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| (photo: Leanna Creel) | |
Abbi Waxman is the author of The Garden of Small Beginnings and Other People's Houses. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, three children, a menagerie of pets and far too much chocolate. Her new novel is The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, coming from Berkley on July 9, 2019.
Nina struggles with severe anxiety, but she's mostly learned to manage it. How did you write a protagonist with anxiety, but address it in a fairly light-hearted way?
Anxiety is so common, and we don't really talk about it--though maybe we are starting to talk about it more, as a society. Nina has essentially sorted out her life in a way that works for her, so she's mostly able to manage her anxiety.
I wanted to write a character who was happily introverted and didn't feel any pressure to change who she was. There's nothing wrong with being an introvert, and being the kind of person who prefers her own company to that of other people. I wanted to write a character who was comfortable with herself, not just trying to fit in. Certainly there are struggles--and you always have to ask yourself, "What does your main character want?" Nina, at the beginning, just wants to be left in peace. To be left alone. But then she meets a man who she maybe wants to spend more time with, and the struggle is within herself. Can she get out of her own way enough to try something new?
I also wanted Nina to find a relationship with someone who accepts her for herself. Sometimes she does need a bit of space, because that's how she takes care of herself. And it's not in Tom's nature to understand that. He's a caretaker--that's his nature. He will eventually have to accept that sometimes Nina needs some space. And Nina will have to accept that he wants to help her, and that letting him do that might not be the worst thing.
Nina's story deals with the topic of family in a slightly unusual way: her estranged father dies, and she suddenly gains a whole new extended family that she isn't sure she wants.
Yes. Nina's life is going along peacefully and then basically everything blows up at once! So she has to decide what to do about it. She ends up with a couple of family members who are awesome, and a few that drive her crazy, which feels really normal to me. We all have family members we love, and some who drive us up the wall.
In the case of her youngest sister, Millie, Nina is also seeing how for the first time she can help someone else. That is a pleasure in itself--to be able to help other people--and that's character growth for her. She begins to think about how she can help Millie--be there for her--even if it means giving up some of her precious alone time.
Nina is a trivia wiz. Tell us about this part of her personality.
I think millennials consume media and creative output of all kinds in a more meta way than my generation did. They'll go see a movie and then they'll read lots of reviews about it, and discuss it online. There's a lot more discursive content about media than there was when I was their age. With the constant news cycle, trivia has become like conversational glue--like squirrels sharing nuts, little nuggets of cultural information. For Nina, it's a self-soothing activity as well. She gets anxious in social situations, and this often gives her something to say that people will pretend to be interested in.
Throughout the book, Nina is trying to learn about her father, who was married several times--but it almost seems that he was several different men.
Yes. My original idea for the book was quite different. I wanted to write about the destruction a narcissistic person can leave behind. There's lots of divorce in my generation: I am a child of divorce, and I have many friends who are, too.
My sister and I tend to joke that we were the lucky ones of our father's three sets of children. His leaving was devastating, of course. I was seven when my parents divorced. But in my father's case, his being around more for my stepbrothers was actually quite damaging. A person can do so much damage in different ways over time, because people do change. But we can't always see our parents clearly as people. We never see people as they really are: we see them through our own lens. So I wanted to write about a character who gains a new family member, but she never actually meets him. She has to figure out her impression of him. I wanted to explore how one's perception of someone is affected by other people.
Nina's day-planner pages appear throughout the book, and they are so entertaining--a window into her emotional state at times.
I'm glad you think so. Sometimes it was easier for me to show what was going on than to write it. Nina's trying so hard to sort everything out, and I thought readers could read into the way she was doing things. I could show rather than tell that she'd had a big fight with someone, for example, and was going to turn over a new leaf. And then real life intervenes, inevitably.
Nina's workplace faces a crisis, but--mild spoiler--she is able to save the day in the end.
I had to go for a happy ending. It's a bit clichéd, but it's fun. And I hope people like Nina and feel empathy for her. She's inspired by all the booksellers I meet when I go around to bookstores. They are without fail intelligent, thoughtful, snappily dressed young women. I would have liked to be like them when I was their age. Ultimately, the novel is sort of a love letter to independent booksellers, and young women in particular.
The kind of books I like to write are a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and with a happy ending. All of my books are the books that you pick up, read and then loan to a friend. I want to be escapist! That's the best possible outcome for me. I ask myself: Is this a pleasure to read? Is it a pleasure to write? And if my sister thinks it's funny--that's the ultimate test--then we're good. --Katie Noah Gibson