From Infertility to Empty Nesting in Fiction

[1:48]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to totally booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and, obviously, podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Today's episode is gonna be a little bit different, unique, and special. I hope that you all enjoy it too. I know I really enjoyed making it. I happened to interview three novelists on the same day in within a couple hours of each other, and all the books had to do with a different piece of motherhood. And I learned different things from reading the books. I learned different things from talking to the authors. But I thought the most interesting part was just how all those books related to each other even though they might not have thought they would if the author saw them on the shelves. The first one is Ways to Find Yourself by Angela Brown. And while this book is about a woman who loses her mother and goes back to a town that has a lot of meaning to her and meets different versions of herself at different ages, there is a big infertility plot line in the story that I found very moving and compelling and really, was the undercurrent of the whole plot. So I wanna start today hearing a little bit from Angela Brown and the infertility piece of the book. Then we're gonna move on to Saba Sams, who wrote a book called Gunk, which already came out in The UK. This is about found motherhood, how you don't have to give birth to be a mother. It's about a failed marriage and a nightclub owner and a woman who gets pregnant too young, a woman who can't get pregnant. But a big part of the book in our conversation was about actually giving birth and the moments leading up to that and the delivery and the physicality of it all, which is really interesting. So then I'm gonna weave in Saba Sams', discussion that she and I had about the motherhood and and the act of giving birth and all of that. And then we're gonna fast forward through motherhood to talk to Lindsay Goldstein who wrote a book called Gap Year, which is fabulous. And it's her debut novel, and it's about a woman who is just about embarking on the emptiness. So we're fast forwarding through the kids at home years to what happens when they leave. So we have before the kids come and right after they leave, which is a trajectory many of us have been through or will go through or have seen others go through. And this book is about a woman who her husband leaves her. All three books have relationships that end in pretty big ways. And in this one, her husband leaves her in the very beginning. Her daughter goes off to a year in Spain, and she is left to figure out what to do with her life and decides to quit her job and and travel and go on the adventure she's always wanted to go on. But while she's doing that, she's still parenting her daughter from afar, of course, but also finding herself again, which is another very common theme, in the empty nest part of life. I hate that expression empty nest, but whatever. So I'm gonna weave together these three conversations, which were all so interesting about the different phases of the motherhood experience. And I think that after you listen to snippets from all three, you'll get another glimpse, another take, another three takes on what it means to be a mother. And I hope that that is something that you find interesting and that you can take away some tidbits from, to inform your own life and maybe how you interact with your own parents or children today. I hope you like it. Open to feedback always. Let me know. So we're gonna kick things off now with excerpts from my conversation with Angela Brown about ways to find yourself. Welcome, Angela. Thank you for coming back on Totally Booked to talk about ways to find yourself, your most recent novel. Congratulations. Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. I'm so happy to be back here with you. Oh, it's such a pleasure. And this is such a unique concept for a book and execution as well. And thank you for taking me outside as we're talking now. There's snow surrounding all of us. And Yeah. Instead, we got to go to the seaside and walk on the beach. Thank you for that. I really love doing that. So thanks.

[6:47]Guest: Ready to live inside of the setting of this book again and be in the sun and the beach and and all of those things. Yes. That would be that would be lovely. Tell listeners about what the book's about. So ways to find yourself is the story of a 30 woman named Grace who we meet at really the worst moment of her life. After years of fertility troubles, her husband has up and left. Her writing career is hanging on by a thread. And her mother, who is her only living family member, dies very suddenly one night. So when we meet Grace, she's incredibly lost and unsure how to move forward in her life. So when an opportunity presents itself for her to return for one week to the beach cottage that she used to stay at every year of her life with her mother, she takes it, hoping a few days in the salt air might help her find her way again. And when she arrives, what she ends up finding is all over this beach setting from her past are past versions of herself. So, know, her teenage self and her college age self and all these different versions of her waiting there to kind of help her find her her way back to herself again. I love when she's like, wait, am I dehydrated?

[8:01]Zibby Owens: Like, what is going on with me? What would my therapist think about this? Like, I don't understand. But I love I love this concept so much because sometimes it's the places that we go, and we're just like, but I'm I'm still walking the same path. Like, sometimes I walk on the street here in New York, and I'm just like, but this is the same block I walked on when I was, like, three years old going to preschool. Like, if only I could just go back and meet her or see her on the same sidewalk. So I feel like your book just, like, lived out that fantasy of mine.

[8:32]Guest: You know, I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah, the setting is definitely, I think, what made the book really come to life in so many different ways. It's, you know, inspired by a setting that's very important to me and that has seen a lot of versions of myself over the years, too. But I think I hope when readers read it that they discover, or it makes them think about a place in their own lives that has seen so many versions of them. Because I think a lot of us probably have, whether it's a, you know, vacation spa There's often a place that we return to year after year or and, you know, see ourselves there again. So, yeah, I love this setting very much.

[9:16]Zibby Owens: I know that Grace goes through this and at times it's creepy when she's like when she meets one version of Cece. And she's like, could you like, why are you touching me? What are you doing? Talk to me also about the infertility, fertility struggles in the book because that is a big through line as well. That's another thing that is not going at all well for destroyed essentially her marriage. And, you know, sometimes the grief of that is too much to bear. And you explore that, like, very delicately. And, you know, I I found the ending I won't give anything away. I found the way you chose to end it, like, super interesting. Anyway, just tell me a little bit about that piece of the puzzle.

[10:01]Guest: Yeah. So in the story, we learn that Grace, for a number of years, has dealt with fertility troubles. More or less, she every test she's had, every time she's been poked and prodded, you know, she she keeps learning there's nothing, you know, tangibly wrong, so to speak. It's just she keeps losing the pregnancies, and it just keeps happening. And it does, as you said, it tears her marriage apart. So a lot of this was taken from my own life. I had never before written about fertility hardships on the page. And I'd always wanted to, but I I never really had a protagonist that it made sense. Like, it didn't serve the story in any way. And with Grace, I knew from very early on, like, this is part of her her story for sure. And, I mean, in my personal life, I have two children now. I have a daughter who will be 10 in two weeks and a three and a half year old. But it took me so many years to to arrive at that point in motherhood where, you know, this little door closed in my heart, and I said, Yep, family's complete. Like, we're all good here. And like Grace, every time I would have a loss, you know, the doctors were like, There's nothing actually wrong. This is just you know, it's not the right time. And for a woman going through that, that's about the worst thing you could possibly hear. So I wanted very much to take those feelings that I had experienced and to almost find a purpose later in life for them and put them on the page in the hopes that maybe somebody else reading it will see a little bit of themselves somewhere in there. Because I think for Grace, she is a character who, I think, had a very clear vision for her life. Like, this is what my life will look like. I will be a mother. I will be married. I will be a writer. And her thoughts about eventually being a mother, I think, are so much a part of her identity. So when it doesn't happen, she loses a lot of herself in that, too. So, it was it was really interesting to explore on the page. It was really funny. As we were editing it, there was this one moment in in edits where my editor left a note, something like and it was a very good note. It made perfect sense. You know, do you think we should describe, like, is something wrong that this keeps happening to her? Like, do you think readers will want to know, like, but medically, like, what was the issue? I was like, for some people, it's just nothing, and that's that's part of it. Like, I I'd really like very much for that to actually be part of her story. So, yeah, it was it was surprisingly satisfying for me to put some of those experiences down on the page because I'd never done it before. So yeah.

[12:44]Zibby Owens: So if you could if you could sort of summarize, like, the what do you want readers

[12:51]Guest: to take away from this about motherhood? To me, it's very much a love letter between a mother and a daughter. But for me, it's also a lot about knowing which voices to trust in your life. And for Grace, I think that voice is her mother's. She, again, has a husband who's left and some other characters who come and go. And And, you know, I think that's true to life. You're never really sure which of the voices are the ones that are guiding you the right way. So I hope readers take a lot out of the mother daughter narrative and this idea that even when someone's gone, like, mother's still very much there and guiding her and and that that's a very important piece to her story.

[13:35]Zibby Owens: Okay. Now we're gonna move on to Saba Sams, where she talks about motherhood and the physicality of it and all of that. Your book has gotten so much attention. I loved your whole feature in British Vogue. How do you feel being like this new sort of it literary girl? I don't think I feel like that. I think I feel like a frazzled mom who occasionally gets time to vomit

[14:02]Guest: some words into my laptop. And then occasionally you open British Vogue and you're there, it's just like some kind of matrix or something.

[14:14]Zibby Owens: Well, I can relate to, you know, all of the duality of being a mom with a career and all of it. And your book was so immersive, and you have such a unique voice. So I'm not surprised you're getting attention. I loved how you wrote Gunk in this style, and we had to figure out why the mother had the why she wasn't really the mother, what was going on, the seedy sort of nightclub scene meets postpartum meets friendship meets coming of age, all the things. Maybe you should explain it a little better. Why don't you tell listeners what it's about?

[14:56]Guest: I mean, I will, but I also love that description because it is it was supposed to be messy. Like, for me, that's what gunk is. And I too find it really hard to explain because of that. I was trying to, like, push back against every boundary that I understood about love and motherhood and family and relationships. But basically, I can explain it as best I can, which is that it follows Jules who is approaching 40 and has been dreaming of motherhood and it hasn't happened for her and is working in Gunk, which is this grotty student nightclub that her really useless ex husband Leon runs. She Well, I say runs. He doesn't run. He owns it. She runs it. And they hire Nim to work the bar, who's this 19 year old with a shaved head. And there's this kind of electricity between Jules and Nim that they can't really explain. And then Nim falls pregnant and their relationship kind of progresses around the pregnancy.

[15:59]Zibby Owens: And, yeah, it's set and brightened. In her becoming a mom, what do you want us to take away

[16:04]Guest: aside from just the chaos of it all? It's funny when I think about the trajectory of the book, Jules was actually She's the narrator and the protagonist, and she came in last. She was kind of the last character to arrive for me. Really, I wrote a birth scene from the perspective of Nim. I just really wanted to write a birth scene that was kind of just intense and visceral and long. I wanted it to take up multiple chapters. I was just like, Let's force my readers to witness this birth scene. And there's this kind of scene in the book where Nim's just about to give birth and they get in a taxi and the taxi driver's like, Don't get in my car after birth. Go away. That was a stand in for the way that we all refuse to witness birth in day to day life. It's closed away and you don't have to think about it unless you're in the room. And so I kind of wanted to put my reader in the room basically. Anyway, tried to write this birth scene. It's impossible. I could not write a birth scene from the perspective of a character giving birth. And I also had this idea of making it kind of radicalizing and you're producing a body from your body and therefore you feel so much more interrelated and dependent on the people that you're around. Anyway, I'm trying to make this birthing character draw political conclusions, and it's just falling apart and there's no narrative. And so I needed a witness in the book. I realised this. I needed Jules. I needed someone who wasn't giving birth, but who was still becoming a mother and somehow on the journey. And that's where she came in. And it was like, had written this scene that I knew was part of the book, I had kind of come up with a plot around this scene, but then all of that had to go away because I had Jules there and everything had to be from her perspective. I wanted to explore how you could become a mother without giving birth or, you know, without being pregnant.

[18:11]Zibby Owens: And do you feel it's important for us to always be remembering sort of the the trauma and the and the details of giving birth. Like, do you feel that we don't talk about it enough? Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[21:25]Guest: That's an interesting question. I I think I I think when I wrote it, I was writing it for myself having been pregnant and not having given birth because I hadn't really read a birth scene in fiction. And I had looked for one when I was pregnant and not anything that really kind of touched me. And that's why I was doing it. I was just trying to put the detail on paper. But I do also feel that we don't talk about it enough and that it should be talked about more. Also that it's not necessarily a subject just for people who are pregnant. Of course, you can go to the antenatal class and you can talk about birth in all its detail and you can see all the gory photos. But I was kind of like, no, I want all the men to read about it too. And I want men who aren't thinking about being fathers ever to read about it too. Wanted to just embed it in a book that also wasn't necessarily a book. Because it's about this grotty student nightclub, it almost doesn't belong. And I kind of like, I wanted it to feel that it could take you by surprise and that it was given its own space just to breathe and be there. Without- you know, it's very different to looking up, kind of, which I did a lot when I was pregnant, is like accounts of birth. That's something that's very possible. But to embed it in a novel felt it

[23:00]Zibby Owens: did feel like it hasn't been done enough to me. So do you have advice for aspiring authors on not giving up or pursuing it? Or why pursue publication versus writing for yourself? I think

[23:13]Guest: the I guess pursuing publication rather than writing for yourself is like it's a sticky one, isn't it? Because since being published, it's also writing is also harder for me. It feels like I've you know, like if it's the other side of the wall, I'm now the other side of the wall. And when I think about writing my first book before I got my book deal and I wasn't thinking about being published at all, was something so energetic and juicy and secretive about it that was just really special. And I miss those times a lot sometimes. But then also I get to do this thing that is incredible for me personally. It just feels so good and I get to do it for my job. And that's obviously the dream. Yeah, as much as it's sometimes I feel like I've ruined myself by monetizing my hobby. It's also the most magical thing that's ever happened to me.

[24:13]Zibby Owens: From someone else who has monetized a hobby of reading, I am with you and I think it's pretty awesome. And now we're gonna wrap things up with Lindsay Goldstein's gap year told from the empty nest point of view and how life does not end when you have children. Welcome, Lindsay. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about gap year, your debut novel. Congrats.

[24:35]Guest: Thank you. I'm excited to be here and excited to talk about it.

[24:40]Zibby Owens: I have twin 18 year olds, FYI, so in addition to younger kids. So this was particularly relevant for me reading at this time of life and at this exact moment of transition. So I deeply appreciated the sentiments, the texts, just feeling so pulled, wanting her to go Anyway, why don't you tell listeners what the book is about? So it's about Jane, who's 46.

[25:06]Guest: She has a daughter, Liza, who is going on a gap year of her own to Spain. And her husband, on the way out of the airport, lets her know that he thinks he's fallen in love with another woman. Their marriage has sort of not crumbled, but they've become distant over the years, haven't really connected. So that, coupled with her boss at her job as a CPA, lets her know that he's offering her a promotion that he thinks she'll want. But she realizes she never really liked her job as a CPA. So she decides that she wants to take an adult version of a gap year in Ecuador, someplace she'd always wanted to go when she was in her twenties, never got to, life got in the way. And, so off she goes to climb this volcano that she feels like is gonna help her reinvent herself and figure out who she wants to be in the next chapter of her life.

[25:59]Zibby Owens: Amazing. Well, it's such a fun read because not only do we get the domestic stuff at home and navigating when her husband the demise of their marriage this week and and Liza leaving, but then you also take us on this really fun trip. We have to climb up to the top bunk at a hostel and deal with the disgusting bathrooms. And then next thing you know, we're, like, you know, passing out on a mountain or whatever, and then we're in the Galapagos. I mean, we're just all over. It's quite a ride. It's really, really fun, and it feels like a very satisfying adventure at the end of it. Thank you. Thank you. So this notion of the chapter not necessarily ending when your kids go to college, but actually starting, like, that that it can be seen as this period of reinvention and sort of a lift off instead of a I don't know what the opposite of a lift off. Instead of, like, the coming to an end of something, but instead being a beginning. Can you can you speak to that? Because it's so important to keep that in mind. Yes.

[27:02]Guest: So I actually did my first signing last night, and I I saw. You went to pages. Yes. I had so much fun. But so this question came up, and what I talked about is, you know, I can't speak to being a man, obviously, but as a woman who's a mother and a wife, I feel like a lot of times we kind of forget who we were before all of that happened, before we became mothers, before we became wives. And so now our kids leave and we have to figure out who were we or who do we want to be going forward. So that's what I really wanted to impart in this book is that it's not too late. And everyone has, I think, more than two chapters to their lives. You keep reinventing yourself as different things come up in your life. It doesn't have to be negative. It doesn't have to be positive, but just a different direction. And there's always new possibilities. So that was really the main message I wanted to put out that especially as women, it doesn't come to an end because our kids leave. There's, there's always more. Like I said, there's a hearkening back to who we were, or you can figure out, hey, I have totally different interests, I wanna go in this direction now. So I hope that's what people get out of this.

[28:20]Zibby Owens: And I feel like trying to remember who you were before is almost irrelevant because even if you hadn't had kids over an eighteen year period, you've basically become somebody else anyway with just life experience and how we all change over time. So we're definitely not going back to who that was. So that's why there has to be some sort of new identity forged. It doesn't have to it doesn't have to be a depressing identity necessarily.

[28:45]Guest: No. No. I think that, like you said, you have gained all this life experience, but there's always something new on the horizon. I mean, I saw my own mother do it when because I'm the youngest when I left home. And I saw her struggle for a few months. I was in Ecuador and it was expensive to call. So I only spoke to them maybe once a month. But when I did those first few months, I felt like she was not sure what to do now. And then she really figured it out and went in her own direction and became sort of had a whole new set of interests that she started pursuing, and it was exciting for me to see. So

[29:28]Zibby Owens: yeah. That's interesting. My mom did that too at 40. And she, like, took up golf, and she did all these new things and got remarried. And I think when we have role models like that, it makes it feel more attainable. But you're still married to your first husband? I had a, starter marriage. That was in my when I was 29. But I am still married to the same person I've been with for twenty years. You put that in there for Jane and Liza that we should only talk once a month, but we can text the rest of the time. And I was like, what? Like, I already FaceTime with my daughter, like, I don't know, six times a day? Like, literally? So I'm like, once a month? Why would they do that?

[30:08]Guest: Oh, well, I guess I mean, part of that was I wanted not only Liza to have some sense of independence and cut the umbilical cord from her mother,

[30:21]Zibby Owens: and this is not any reflection. No, it's Okay. I shouldn't be doing it so much. I get it. I need to cut my own cord more, I guess. I mean, this was really Jane's story that

[30:32]Guest: she had to figure out her sense of independence from her daughter who she's very close to. So yeah, I'm sure there will be some readers who don't like that aspect.

[30:44]Zibby Owens: No. It's it's fun. I mean, I don't think so. Do you have friends who have done empty nest adventures like this, gap years of their own in midlife midlife gap year?

[30:57]Guest: None of my friends, yeah. None of my friends' kids have all gone off to college yet. Mhmm. But I have met people who have to I actually just met someone yesterday at my signing who told me that she was thinking of doing something like this. And I met actually another woman came to my signing who I hadn't met before, who said that she and her husband actually started writing together. And they just did a retreat in The UK to take some writing classes and to start putting the structure down of their story. And so I've met other people and that was after their kids had left. So I I am inspired by that. I think that I don't know if I'll be brave enough to do it.

[31:44]Zibby Owens: Seriously, you're gonna have a lot of people watching after this book. You know? Like, okay. Chop chop. Let's get to it. Where is the fun?

[31:52]Guest: I know. I have had people ask me my husband's name is Thomas. Like, is is he like Clark? I said, no. He is not like Clark.

[32:01]Zibby Owens: And if he was, he probably wouldn't say it to anybody. Right? You wouldn't want to admit that. Yeah. No. But he is not. He's

[32:09]Guest: far more of an Alan.

[32:13]Zibby Owens: Al, as they say. Yeah. That's great. You know, that sometimes starting over is not pretty. I think that's sort of it's it's like encapsulates the theme of it. You can start something new, but it it's not gonna be all roses and sunshine at the beginning. Anyway well, congratulations on gap year. Truly enjoyed it. Got a lot out of it. Do you follow Grown and Flown, the website and community place? Should I don't. You should you need to check it out. You should write an article for them or something. And I bet it would be yeah. It would be a good audience for your book. That's fine. That's my tip. I'll look it up after we hang up. Okay. Alright. Well, thank you so much, Lindsey, and I I hope to meet you in person in LA one of these days. I would love that. Thank you so much, Zibby. So that wraps up some excerpts from these three novels and novelists today, Angela Brown, Saba Sams, Lindsay Goldstein, and their three books, which you can learn more about in the show notes. I hope you've enjoyed this walk through motherhood today. Let me know. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.