Jennifer Weiner, THAT SUMMER: A Novel

[1:19]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com.

[1:52]Guest: Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Hello. Hi. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. You're in your closet, I see. I am in my closet. This is like the the full on in her shoes moment. Now we're, like, literally in your well, I have to say that in this crowd here, many people want to be your close friend. So I don't know if you have a party that needs, you know, bodies to fill or anything, but many people feel they actually already are your good friends, but you just don't know them yet. So here they are. That's

[2:27]Jennifer Weiner: so nice. Hello. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for reading that summer. We were just finishing discussing

[2:35]Guest: which characters from that summer are going to be in your next book. Can you share that? Ah,

[2:41]Jennifer Weiner: yes. Okay. So the final book in what I am very ostentatiously referring to as my Cape Cod trilogy is going to be called The Last Summer. It's going be out next year. And in that summer, we meet Veronica and Sam and Sarah, the woman and the kids for whom Diana is working, with whom Diana is working. So we meet them in the eighties when the kids are little and we're going to see them in the present day. So it's basically forty years later, The kids are all grown up. They have spouses and children and problems of their own. Veronica is in her seventies and she's getting ready to finally put this big house on the market because all of her fond hopes of her children and grandchildren coming to visit and spending the summers with her have not come to pass. And so she's getting ready to say goodbye, and her stepdaughter asks to get married there. And Veronica says, Sounds great. You know, sounds like a great way to kind of bookend things. You know, there'll be one last big blowout bash and then she'll put the place on the market and say goodbye to it forever. So that is how the book begins. It starts with an engagement and there's all kinds of hijinks and confusion and secrets and drama along the way, and hopefully a very happy ending. Wow, that sounds amazing.

[4:07]Guest: So another question. What inspired this book? And I want to know also what inspired the vision for the trilogy.

[4:14]Jennifer Weiner: Okay. So what inspired that summer? A couple of of different things. The short and funny answer is I was getting another Jennifer Weiner's emails for a while. And the other Jennifer Weiner yes, this actually happened. She lives in California. She is a tennis player. She belongs to a synagogue, but different synagogue than mine. So every once in a while, I get like a notice like, you know, carpool assignments or progressive dinner or tennis tournament. And I'd read these, you know, and then I'd forward them back to whoever sent them and say, you know, I'm the wrong Jennifer Weiner. Sometimes I'd say, I'm Jennifer Weiner, the novelist, thinking like I can at least sell a few bucks off of this. But I just got really I was very interested. I mean somebody else has your exact name. Like I don't think there's a world in which you can't be a little curious about who they are, and what they're doing, and what their life is like. Because I'm thinking this woman's probably about my age because, you know, all of the Jennifers are roughly the same age. We were all born between 1968 and 1974. And I just figured, like, when this happened, I was interested as a real life participant, but I was also thinking to myself, this would be a really remarkable way for two women in a novel to meet each other. And it would be very an interesting way for them to connect and an interesting way for them to sort of both reflect one another, but exist in opposition to one another. So that was the first piece of where this book came from. That happened years and years ago when my kids were little, and I just kind of filed it away and I thought I will use that someday. That was one piece of it. I mean obviously the Me Too movement was another big piece of it, watching all of that unfold. As recently as a couple weeks ago with Bill Cosby getting out of jail on a technicality, just watching man after man after man being accused, being sort of judged in the court of public opinion, watching these guys in some cases be drummed out of public life very briefly, and then just sort of reappear and not seem to have made any changes or processed anything that they had done or made any kind of real world apology or repairs to what they had done. That was really interesting and that was something that I wanted to deal with in this book. And then the last piece of it was just like getting ready to send a kid to college. I have a daughter who's 18. I don't know how that happened, but it did. And she's going to college in the fall. And I've just been thinking so much about what the world is like, what it was like when I started college loathies many years ago in 1987, know, like how the world has changed, how the world maybe has not changed enough. And what our job is as mothers, as women, as sisters, as wives and daughters and granddaughters and all those things, how do we leave the world better than we found it for the next generation of women and the generation after that and the generation after that? So all of those things were things that went into

[7:42]Guest: the pot as I was cooking that summer. Yeah. Well, speaking of cooking, that was another question that everybody was talking about was the abundance of food related imagery and all of that. Were you in a particularly cooking state of mind when writing this or what?

[7:58]Jennifer Weiner: Well, everyone was nesting, right? I wrote the book during the pandemic, during the quarantine. So it was like the sourdough bread and everybody was baking, everybody was making desserts, making breads, making everything. Self, but I was thinking about the way food connects us, about the way food lets us talk about who we are, how it can sort of shorthand a culture or a religion or socioeconomic status, all those things. And I I wanted cooking to sort of be the place where Daisy and Diana met each other. Because Daisy's this home cook, you know, with this like small business that her husband is sort of constantly diminishing and and keeping small on purpose. And Diana, you know, works in the restaurant industry, ends up managing a restaurant, but of course is keeping that a secret. I really liked the idea of food being the place that the two of them connected and the common language that both of them spoke. And of course then it just gave me an excuse to like make every roast chicken in the world, which is always a good time. I love to cook. I love to eat. I love going out to eat. Couldn't do a lot of that last year, so it was lots of cooking at home. Excellent.

[9:18]Guest: Well, I wanted to introduce you over here to Olivia. I don't know. I'm gonna ask her to unmute because Olivia has read every single one of your books and has been following your career. Hello. Hi. I can't believe I'm talking to you.

[9:31]Jennifer Weiner: Hi.

[10:01]Jennifer Weiner: Oh, that's very, very nice of you. Thank you very, very much. And no, it's not creepy at all because I feel like, you know, if there are people who are just like super enthusiastic and think I'm really great, it makes up for my teenagers who just like think I am the least cool person who has ever drawn breath and want nothing to do with me and like will disavow me if we're ever out in public together.

[11:33]Jennifer Weiner: so it's a really interesting story. The older I get and the more people I meet, the more I learn that it's not all that uncommon of a story. My father was a child psychiatrist and he was a really good, really attentive, really hands on father, not the most forgiving guy. He had really high expectations. And so he was like one of those people that would know, you'd bring home a 99 on a test and you'd want to know what happened to the other point and just, you know, set the bar very high and could be very disappointed if you didn't clear it. But you know, generally was just he was very present. He read to me and to my siblings a lot. He encouraged all of us to be readers and to love learning and to love school, you know? Then I'm the oldest of four. And I think that when And basically

[12:39]Jennifer Weiner: my parents' marriage fell apart and my dad just kind of left. This was happening a lot in the eighties. I mean, was kind of like an epidemic at the time, but he didn't leave and say, Your mom and I can't stay married anymore, but we both love you and we're both going to put you first, which is the thing that parents say these days when they get divorced. Was like, Well, you know, the marriage didn't work out and I am really not that interested in being father any longer either. You won't be seeing me very much. And he actually told us that he wanted us to think of him like the fun uncle, which was revolting. I told him sounded kind of pervy too, and he wasn't real happy with that. So, I didn't see him for years. I would see him once in a while and then I wouldn't see him for a long, long time. I didn't know where he was living. He had gotten another woman pregnant and then married her and then divorced her before baby was born. So just like big mess, lots of drama. And then I sold my first book and published it. Then he kind of showed back up in my life. By then had sort of the wheels had come off of his life in a in a really big way, and he was addicted to drugs at this point, which I did not know. Like, I didn't know what to look for, and I don't think it was anything even on my radar at that point that this guy who'd like been a child psychiatrist and lived in a house in the suburbs with like a pool and a picket fence, that that was something that could happen. And, you know, he would he would show up at readings and just be kind of abusive, and it was just horrible, horrible. And, you know, I just was trying to live my life and not have him be part of it because at that point he was really scaring me and I had babies and I just didn't want him anywhere around me. And he died when my younger daughter Phoebe was three months old. And it was one of those things where like I was out in LA and I got a call from the police department. I was his next of kin because he wasn't married at that point. And they said, we found his body at a girlfriend's house and he died of an overdose. It was this whole it was a mess. It was just really, really awful and really traumatic and just took me a long time to try to process and try to make sense of. And it just kept getting worse. My siblings and I, like we laugh a lot because like what else are you going to do? Like you kind of have to laugh to get through this stuff. And so we would be laughing like, Oh, dad died of a drug overdose. Can't get much worse than this. And then we were going through his stuff, all of these like he'd sort of become a hoarder. So just like boxes and boxes of papers and mail he hadn't opened and magazines and newspapers and stuff he'd never thrown out. We're going through all this stuff and we found all of these unopened envelopes from the state of Connecticut's office of like child support, right? And we all just assumed that they had to do with the four of us because he'd been really bad about paying my mother his child support. And then we opened up one of the letters and realized that there was he had another baby, like yet another baby who was basically the same age as my daughter Phoebe was. And just, you know, the whole thing was just a mess and it was really, really awful. And, you know, it just it just made me think a lot about the things you think you know about somebody, the things that you think that you believe about them, and then what turns out to be the truth. And just all of the things that formed his own life. I mean, because I'm sure there was probably undiagnosed mental illness, untreated mental illness. I think there were things just people didn't know about then. You know, it's just it's just kind of it's ongoing. It's not the kind of thing that you ever really get over, I think, for good. But what I'm trying is just to like give my own daughters like a better sense of, you know, men in general and fathers specifically as they move out into the world. Yeah, it's just but boy, Father's Day is never never an easy holiday. I'm always glad when that one's over.

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[20:21]Guest: I am so sorry, and thank you so much for sharing that with us. Yeah. No. I feel terrible that you had that you know, to even relive it and the telling, and I didn't know that we Like I said, the thing that I found, it's like

[20:33]Jennifer Weiner: when it happened, I was just like, I'm never telling anybody any of this. Like this is so embarrassing. I'm so ashamed. Like how could I have been so clueless and how could he have been so awful? And you know, but when I talked about it, the first person I told was like, you know, my dad left my mom and he ended up like living in a trailer and he was homeless. And it happens, know? And I just think that like, it's such a cliche, like we're only as sick as our secrets, but like, you know, whatever he did, it wasn't my fault. And I try to feel like, you know, if I can make somebody else feel less alone or more seen or more recognized by talking about what happened, I think that's important. I think that's an important thing to do. So you know, I do talk about it. I do tell the story. So yeah, but thanks. Thanks. No, I didn't mean like it had just come out publicly now.

[21:34]Guest: You know, I obviously, you know, I just meant thank you for confide you know, talking about it. Yeah. Francine, maybe give a question. Just a quick couple of things, but just so you know, when you talk about stuff like this, it's very freeing. You know, it opens us up and you will be surprised how supporting people will be. We all have stuff. So if you talk about it, it is so liberating. I went through addiction with a daughter and I used to try to hide it and it just got worse. And now she's fine. And she's the one that was a brat, but she came back to be a great human being and yours will too. Just give her Oh, a she will. I always say that if mine made it to the other side and she's a respectable, conscientious, loving human being, anybody's can turn around. I mean, I'm grateful for that every day. This is my first book of yours. It won't be my last. Thank you. Oh, I'm so glad. And we all want be your friend. You. Thank you. Diane is raising her hand down there patiently here. Jennifer, thank you for sharing that. My parents were divorced and it was in the sixties. And we were the only family. So I understand it, but my father was not as present, I don't think, at the beginning. But I have a question for you. Growing up with a father like that, how did that influence your writing as a bestselling author? And also how did your mother deal with that? You were living with her, yes?

[23:06]Jennifer Weiner: Yeah, no, I mean, the story that happened was my parents got divorced, my dad was just gone, my mom was basically a single mother for ten years. And then she fell in love with a much younger woman. And the four of us were just like in shock and we're like, anybody see this coming? Like did anybody notice any signs? And I will just never forget like my sisters and my brother and I, and my sister's like, well she always had short hair and she would always wear like those boxy L. L. Bean jackets. I'm like, Molly, we lived in New England. That was everyone. They all have that haircut, they all wore those jackets. And then we're like, yeah, it's like a quiz show almost, like New England or gay? How Like do you know? But okay, so yes, I lived with my mom. But in terms of my writing, I mean, so Good in Bed, my very first book was very autobiographical. It was about a woman in her 20s who had been like dumped by her boyfriend whose mother was newly gay and like would not shut up about it. And whose father had just like fallen off the radar and had been this very loving present father and she just didn't know how to make sense of that. It was about how her trying to make sense of it. And I think that like many novelists will tell you that fiction is what they Fiction is the tool that they use to make sense of things that don't make sense. Whether it's something personal, something that happened in their family, something that happened in their own relationship, something that's happening in the world, whether it's politics or the pandemic or whatever it is, think nine eleven, I mean the nine eleven novels that we're starting to see now. Fiction is where we go, it's where I go, and it's where I went first as a reader because I was like a voracious reader as a kid. Like I always joke like I was this like weird little kid. I had no friends and a giant vocabulary. I read all the time. Like books were my safe place. They were my haven. They were my place where nobody judged me. Nobody made me feel bad. So I think that, and I also joke a lot that, like, the thing that made me a writer was having an unhappy childhood because it gives you stories to tell and it gives you something you need to make sense of, you know? It's like Jodi Picoult, who is a friend of mine, had like the happiest, the most normal childhood. And I'm always like, Jodi, how did you ever become a writer with all this normal? I joke that all of the dysfunction and all of the, okay, now your dad's gone. Okay, now your mom's gay. Like all of that was a gift because it gave me something to try to make sense of in my novels and something to try to figure out. It made me a reader and then it made me a writer. So I'm grateful like I am. Beautiful.

[26:39]Jennifer Weiner: I just feel like close to you and I'm grateful for your reading and your writing and thank you for being here. You're really welcome. Thank you for saying that. I mean, don't know if Zippy told you guys or if any of you guys follow me on social media and know this, but like my mom died on mother's day. Like this has just been the most unbelievable year. And I know that books are one of the things that got me through it. And I know that just reading stories, whether they're specifically about mothers and daughters, or they're just like a good book that can sort of take me out of whatever I'm going through. Like books are such a gift and I'm so grateful. I'm grateful that I'm a reader. I'm grateful that my parents were readers and that they modeled that for the four of us. I'm grateful that my daughters are readers because like I honestly do not know if they could still live here with me if they weren't. I don't know how I would handle that, But thank you for saying that. I'm really glad to hear it. I'm glad my books. Yeah, and I followed your bike journey and

[27:39]Guest: it's just awesome. So good for you for taking care of yourself and doing what you find is important and taking a step back and we're here for you.

[27:49]Jennifer Weiner: Thanks.

[27:50]Guest: Okay, last question. Dara, go ahead. Hi, thank you. I'm getting teary and I very rarely cry in public, which I'm working on by the way. Thanks for the open vulnerability and there's so much you have shared that I and I'm sure many other people if not all of us relate to and I just want to thank you from my heart. I'm curious as a writer that if your father were alive would you have even even your first novel you said was autobiographical which I think for a lot of fiction writers that is the case did you get any pushback did you have any fear of you know your mother lashing out how did you handle all that I really would you have be transparent

[28:30]Jennifer Weiner: and still protect your loved ones and how does that all That's a great question. I mean, so my dad at that point, he was just so gone. Like I don't I wouldn't have known how to find him if I'd wanted to let him know about the book or anything like that. But my mother, I felt very differently about. And I always say that Philip Roth famously said, novelists can't concern themselves with present day people. Like you are writing for the ages and you are writing for posterity and who cares what aunt Marlene thinks of what you wrote. And I would always read that and think like, I gotta go home for Passover, Philip Roth. Like, don't know where you go, but I gotta go home. So I can't have everybody mad at me because it's gonna make the satyr super uncomfortable. So when I wrote my first book, which had a gay mom character, I gave the book to my mother and I said, Okay, so there's a mom in this book and she was inspired by you. And I said like, I didn't write this to hurt you. I didn't write this to embarrass you. I will change anything that you want changed, except please do not make me change the name of the lesbian women's softball team, nine women out, everyone thinks So that's really don't make me change that, but I'll change anything else. So I give her the manuscript and then I have the unforgettable experience of sitting in my childhood living room in the house where I grew up, listening to my mother, flipping the pages of my manuscript and I'm hearing like flip, flip, flip. And then she would scream, Jenny, God damn it. I would know. I would know that she had gotten to one of the pages with the mother. But she ended up not asking me to change anything. She said, It's fine. It's all okay. And she just said, I'm gonna tell everyone it's fiction. And I'm like, well, it is. And she said, yeah. But I'm just gonna tell everybody it's fiction. I'm like, alright, Fran. Whatever works for you. You know, if that's gonna, like, cover your bases, that's fine. So that is how that worked. But I think that every writer has to, like, figure out her own path through that particular thicket. You know? Like, you've gotta decide, like but the other thing that I found is, like, the people who you really genuinely use as inspiration for your villains, they don't recognize themselves, like, ever, ever. They're just like, who is this awful person who is treating the the heroin so terribly? And, you know, you just have to keep your mouth shut. It's so positive.

[31:03]Guest: Thank you for sharing that for so many reasons. So much love. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're very welcome. Jen, thank you so much for coming. This was amazing. You're amazing and even more friends now for you, not that you need them. And thank you for entertaining us with your book and your presence and all of it and using all of your your pain for for good.

[31:23]Jennifer Weiner: You guys are so welcome. Zibby, thank you for everything and for all you do for like so many women writers. We are all so grateful. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Goodbye. Have a great day, everyone. See you on social media. Bye.

[31:49]Guest: and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.