptive families, like any other family are deeply complicated. And every one is different. Right? And, so I don’t think that anything’s surprised me, really. But maybe the surprise was that I didn’t have it all figured out. Shocker. Eleanor, you didn’t have it all figured out.
B&N: Do you have a favorite moment, though?
EB: Gosh, I have a bunch. Elizabeth, kind of how she gets drawn into the family is a favorite moment. Because it’s just the way life works. There’s a moment toward the end when the three mothers are together with the kids. And I don’t want to talk too much about it. But there’s like almost a little bit of role switching going on because they know each other better. And they know themselves better now. So I think that’s a favorite moment. Oh, and there’s a really great game of would you rather around the dinner table, partway through the book that I’m also very fond of. That was probably my favorite scene to write.
B&N: It is very funny. You know, tiny people will come up with the grossest things. But if you get the adults to play along, yeah, the gross just that moment is very, very funny. But let’s get back for a second. Let’s talk about you as a writer and how we got here. I mean, The Weird Sisters, remind me when that pubbed? It’s been a minute.
EB: 2011. Yeah.
B&N: All right. So January 2011, we’ve got the Weird Sisters. And then light in Paris was what 15 or 16.
EB: 2016.
B&N: Okay, 16. So, you know, you’ve got this nice cadence. The first novel comes out, you’ve written in a very close sort of first person plural, which everyone loves. I mean, that is one of the joys of reading The Weird Sisters without a doubt. And then you go slightly historical on us in the next book, which I had not been totally expecting, loved it, but had not been totally expected. And now back, here we are in the present day, looking at family again. So when do you know your idea is the book?
EB: Oh, gosh, this is such a complicated question. Because I say that I write fat five bad books for every good one, like I did not publish, I didn’t finish writing The Weird Sisters and immediately start writing The Light of Paris, there are multiple books in between those. And there are lots of reasons for that. I think one of my flaws as a writer, or maybe a flaw as an author, is that I’m a very forceful person. And so I just tend to think that I can make anything happen. Um, so if I have a book that’s not working, I just continue to live in denial about it, you know, for forever, but no, I’m gonna make this happen. Even though it’s terrible, nobody wants to read it. You know, I think both The Light of Paris and this have this element of the mystical to them in the wind and the way that they came to me. So The Light of Paris is half based on my grandmother’s experiences when she lived in Paris in the 1920s. And my parents mentioned that to me, you know, I think I just failed writing another novel my parents happened to mention to me, and I was like, I’m sorry, wait, my grandma was in Paris? Like Hemingway, Paris? So that just kind of came to me that way. And then this book came to me because of like, whatever miracle brought me my son. And so maybe there’s maybe I know, because there’s an element of mysticism, but I think I have written enough. And most importantly, I have read enough that I know when something’s working, I know when, when it’s when it’s good. And I know that it’s worth other people’s time, because of course, you know, we’re in this weird capitalist society. So we feel like whatever we write, we have to share with the world, which isn’t the case. Sometimes it’s just for you. Sometimes it’s just for people you love. But I think that there’s a certain element of knowing, which is like, this book has something bigger to say. And that was the lesson that my readers taught me with The Weird Sisters was like, these were not just my problems, right? Like other people had these feelings and questions too and that’s really important. That’s I think, when a book needs to go out into the world is when other people have something to gain from reading.
B&N: And that’s a huge part actually, of all three books and the connective tissue again. And I know I mentioned this at the top of the show. But the idea that you can come of age at any point in your life that you don’t have to be, you know, a kid whose voice is changing, their body’s changing, that you can actually be an adult. And it’s really a pleasure to see the growth of all of your characters across each of the books that especially in any other family, because there’s a lot of work to be done. And it makes the novel ultimately, very helpful, even though you don’t present pat answers. And I’m certainly not in any ways doing that. But it’s a really helpful book, especially in this particular moment. But that is something I really appreciate reading your novels is that people go through it, but they do actually get through on the other side. And it may not be what they expected, but they do get to the other side and not necessarily in pat perfect ways either.
EB: And I think I mean, isn’t that how life is right? You know, I mean, generally, I’d like I’m a pretty hopeful person. People ask me kind of about happy endings. And I say, want to write Happy Endings, I write hopeful endings, right. Like you said, I do think that we generally, we generally come through on the other side, and it is absolutely not what we expected. Maybe what we wouldn’t have wanted for ourselves, is funny with The Weird Sisters. Actually, I had a happy ending. And my editor made me untie it a little bit. So that it wasn’t quite as perfect. But yeah, I do hope this one is helpful. And, these kids are going to go through a lot as they age, they’re going to have a lot of questions. You know, their relationship with their biological parents is going to be tricky for them in the future. Some of them already have issues that they’re wrestling with in the course of this book. So I see I see issues for this family ahead. It is not all resolved. But I definitely, I like the hopeful book. And so that’s what I want to give people.
B&N: You know, something you just said made me think, are you possibly thinking about a novel centering on the children?
EB: No, no, I’m not.
B&N: Okay. I just I had a moment though. It’s like a wait a minute. Is there a second book?
EB: Oh, my God, there are a million but you know, that was the that was one of the things about this book is that I mean, first of all, there was just the logistical issue, right, you write nine people in this family, they’re all in a house together. That’s a lot of people to put in a scene and ask the reader. Right? Well, you know, let alone let me remember. But the other thing is that I had to kind of set it at a point where the kids were mostly okay. Partially because their issues could just suck up all the air in the room. And also because that wasn’t a story. It felt like I could tell, right? I don’t you know, I don’t have the birth mother is in the story. But she’s not a spotlight. And because I was like, I can’t speak for her and I don’t feel comfortable speaking for these kids. There are so many adult adoptees who have great stories to tell, I was thinking of Nicole Chung’s book, which I’m now blanking on the title of.
B&N: She is amazing. And you know, and I’ll drop the title in the show notes for this episode, because she is incredible. And she was a Discoverer pick too.
EB: Yeah. And well deserved. And her memoir is just fantastic. And I feel like as an adoptive parent, I learned a lot from her. I mean, her situation is very, very different from my situation. But I learned so much from it. So I don’t know, like someday maybe, but I also borrowed so much from my friends, you know, adopted children and their experiences with motherhood in this. So I need to let you to let those kids talk for themselves, I think.
B&N: Totally get that. I was just thinking of them actually, as adults. Yeah, a little bit like what Jenny Egan did in The Candy House. And there’s when Lulu shows up a couple of times. And suddenly Lulu had gone from being nine and 15. And then Lulu has got a whole new story. And it’s kind of great if you have a chance. It’s it’s a really, really terrific read. And speaking of terrific reads, who are you as a reader? How did we get here? I mean, you have so many influences. But let’s talk about you as a reader for a second.
EB: I think that I’ve always been drawn to kind of the stuff that I write, which is upmarket commercial book club books, you know, that kind of balance between accessibility and depth. With the Weird Sisters. I feel like it was Pat Conroy and Maeve binchy. And but then there’s also this layer. I think I said in an interview when to slay off Stephen King, where sometimes I have to, like, physically go into the story and pull out like Stephen King strands because I’m like, That’s not mine. That’s not mine. That’s not mine. I have to give it that. So I really wanted that. But you know, I was a judge for the Discover awards a few years ago. And one of the things I loved about that is that it forced me to read books that I wouldn’t have read otherwise, right? That’s one of the reasons I love the Discover program is because I can always go and be like, Okay, Eleanor, you’ve read too much of the same thing. Like, let’s go. Let’s go like push your boundaries a little bit and see what’s there. I just read The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian.
B&N: Oh, yeah, that’s a page turner. That moves.
EB: And The Foundling by Anne Leary. I don’t know, I don’t know whether and Larry is well known or not. The Good House is like one of my favorite books ever. And this one is totally different. But I also that was also a page turner. But if you ask me why I couldn’t even have told you why. But I’m also listening to an audio book called The colony, which is about the Mormon fundamentalist groups in Mexico like, so I think I’m just a really broad reader too. And I love that I love that about books. And I love that about what’s happening in publishing now, where we’re making such a greater effort to publish stories from people we wouldn’t have heard from before, because I have just read so many interesting things.
B&N: And story. I mean, let’s not discredit story, I mean, I love to read for language, don’t get me wrong. Okay, here’s the thing. I don’t necessarily need to like the characters I’m reading about. I’m really okay. If I think someone is pain. And, you know, occasionally you hear from folks who are like, Oh, no, I really only want to like the characters and I’m like, I sort of have a little more push and pull between story and language. Because sometimes, you know, sometimes in the service of one, the other gets a little tapped aside. I mean, I love it when all of the things come together. And I get, you know, an amazing, beautiful, you know, crazy thing that just moves and I don’t want to leave it that’s, that’s really what I’m looking for. But has story always been the thing that’s driven you or did you have that moment to where you were like, Oh, I’ve got to think about language first. I’ve got to think about character first, or is it always been story?
EB: It’s always been character. Okay. Always been character. For me. That’s the most interesting thing to me. You know, with the Weird Sisters, when my editor bought it, she said, this is a very lovely book. Some things should happen in it. I was like, oh, right, we need a story. So that really comes late to the game for me, you know, I don’t necessarily like want to read a 500 page novel or write a 500 page novel about like a person watching paint dry. That doesn’t seem interesting. But I am definitely I’m definitely drawn to that. But I do also like a good story. And I get very frustrated because I don’t so much anymore, but it used to teach writing a lot. There’s this very like MFA mindset that it’s the beauty of the work that must come first. I was like, it’s okay to like story. It’s okay to just want something good to read. I just tore through the latest Elin Hildebrand. And that’s, I mean, that’s probably a bad example, because like, the woman is a graduate of, you know, Iowa and she this is like her 28th novel, she knows what she’s doing. But, nobody’s gonna accuse those books of being Tolstoy, but they’re so great. And they’re so interesting. You know, Stephen King like is the best characterization like of any working writer. Sloane Crosley. I started reading Cult Classic last night. So good. There was this line where she was talking about these two people like sitting in a room awkwardly having a conversation. And she said, it was like they were guests of the furniture. And I was like, That is the best line I have read this year. And Sloane Crosley is not you know, TC Boyle, right. So nobody owns anything, right? You get to put everything into your story. So I hope that’s what I’ve done here.
B&N: And Cult Classic, you are in for a treat. There are so many good lines in the oh, you’re going to have a ball with that book. So here’s a question though. What’s next?
EB: So I’m on a little bit of a sabbatical right now, actually. So I have this young child who has developed an interest in ice hockey, which is not the thing that I would have expected. So I spent a lot of time freezing my butt off in ice shrinks. Um, I have two drafts of two things. And I’m just kind of giving myself a little bit of time to let them marinate. You know, one of the things I was talking to someone about, about writing and I was saying, like, you have to do a certain amount of living in order to be able to write something. And so I’m kind of living a little bit and seeing which project I want to go back to.
B&N: I got it. I totally get it. Have you had the same editor across all your books? I can’t remember.
EB: Oh, no, I’ve had a different editor for each book.
B&N: Oh, wow. Okay, so what do you take away from the editorial process then? Especially since it’s a different relationship each time?
EB: So I mean, I think it’s a different thing. Like I always say about children, you know, if you there are multiple children in our family, every child grows up in a different family, right? You know, the first child has the only child experience, you know. So I think probably the most important thing that I take away is that I don’t always know best, right? You know that I am not a writer who’s precious, I’m willing to, you know, if someone points something out to me, like, there’s some things that I’m gonna hang on to it. But if it’s a big thing, and they’re asking questions, my editor for this and I worked very closely together, it was 2020, we didn’t have anything else to do other than talk to each other. We’re just chopped inside the whole time. I think that that’s it to kind of like trust other people. And then to really not to like mentioned Stephen King for like, the fifth time in this process. But in On Writing, he talks about writing with the door closed versus writing with the door open and, and to really like to write with the door closed, because if you are writing and going, oh my gosh, you know, is this gonna be a bestseller? Or what’s the New York Times gonna say about this or you know, B&N gonna say about this. Like, you’ll just paralyze my editor for this book was great she is I don’t even think she’s 30. And here she is, you know, editing this book about, like motherhood. And you know, there’s a lot of midlife stuff in here. Because the characters are older, and she was just so thoughtful and wise about it. That I’m really, really grateful to her.
B&N: That is really lovely to hear. Do you miss anything about these characters now that they’re I mean, you finish the book, chances are good, you’re not necessarily going to sit down and need to read it again. Yeah. So do you miss these guys?
EB: I don’t know. Like, you’re making me think again about the circumstances in which I wrote it, where I was like, kind of lonely. So maybe I just missed that kind of people being together and that feeling that you’re not alone. But I have my own tribe. Like, generally, by the time I am done writing a book I really wish everyone would just like die in a fire. I’m so tired of their problems. I can’t you people deal with this by yourself? And it’s like, no, Eleanor, they can’t actually because they’re imaginary. So but I missed that that feeling of family that they develop over the course of the book, and I miss Tate and Taylor because they’re hilarious.
B&N: And everyone really does evolve. I mean, that’s the one thing that I was sort of, I knew you’re going to pull it off. And again, it’s because I’ve read your your other books, but I knew you were going to pull it off.
EB: What did you doubt?
B&N: Elizabeth’s arc was the most satisfying for me. Without a doubt it was the most satisfying. Tabitha’s was, was a close second. And Ginger, I sort of knew Ginger was always going to be fine. She was always just going to be fine. Yeah, but Elizabeth, I was kind of like, okay, are you going to really swing back to where I’m hoping you’ll swing back just for your own sake? Right. She really did it.
EB: You know what’s funny is that she I feel like makes the smallest progress. But it’s small. But it’s huge. Right? Like she just has to do one thing. It feels huge, but it’s small.
B&N: Ah but for her that one thing is like climbing. It’s it really is like climbing Everest for her. And it’s kind of amazing. The way you put it out into the world to hear you describe it here. I’m like, Well, yeah, it was only one thing. No, not while I was reading and it was great.
EB: It’s like the one thing you need to do. It feels huge, even if it’s tiny.
B&N: And Tabitha, I mean, similarly where she takes that step back, and it’s like, oh, there are no snacks packed. And I promise listeners that will make sense. What I just said will totally make sense. But yeah, it really it was very satisfying to see how everyone sort of just came to their next stage. I’m not saying things got wrapped up. I’m not saying things got resolved. There are lots of nice, open ended places where plenty of things could go but at the same time, it was really satisfying just to see these three women have a moment where stuff started to make sense. Eleanor Brown, thank you so much. Any Other Family is out now.
EB: Thank you so much.