Katie Hafner, THE BOYS: A Novel
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[0:58]Katie Haffner is the author of the boys a novel
[1:01]Katie is a journalist and author who writes frequently for the New York Times and the Washington Post
[1:05]She is also the host and co-executive producer of the popular podcast Lost Women of Science
[1:11]She is the author of six nonfiction books including mother daughter me a memoir a romance on three legs
[1:18]Glenn Gould's obsessive quest for the perfect piano and where wizards stay up late
[1:24]The origins of the internet with Matthew Lyon, and that's it. I mean not that's it
[1:28]But those are the books. The boys is her first novel
[1:31]She lives in San Francisco with her husband Bob Walker and their miniature poodle Newman
[1:36]Welcome Katie. Thanks so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss the boys and your
[1:42]Career and your other books and everything else. Oh, thank you for having me
[1:48]So why don't we start well first tell listeners what your book is about?
[1:53]So we have a frame
[1:55]Yeah, this is always the like what is your book about? Sorry. It's so it's first of all
[2:01]It's my first novel
[2:03]Yeah, I'm a journalist. I like to say I'm a journalist who just kind of got an idea for fiction and
[2:11]ran with it and
[2:13]before I knew it I had a book and it's about it's it's what I've come to understand is called
[2:19]the relationship genre and
[2:23]In fact, you could narrow it down to the troubled relationship genre
[2:26]and it's really about the challenges of relationships
[2:30]particularly between people who are opposites and particularly during a pandemic
[2:35]even though the pandemic is more
[2:38]the backdrop and not
[2:40]definitely not the centerpiece of the story and then it's about adding children to the mix and
[2:47]how children are often intended to lubricate the rough edges of her relationship
[2:54]they can also serve to be one more source of
[2:58]friction and so in it's that
[3:01]kind of writ small in this relationship between my
[3:06]two main characters. So one of your characters has two
[3:10]brothers, right? Isn't that what it is that two brothers come and they become their like foster children?
[3:16]Yeah, one of the characters actually they should be the brothers
[3:21]but they're they end up it's the main character's name Ethan
[3:25]he's completely he's very socially awkward but in a very endearing kind of way
[3:30]and he falls in love with this woman named Barb
[3:34]and they get married and they're really opposite she's very gregarious she's very outgoing
[3:39]and he gets very worried about having kids
[3:45]and because for reasons I won't go into but he's totally neurotic about it
[3:50]and she talks them into it they can't have kids so they adopt well the first they
[3:55]they take in these foster kids and that's the kids who that's who the boys are it's these two kids
[4:01]imagine taking in these foster kids from Russia
[4:06]I don't know by the way with from Ukraine I was like I could just take a few Ukrainians and
[4:11]yeah kids from Russia they don't speak any English and anyway then the pandemic comes
[4:18]and he gets like kind of overly attached to these boys and it drives and that's when kind of
[4:26]tragedy sets in and it drives her away Barb who you don't really know what to make of her
[4:34]in the first half of the book and then after she leaves he takes the boys on this bike trip
[4:40]to Italy you know those upscale bike trips yeah where they take everything pictures
[4:47]yeah they take all your luggage and everything so he takes the boys on this bike trip to Italy
[4:52]and then that's where the there's a twist and that's where the this reveal comes in and that's
[4:58]what I think it's what's getting the books some early attention is like how did she pull off this
[5:05]reveal I didn't know how I'd do it when I started but I kind of figured it out and the reveal
[5:11]comes pretty late I mean it comes in the last third of the book and then you then you see the rest
[5:18]of the story through have you seen the movie the sixth sense or get out no that's right you have
[5:25]four kids so mom served have time to watch so so there's this I mean it's a the sixth sense is
[5:33]this very famous movie where you don't learn into the last minute of the film what was going on
[5:40]for the you know the first hour and 59 minutes and this is a little bit like that because you
[5:47]want to go back in the sixth sense you want to go back and look for the clues same with the movie
[5:52]get out so that's what this is it's a little sneaky so you've written narrative nonfiction
[6:02]books memoir everything what was it about this which part of this is it converted you to becoming
[6:08]a novelist so the way I got the idea was that my daughter and I who's now in her 20s we were
[6:15]on one of these by trips and something happened one night someone said something and I can't tell
[6:20]you what it is because I would give it away okay and my daughter turned to me she said mom that's
[6:26]a novel and I hadn't I'd written maybe one short story in my life that never got published in
[6:35]second college and I think you're right and so you know how most people would say you're right
[6:41]you know maybe and patch it would write something like that or you know and I thought well why don't
[6:46]I try it and I just see be I just my imagination went a little crazy because it's the kind of story
[6:55]you'd hear this story and you'd think what could possibly have been going on to create this situation
[7:03]and so that's I just thought you know why not I mean I've been a journalist for a very long time
[7:10]most of that time with the New York Times kind of tyrannized by facts you know getting stuff right
[7:16]you wake up in the middle of the night and you think oh my gosh did that name Carol have an
[7:20]eat the end you know and then are we gonna have to run a correction I've had to run
[7:27]some really embarrassing corrections and you just hate it it's the
[7:31]corrections are just so frightening and I thought okay well in fiction it's like how old is she
[7:38]well I don't know how old do you think she should be
[7:42]so it's very different because I've written six previous books of nonfiction and
[7:50]everything has to be correct however I can say that my life as a reporter has informed this book
[8:01]to know and like for a while I've been writing about older adults and loneliness which is a huge
[8:09]problem among older adults especially those who live alone and I just ran with it in this book
[8:16]and I made one of the main characters a psychologist who studies the phenomenon of loneliness
[8:23]among older adults and it's something I did a big story for the Times about it a few years ago
[8:29]and decided to turn that into part of the book so I think that a lifetime of reporting
[8:37]hopes a lot because it grounds you know I think that a reporter
[8:42]it's a very perilous to try to write fiction if you're a journalist because it's like oh you know
[8:49]it's like so liberating people a lot of journalists kind of go off the deep end do you know what
[8:55]I mean like there's this famous New York Times reporter who shall remain unnamed
[9:01]who years and years and years ago wrote this incredibly raunchy book I mean the first
[9:09]pages are like oh and you don't even want to touch it like it needs like this you know she'll
[9:16]love you a little guy it's room it's been like whoa it is uh it is troublesome to see inside
[9:25]some people's imagination and have enough money oh my god yeah like every other year but
[9:32]the I think he's a prime example of someone who who was too unrestrained by the fiction so
[9:40]fiction can be for journalists both liberating and paralyzing because anything can happen
[9:47]I mean you can go anywhere with the story so I needed to kind of know what was going to happen
[9:53]so that I wouldn't go too crazy so that was an interesting and interesting exercise well
[10:00]And how long do that whole process take you?
[10:03]About three years, you know, I thought it would be easy
[10:06]because it's like, oh, you just make it up.
[10:08]And versus nonfiction, whereas you're reporting
[10:12]and you're traveling and you're in archives
[10:15]and you're interviewing 100 people.
[10:18]And for very, very different reasons,
[10:22]you know, there's continuity and there's the plot
[10:26]and there's the seeding of the story.
[10:28]Well, you know, the whole thing, you know,
[10:29]you have to, and then I had to drop the clues,
[10:33]the beginning of the book.
[10:35]And then I had to wrap it up plausibly
[10:37]in the latter half of the book.
[10:40]And I had to have, make sure that the reader didn't lose faith
[10:43]because there is so much of a leap of imagination.
[10:49]The reader is then asked to take.
[10:51]So it went through a lot of drafts
[10:53]and then when Cindy Spiegel in her reincarnated
[10:58]and speaking on grow, she read it.
[11:01]And she said that when she read the reveal,
[11:03]she just started to laugh.
[11:05]She just said, what?
[11:07]Yeah.
[11:08]So that's why she wanted the book,
[11:12]which isn't to say it didn't need like a total overhaul,
[11:16]which it did and it got.
[11:17]And thanks to her, she's a genius.
[11:20]I mean, she just gets it.
[11:21]She understands fiction and she understands story
[11:24]and she understands characters.
[11:27]And I think that one thing that I didn't have a problem
[11:29]with was dialogue because I'm a reporter.
[11:34]So I'm quoting people all the time.
[11:36]So I know what actual real people have said.
[11:39]And yeah.
[11:40]Wow.
[11:41]I know.
[11:44]So it's not a journey.
[11:47]It's amazing.
[11:48]And speak like grow is another,
[11:51]is a publisher that just launched last year,
[11:53]their first books, right?
[11:55]And how did you decide, like what made you decide
[11:59]to go with them?
[12:01]So I had been at, it was then random house now,
[12:06]Penguin Random House.
[12:08]And it's so easy to get lost in like the machine,
[12:13]the Random House machine.
[12:15]And I just, and I've been at Simon and Schuster
[12:18]and I've been at Scribner and then at Bloomsbury.
[12:20]And I just thought, I just want to go with a really small house.
[12:26]I just, I was thinking like just a very,
[12:30]a literary house.
[12:31]I just didn't want to do that again with the big people
[12:35]and they've gotten even bigger, right?
[12:38]They've consolidated even more.
[12:39]And they just, they have their stars.
[12:42]And I just wanted to be,
[12:44]and also I had in fact Cindy and Julie, Cindy Spiegel
[12:50]and Julie Grau had bid.
[12:52]They had wanted this memoir that I wrote,
[12:55]Mother Daughter Me that Susan Camill
[12:57]at Penguin Random House and Embod.
[13:00]And they said to me later that they always considered me
[13:03]the fish that got away, which is nice to hear.
[13:06]And so when the boys came to Cindy's attention,
[13:11]she just, she wanted it, she, she took it.
[13:14]So knowing you needed like a total read overhaul.
[13:18]Yeah.
[13:20]Wow.
[13:21]Can you tell me more?
[13:22]I have to go back now and read your memoir.
[13:24]Tell me more about your memoir.
[13:26]Well, the memoir and, you know, I would,
[13:29]I would counsel people to think very hard before embarking
[13:33]on a memoir.
[13:34]The memoir was really a tough one to write.
[13:36]It was about my mother.
[13:39]It was about three generations of women under one roof.
[13:42]So my mother and my daughter, who was a teenager at the time
[13:46]and me, that's why it's called Mother Daughter Me,
[13:50]living, we brought my mother to live with us in San Francisco.
[13:53]I was a single mom, my husband had died.
[13:58]It was, we were, my daughter and I were like,
[14:01]the walking wounded.
[14:03]And I thought it would be this wonderful thing.
[14:05]It was such a wishful thing.
[14:08]It was like a total fairy tale.
[14:10]Like, oh, we'll all live together.
[14:12]And it'll be our year in Provence and year in Purgatory
[14:17]and then Pure Hell.
[14:18]And then it didn't go well.
[14:20]Partly because my mother didn't raise me.
[14:23]So you build up this fantasy of the mother you think you have.
[14:30]And it wasn't the mother I actually have
[14:33]which isn't to say she's in any way a bad person.
[14:36]She just, I had superimposed my fantasy
[14:40]on who she would be living with me.
[14:44]And I think my daughter did the same thing.
[14:46]We year in a family, we had lost her dad.
[14:49]It was an unmitigated catastrophe.
[14:52]And so she ended up moving out.
[14:54]And it's very upsetting.
[14:58]And she was very, very upset by the book
[15:01]and doesn't speak to me.
[15:04]So it was really, yeah.
[15:05]And she kept the lawyers at Random House very, very busy
[15:09]for quite a while.
[15:11]So that's why I'm saying to people,
[15:13]and just, yeah, I know, I know.
[15:17]So no wonder I wanted to write fiction, right?
[15:20]Oh, plus, I had so many kind of dodgy characters in my own life.
[15:25]I had a super terrible childhood
[15:28]where my sister and I were taken away from our mother
[15:31]when we were very little.
[15:33]I was in the step family from hell and it was terrible.
[15:36]And so I thought, well, there were so many dodgy characters
[15:40]in my life.
[15:41]I was gonna write a novel and tell me what you think of this.
[15:44]Where everyone is a good person at their core.
[15:49]And I think that what a lot of people say
[15:52]is that goodness writes white, i.e. bland.
[15:57]And I just thought, you know what?
[15:58]Let the other people write the dark books.
[16:01]But what do you think?
[16:02]Do you like edgy stuff?
[16:04]I think everybody being nice and good.
[16:07]I know.
[16:08]Thanks.
[16:09]Yeah, not everybody has to be malicious.
[16:11]As long as there's some sort of conflict.
[16:13]There's a conflict between these really good people.
[16:17]And you think the reader is misled into thinking that Barb,
[16:22]the white is like nasty.
[16:25]And then you kind of get it.
[16:28]I know.
[16:29]It's really good.
[16:33]This is like my husband only wanted to hear good news
[16:35]for a while, you know?
[16:36]Oh, I seem same.
[16:38]I've started subscribing to nice news.
[16:41]Yeah, I just had on a podcast.
[16:44]It's not called nice news, but it's similar.
[16:46]Anyway, I'm blanking on the name.
[16:47]Good news nation, maybe.
[16:48]Anyways, that's all posting about good news.
[16:51]Yeah.
[16:52]Yeah. I like that.
[16:53]We need a little bit of that.
[16:54]Yeah.
[16:55]So if people want to go live in Ethan and Barb's world
[17:00]for, you know, it's a quick read a couple days, then why not?
[17:05]And then we can worry about the fact that nobody
[17:07]can get an abortion anymore.
[17:08]Yeah, exactly.
[17:10]I got.
[17:12]Wait, can I ask how your husband died?
[17:14]You don't have to answer.
[17:15]He died.
[17:16]So we had met when we were growing up in Western Massachusetts.
[17:20]Our fathers started a college in Amherst, Massachusetts
[17:24]together, Hampshire College.
[17:25]And so we met when I was 10 and he was 11.
[17:29]And, you know, we were together on and off
[17:32]through high school and he came and kind of found me
[17:36]when I was older and we got married and we had our daughter.
[17:38]And when he was 45, perfect help.
[17:42]Perfect health, perfect.
[17:45]He just had a physical, he had perfect blood pressure,
[17:47]perfect cholesterol, ran five miles a day,
[17:49]if they had a lot of tennis and was on a treadmill.
[17:53]I mean, classic story when he was 45 and our daughter was eight.
[17:58]And, yeah, so.
[18:01]Anyhead of heart attack?
[18:03]He had a heart attack.
[18:04]Oh, I know.
[18:07]But I'm 45 and I have an eight-year-old.
[18:10]This is like terrible.
[18:11]This is the worst.
[18:12]I mean, it's terrible.
[18:14]I mean, because-
[18:15]So sorry, this happened to you.
[18:16]I can't even, I mean, it's terrible.
[18:19]It's really terrible.
[18:20]I'm sorry.
[18:21]Yeah, thank you.
[18:22]I mean, it's been a while and he, I often think, I mean,
[18:26]just I think it's the fact that he can't see her just have,
[18:31]she has blossomed unbelievably.
[18:33]She just got her MD and is starting her residency.
[18:37]And she's a star and she's beautiful.
[18:39]And she looks abs 100% like him.
[18:43]She is him.
[18:45]And in so many ways.
[18:46]So, and he and I had named her after some when we went to high school
[18:51]with an Amherst.
[18:52]So I know it's, I mean, we've moved on.
[18:57]I'm remarried to someone who I adore.
[19:01]And he read my novel, this person I'm married to now.
[19:05]He must have read it, I don't know, 20 times.
[19:08]Oh, I know.
[19:11]He doesn't even read.
[19:16]How many books have you read in last year?
[19:17]Oh, 20.
[19:18]Well, it was the same one.
[19:19]It was all different each time, a little bit different.
[19:26]It's really funny.
[19:30]It is very funny.
[19:31]Where do you live?
[19:33]We live in San Francisco, but I'm talking to you now from New Hampshire
[19:37]because we have a house, a summer house in New Hampshire.
[19:40]And so we're here now, but he has a job that is not very mobile.
[19:44]So he has to go home tomorrow and go back to work.
[19:48]So, but he helped me bring the dog out.
[19:51]And he is at the same, he's at UCSF, which is a really great medical school.
[19:56]And he's chair of medicine there.
[19:59]And he's so proud of.
[20:00]her of my daughter. So I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I'm so. I'm like in this.
[20:07]Well, after all of your whole writing career and everything you've gone through and
[20:14]is there anything you wish you'd done differently? Or do you feel like it was meant to be
[20:17]that now the novel is coming out? Well, you know, my step sister, who I'm still very close to,
[20:23]she just read it and she said, I should read it to you. She said, she's great. She has a wonderful
[20:29]critical eyes. She used to be the literary director of the actor's theater of Louisville.
[20:34]And she said, you have a novelist sensibility, my dear plot is your new best friend.
[20:42]And I know, isn't that nice? So thank you, Julie, for saying that. And she pointed out a few
[20:48]inconsistencies. We'll go on here. I said, yeah, I kind of knew about that, but I was just so tired.
[20:55]That's what that's. I don't regret. I think, I mean, maybe I'm
[21:03]building the lily care, but I think I needed to wait all these years to write a novel just because
[21:09]I needed that store of knowledge and wisdom. And I think I would have written like Kafka like
[21:15]dark stuff in my younger years. And now it's like, why do that? Yeah. So, but other as I've said,
[21:27]like, let all those other people be dark. We're sticking with the good.
[21:37]Amazing. Well, Katie, thank you so much. This has been really fun. I think you should put plot
[21:41]is your new best friend up on the fridge or something like that. I just love that.
[21:46]Okay. Thanks, Evie. And congratulations. Is your book called book ends?
[21:52]It is. What's the subtitle? I can't read that there. I love loss and literature.
[21:56]Oh, wow. I talk about all the other books I've read along the way through the
[22:01]Oh, that's my own life. So I'll send you on. I'm trying to send it to us.
[22:05]Thank you, podcast. So yeah, please do. That's great. It's wonderful. Congratulations.
[22:11]Thank you. All righty. You too. Okay. Take care. All right. Bye.
[22:18]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
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