Claire Lombardo, THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD
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[0:38]Clareland Bardo is the author of The Novel, The Most Fun We Ever Had.
[0:42]Clare is a novelist, teacher, and posted enthusiast.
[0:45]Her first book, The Most Fun We Ever Had, was an instant New York Times bestseller,
[0:49]and has been translated or is forthcoming in over a dozen languages.
[0:53]The novel is being adapted for a series to be written by Clare and co-produced by Amy Adams and Laura Dern,
[0:59]which I'm realizing now I forgot to ask her about, so sorry about that.
[1:02]Clare is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the Iowa Writers Workshop.
[1:07]Her short fiction has appeared in, among other things.
[1:10]Playboy, Barrelhouse Magazine, Little Fiction, and Long Form.
[1:13]Her story, I only want to talk about the nice things, was one of 2016's Best of the Net,
[1:18]and was number one on Long Form's 2015 fiction list.
[1:22]Prior to writing The Most Fun We Ever Had, Clare spent several years working with homeless children and families in Chicago.
[1:27]She has also been a dog walker, a nanny, a temp, and a communications aid at a woodwind nonprofit.
[1:33]Think Flute. She is not herself a woodwind musician.
[1:36]A native of Oak Park, Illinois, she now lives in Iowa City, Iowa, with her dog, Renee.
[1:41]Welcome, Clare. Thanks so much for coming.
[1:43]On mom's time to read books.
[1:44]Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
[1:46]So tell me about The Most Fun We Ever Had, the process of writing that book,
[1:51]how that became a book, and take me up to today.
[1:54]Oh, sure. Take your time.
[1:57]Oh, I'll just settle it.
[1:59]The tall order. I'll just talk a lot.
[2:01]No, The Most Fun We Ever Had, do you want me to describe the book or do you want me to just talk about it?
[2:06]Sure.
[2:07]For people who don't know what it's about, give a short description.
[2:10]Sure.
[2:11]So The Most Fun We Ever Had is a multi-generational family story about the Sorens and family who lived in the Chicago suburbs.
[2:19]The book follows this family, this couple, and therefore sort of Aaron to daughters for over 50 years, or almost 50 years.
[2:26]And so at its core, it's sort of about this ironclad marriage between these two people, and then it's sort of all the things that come from that.
[2:33]So that is my elevator pitch. And so, yeah, I started writing this book. Gosh, I don't know, nine years ago.
[2:40]It's been a really long time. I was 24, eight years ago.
[2:44]So I, yeah, I was working on this book when I was in graduate school to be a therapist. So I thought.
[2:51]And it was so sort of all consuming and the thing that I cared about so much that I ended up dropping out of graduate school.
[2:58]And I ended up very, very fortunately at the Iowa Writers Workshop a couple of years later.
[3:02]And yeah, spent the next few years working on this book and then I met my editor at double day.
[3:07]And here we are. Yeah, it takes a really, you know this as well.
[3:11]it takes a really long time to publish a book. It is a long process. Thankfully, a fairly entertaining and pleasant one.
[3:17]But yeah, so the book came out almost two years ago.
[3:20]It's coming out in paperback in a few weeks, which is really kind of exciting to breathe new life into it.
[3:26]So yeah, it's been a long eight or so year.
[3:29]Yeah.
[3:30]And how did you arrive? How did you come up with those characters in the family and decide that that was the type of first novel you wanted to write?
[3:38]Well, this novel started out as a short story about one of the characters, Violet, who is this woman who has placed a child for adoption very young and then kind of curates this ostensibly picture perfect life for herself.
[3:51]She has two little kids. She and her husband live on the north shore of Chicago.
[3:55]And she has everything is kind of arranged to very specific specifications.
[3:59]And then the kid comes back as a teenager.
[4:01]She's really really interested in that dynamic in life kind of getting in the way as it often does, but specifically in that way.
[4:10]And then from there, I just sort of started her family kind of took over and I became really obsessed with her. She had sort of a larger than life sister and then these parents who were sort of crazily in love with each other and slightly more accepting of the messiness of life.
[4:25]I just kept growing. I'm from a big family. This is not an autobiographical novel by any stretch, but I'm very sort of interested in family dynamics and always have been so it kind of evolved from there kind of my obsession with other people, I guess.
[4:40]Yeah.
[4:41]What number child are you of how many?
[4:44]I am the youngest of five.
[4:47]And I kind of, you know, I was a very quiet kid and I, I remember one of my sisters saying once like, I was always like the, you know, I was always very quiet and not ever saying much, but she was like, we knew that you were listening.
[4:59]Like there was, you know, something, something going on. So yeah, I've always just been as fascinated by my older sisters. And so yeah, yeah, that certainly influences me as a as a writer.
[5:09]And are you, are you close with your siblings? I am. Yeah, all of them in different ways. And I feel about them the way I sort of feel about my characters, which is that I, you know, I like them all to different degrees on different
[5:21]which I think is the case for most. I hope that's the case for most people. But yes, yes, they've all been they're all right early and creative in different ways. So it's been nice to have, you know, readers in my, in my family as well.
[5:34]That's great. I feel like so much advice people give us sort of like getting a group of readers or like minded people. But if it comes baked into your own family, how great is that?
[5:42]Sure, right.
[5:43]Yeah, very convenient.
[5:45]And tell me a little more about Iowa because I hear so much about it. And it just seems like I don't know. So magical and, you know, what is it like exclusive? What is it like being there?
[5:57]Yeah, so it's I was so terrified when I got here because I had heard, you know, all sorts of stories as well. And I also felt just like massive imposter syndrome when I got here like it was truly a mistake that I had gotten in.
[6:11]And I remember my first day of workshop. I sat, I was in the novelist Ethan Caine and who later became my mentor and like a very good friend. This was not because of him, but I was it was my first workshop ever and I was sitting in the corner of the room.
[6:23]And I thought I was going to have a panic attack. Like I just became convinced that I was going to like die. And so henceforth sat by the door for the rest of the semester.
[6:32]So I passed out. I did not. But yeah, it was terrified when I got here at an end of being such a wonderful and moved back very recently.
[6:40]It's a really wonderful place to be a writer. It's this the community of Iowa City sort of at large is very creative very writerly very, you know, people who are supportive of creative ideas and creative work.
[6:52]And the workshop, especially was just I had the most lovely group of classmates who it was not very competitive. It was very supportive. And I had a number of the Shawn Winslow who had a book come out of Regina Porter several of my classmates had books come out.
[7:06]You know, within like a month of me. And so it's just it's yeah, it was a really sort of magical magical couple of years. Yeah, hence my my coming back here. Yeah.
[7:15]Do you have a history of panic attacks or was that the first one or no, it was this completely like out of out of nowhere. I'm a highly anxious person.
[7:24]But I think I was just so overwhelmed to sort of when I described it to my mom's a nurse and I described it to her later and she was like, yeah, that sounds like, you know, classic panic attack symptoms.
[7:33]But I was fine. And thankfully even canon is also a physician. So I guess he could have intervened if I if I needed it. But yeah, I was just so so nervous. And so, you know, sharing creative work is such an intimate scary thing. And it was not something I'd ever done before because I had studied.
[7:50]English major, but I was a rhetoric major. So I never like given my fiction to other people and suddenly it was like, I have this novel that I've been working on quietly for years. Like now I'm just going to hand it off to people. So it was it was highly overwhelming at the outset.
[8:04]What does that mean to be an English rhetoric major.
[8:07]It essentially means that I was trying to finish college as quickly as possible because I had also dropped out I dropped out of college and I was 19 because I was pretty unhappy where I was and then I got this job as a paralegal at a nonprofit.
[8:22]I ended up staying up for six years and then it was suddenly like I was 24 and I was like, I should probably finish college and so I was trying to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. So credit wise I just sort of I was closest to being just sort of a straight English major. So I just took
[8:37]kind of ran the gamut instead of focusing on creative writing or literature. I sort of did dabbled in all of them. So yeah, it was that was a weird few years as well.
[8:47]I know what is this dropping out of multiple programs, but you made it through Iowa right and now you came to tell. Yes. Yes.
[8:56]What is it about those situations that makes you change your mind. I mean, like I tried to drop out of business school, but everybody convinced me to stay, including the people at the business school.
[9:06]They like basically wouldn't let me drop out. But I was like, I'm out of here. I'm done.
[9:10]There's like, not how far into your program did you want to like how long did you well. So probably three months in, but it was during 9 11 and I had lost a friend and I really didn't want to be in Boston anymore.
[9:23]I was like, I can't deal with this. I can't even think straight because you know in like your grieving. It's really hard to focus. Yeah.
[9:29]I was like surrounded by people who were like super bright and I was already a non traditional student. You know, I didn't have panic attacks, but I might as well have.
[9:37]I mean, I don't think I spoke for like months on it.
[9:40]Oh, God. That sounds horrible. Yeah.
[9:43]I'm so intimidated and everything, but eventually I came around, but it took. It took a while. So I know that feeling. However, I didn't like pull the trigger and drop out.
[9:51]But now I'm sort of now. So I want to hear like to make it over that finish line twice. Like what gets you there.
[9:58]You know, yeah, it's a good question. I think.
[10:00]The first time I, I was at a very, very tiny private liberal arts college in rural Illinois,
[10:06]Knox College.
[10:08]And I was just, I had come from a really big high school and a really big family.
[10:11]And I was suddenly just in this tiny town with, you know, in this tiny school and I was
[10:15]just miserable.
[10:16]And I was also, at the time I was there, this was just sort of a comical, happenstential
[10:21]thing.
[10:22]There were dead crows all over the campus, like, and I still don't know if there was
[10:26]some mass, like, crow flu, or, but it was this really ominous thing that you would
[10:31]just walk outside and there were, like, dead birds everywhere.
[10:34]But I was just miserable, but it's a really weird story.
[10:37]No, it's like, I feel like I'm reading a novel now.
[10:40]This is great.
[10:41]The girl.
[10:42]I know I've tried to write it into a project.
[10:44]It hasn't made it yet.
[10:45]But yeah, that time I think I was just, I find the notion of, you know, that we're supposed
[10:49]to know at 18, what we want to do with our lives is so ludicrous to me.
[10:55]You know, I have friends now who have teenage kids and I'm just like, I have such empathy
[10:59]for being that age and for not knowing what you want to do because, of course, I mean,
[11:03]some, you know, some people do and that's great, but I had no idea what I wanted to do.
[11:07]I was, you know, I had a bunch of ideas that I thought, you know, would be valid career paths
[11:13]or fruitful career paths.
[11:14]And I was 18.
[11:15]And so I didn't know.
[11:16]So I dropped out then just more for, you know, practical reasons.
[11:20]It was a very expensive school and I knew that I wasn't, you know, taking advantage
[11:25]of it in the way that I should have been.
[11:27]But when I dropped out of graduate school, that was also a very financially unsound decision.
[11:35]But I was three months into my degree and my father died very, very suddenly and very unexpectedly.
[11:42]And yeah, thank you.
[11:44]And so I think, you know, it was, it was horrible for, you know, every, every possible
[11:49]reason, but I think it also made me sort of reexam and what I was doing.
[11:52]And I, you know, my parents were and R and my mom is very, very supportive of, you know,
[11:57]whatever their kids have wanted to do.
[11:59]And so it wasn't like I felt like this pressure to finish this degree because of my parents.
[12:03]It was, I was putting pressure on myself, but I think losing my dad, I looked at the world
[12:07]in this different way, like what is actually what matters, you know, and what, you know,
[12:12]kind of got me through that year, which was such, it was such a weird year and I had bedbugs
[12:17]twice.
[12:18]It was just like a miserable, like also in rural Illinois, it was not a great time.
[12:22]But the thing that kind of kept me sane was working on this book and it was kind of
[12:27]this space that I could retreat into in the evenings and it was, you know, so I was going
[12:31]to my classes and sort of going through the motions and reading theoretically about all
[12:35]of these psychological concepts and, you know, all of these theoretical problems that
[12:40]people could have.
[12:41]And I was myself having, you know, actual problems.
[12:43]And I found fiction as sort of more fruitful and therapeutic way to work through some of those
[12:50]things.
[12:51]So I remember calling my mom and telling her I was dropping out and I said, I think I'm
[12:55]going to, you know, apply to MFA programs and she said, great, like come on home.
[12:58]She was very, very supportive and so yeah, I decided that I would give it a year and that
[13:03]if nothing happened, I would go back and I knew that I could, you know, my credits would
[13:07]be saved.
[13:08]So I knew I could come back if it didn't work out.
[13:10]So I applied to, I think 12 MFA programs and during that year, I had, I was a nanny
[13:15]for a while.
[13:16]I was a temp.
[13:17]I worked at the National Flute Association, which is probably the weirdest job I've ever
[13:22]had.
[13:23]And I have to clarify that I'm not saying flu, like influenza, I'm talking about, like, the
[13:26]wood went to instrument and I'm not a musician so it was a very strange job.
[13:32]And then I got into Iowa and so it was really, you know, it's not, it's not a path that
[13:37]I couldn't add, you know, I wouldn't advise other people to do this.
[13:41]I went into, you know, tons and tons of student loan debt and not for Iowa, but for my
[13:46]social work degree.
[13:47]And it was a huge risk, but it felt right at the time.
[13:50]And so I think, you know, it's just an example of one of those things that you can't really
[13:54]plan that very fortunately worked out well for me, but just as easily could have, could
[13:59]have not.
[14:00]Oh, can I ask what happened to your dad?
[14:04]You don't have to answer.
[14:05]Oh, no, no, he had a heart attack.
[14:07]He had had sort of heart problems since I was a kid, but it was 62 because he three very
[14:12]young, very healthy, otherwise I'm so totally, totally unexpected.
[14:16]Yeah.
[14:17]Yeah.
[14:18]And we were very close.
[14:19]And, you know, in a lot of ways, the father in my novel is not my dad, but it's sort of an
[14:23]homage to two good dads and two, you know, dads who are reverent of having daughters.
[14:29]So that was kind of a, you know, my way to work through, work through that.
[14:33]And what are you working on now?
[14:35]I'm working on a, I say a new book.
[14:38]I've been working on it for what feels like a billion years as I started it when I was
[14:42]in graduate school.
[14:43]I'm working on another novel that is about marriage.
[14:48]And if, you know, if the most fun we ever had is kind of more of a, you know, pulling
[14:52]the lens back and looking at a whole family.
[14:54]This is sort of delving more deeply into the nuances of of a marriage.
[14:58]So putting it a little bit more under the microscope.
[15:00]Are you married?
[15:01]Am I allowed to ask?
[15:03]Oh, sure.
[15:04]Yeah.
[15:05]No, I'm not.
[15:06]Yes.
[15:07]You're allowed to ask that.
[15:08]That's one of those questions.
[15:09]You're not allowed to ask people.
[15:10]Aren't you like not allowed to ask somebody with the other day said it was like not even
[15:13]PC to ask if you had kids or can I even say PC?
[15:17]Anyway, I'm just getting myself into.
[15:18]Yeah.
[15:19]Okay.
[15:20]I'm done.
[15:21]There's no judgment here.
[15:22]Well, that sounds very interesting.
[15:25]And I feel like, especially this year, a lot of marriages have become highly dissected and
[15:30]thought about intimately, as everybody's been stuck inside with their spaces.
[15:35]Right.
[15:36]Right.
[15:37]Looking more deeply at their marriage than perhaps they want to.
[15:40]Yeah.
[15:41]Yeah.
[15:42]Yeah.
[15:43]Yeah.
[15:44]Yeah.
[15:45]So what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[15:46]My very pat answer that sounds really smug and that I don't always follow myself is to
[15:52]just keep writing so right as much as you can try to develop a writing everyday routine
[15:58]if you can and to read all the time.
[16:00]And I think that sounds so simplistic, but I forget how sort of necessary that is.
[16:06]Like, I think I go through periods of, you know, difficulty writing.
[16:11]And I realize in hindsight, it's because I'm not reading enough.
[16:14]I'm not, you know, I'm not being externally stimulated.
[16:17]And I think if you get so deeply into a project that you're just sort of, you've got blinders
[16:21]onto everything else, you're setting yourself up for not great writing possibly.
[16:26]So I try to, I'm usually reading like seven books at once.
[16:29]I've been that way since I was little, I have very sort of, you know, fleeting attention.
[16:33]But reading a lot.
[16:34]What seven books are you reading now?
[16:36]Oh gosh.
[16:37]What am I reading right now?
[16:38]I am rereading a novel by Dan, I never know how to say his last name, Dan Sean.
[16:43]I believe you remind me of me, which I loved like 10 years ago.
[16:46]So I'm resurrecting that.
[16:48]I just finished my sister, the serial killer, Jureba.
[16:51]I loved it.
[16:52]Oh, it was, yeah, it was really, really fun.
[16:54]It's also this really tight, like physically tiny book.
[16:56]So it's like the perfect bedtime reading.
[16:58]Oh, I just started, we begin at the end.
[17:01]Yeah, you read that.
[17:02]Chris Whitaker.
[17:03]Yes, I read that.
[17:04]Yes.
[17:05]Okay.
[17:06]I just had him on the podcast.
[17:07]Oh, cool.
[17:08]Okay.
[17:09]I've heard like, that's the only book I've ever tried to pull strings to get an early
[17:13]copy.
[17:14]Yeah.
[17:15]And I failed because we don't have the same publisher, but I bought it the day it came
[17:19]out, which I also almost never do.
[17:21]So I'm enlisting to that as an audio book and really enjoying it.
[17:25]If you ever are desperate for an early copy of something, just send me questions.
[17:29]If you're desperate again for an early, just like get a thank you, don't, you're like,
[17:34]you're going to regret saying, I'm not saying that to everyone listening, but I am saying
[17:38]it to you Claire.
[17:39]If you need a favor, every so often, I tend to get a lot of books, which is really, really
[17:46]exciting.
[17:47]Sometimes I get multiple copies and I don't even know what to do with them.
[17:49]I should just let me know.
[17:50]Great.
[17:51]Thank you.
[17:52]I'll keep like surfacing, yes, that's great.
[17:54]Thanks.
[17:55]The one question I really have also is there so much, like so many people I have on this
[17:59]podcast are in the midst of book publicity craziness, right?
[18:05]It's either right before it starts or right in the middle of it or after it or whatever.
[18:08]And you're just like on this sort of whirlwind of interviews.
[18:12]And then after that, it's like, okay, well, that's done, right?
[18:16]Like I can go back to my writing and this and that and the other thing.
[18:18]So here, and I know it's obviously the beginning of your paperback launch, but after two
[18:23]years, looking back on that whole experience and now being able to be more perhaps clear
[18:28]headed about what that whole thing was like and the book and everything.
[18:31]Like, how do you feel looking back on that?
[18:33]Like how do you feel like that whole experience even was and how do you feel about your
[18:37]relationship to the book now having been through all of that?
[18:40]That's a really good question.
[18:42]I mean, in some ways, it's not that I don't remember, but it was such an overwhelming
[18:48]like writing a book is such a solitary, lonely, often process and you're so deeply in
[18:54]your head.
[18:55]And then suddenly it's like you're talking to people constantly and having to be on all
[18:58]the time.
[18:59]And I wouldn't say I'm wholly introverted, but I'm more of an introvert than I am an
[19:03]extrovert.
[19:04]And so I think part of me was just you kind of go into this other mode and you get
[19:09]better at it.
[19:10]I think, you know, I shudder to think of some things I said in early interviews.
[19:13]So maybe it's good that you and I haven't met it because I'm probably slightly more
[19:18]articulate than I'm not terribly articulate now, but probably slightly more than
[19:22]I used to be.
[19:23]But it is such a, it's such a different thing.
[19:24]And I think my relationship to the book, I guess I've, I've become in some ways I feel
[19:30]closer to it and in some ways I feel, you know, I can speak about it more objectively
[19:35]because again, you know, right at the outset of the book coming out or even, you know,
[19:39]we did a lot of prepub stuff.
[19:40]I had just finished writing it.
[19:41]So I was really protective of these characters who felt like, you know, sort of real people
[19:45]to me and I was also kind of just used to being alone in my apartment and never talking
[19:49]to anyone.
[19:50]And now, you know, it's kind of like this autonomous, not autonomous fully, but it's this
[19:55]thing in the world that has its own legs and its own life.
[19:58]And I think I realized that.
[20:00]I had pretty shortly after the book came out like you have no control over who's going to read it or what they're going to think and you're not going and you know, I remember one of my professors.
[20:09]I don't remember who saying when you're writing you have to know that like when someone just any just like you know any person in the world is reading your book you're not going to be next to them being like, but no, you missed that or like pay attention to this.
[20:23]So it has to kind of speak for itself. So I think, you know, I think my relationship is probably healthier like less codependent with the novel now that being said, I also I forget plot points that I've written like there there are certain times when someone says something and I'm like,
[20:39]make it into the book like I have to go back and check just because it's been I haven't read my own book and you know a while.
[20:47]So it's hard to remember sometimes it's a long book so I should read it again before I for the paper.
[20:56]Yeah, you also feel like associate that reading your own book. I don't know if you feel that like it just seems like a very sort of like master Victoria like I don't know at least it's not like on the train or something.
[21:08]You will not tell anyone you just stay right there and do it. You don't have to tell a soul.
[21:13]Maybe you don't do it in a restaurant, but, but even if you did, that would be like hilarious marketing. That would actually be so funny if you had like some sort of like spotting authors in the wild reading their own books and like, you know, like a time.
[21:26]What was that thing like the time, not time of Gucci, but like the thing that everybody played that game that like I don't want my kids to play where you have to spot things.
[21:36]Yeah, it should be like a Pokemon go, but it's authors reading their books in public and like you got it.
[21:43]You would get like 20 points and like, I don't know. Yeah, you see like a whole thing. Anyway, never mind. My mind is like totally totally.
[21:50]Okay, never mind. We'll pursue this. Yes.
[21:53]First two author go or something.
[21:56]And that will allow you to comfortably read your book without feeling weird. So thank you.
[22:03]All right. Well, Claire, thank you so much for coming on mom's no ten to read books and good luck on your next project.
[22:11]And I will try to catch you in the wild reading your own book and we'll see what happens.
[22:15]Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. I could grasp on the paper back.
[22:19]Oh, thank you. Thanks. Okay. Take care.
[22:22]All right. You too. Bye.
[22:25]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books.
[22:29]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books.
[22:34]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[22:41]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[22:45]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.