Books
The author ofHead Over Heelsreturns withMeant to Be Mine.
And just as Orenstein suffered a loss while writing the novel, Edie grapples with grief.
Because we didn’t know what 2022 was going to look when I was writing this.
What were your inspirations for the book?
I wanted to wear real clothes again, so Edie became a stylist.
I missed going out to restaurants and bars and live music, so Theo became a musician.
I was thinking a lot about politics, so there’s a campaign and a race in this book.
And for me, that was going to hug my grandparents who were living in Florida at the time.
So Gloria became a really central part of this book.
I also knew that I wanted my book to be more explicitly Jewish than my others have been.
The family in this book really represents my family.
But the feedback I’ve been getting is really every culture cares a lot about their grandparents.
Every culture cares a lot about food.
Holidays are really important to everybody.
Every culture has parents that are poking into their lives.
The things that might be niche on the surface are really universal.
I’m so sorry.
And Edie definitely faces those pressures because of a different reason, because of the situation with her family.
Did you take direct inspiration from your grandmothers when you were writing Gloria?
Were they these eccentric figures as well?
Yeah, so all four of my grandparents are really in the book.
She traveled abroad internationally by herself at a time when women really didn’t do that.
She called her travel diary from that period A Broad Abroad, which I just think is fabulous.
That’s a blog title right there.
And she was brilliant.
She didn’t really work because that’s just not what women of her era did.
But she also had this sharp, sassy side to her, too.
Sometimes a grandmother should be a little bit sassy.
So she’s in the book in that way.
My mom’s mom, Eleanor, was a very classic Jewish grandmother archetype.
She played mahjong, she made a lot of matzo ball soup.
Pretty much word for word, actually, because in 2018I wrote a story for Bustle about the soup.
So she’s very much a part of this.
And then my mom’s dad, Jerry, he just had such a colorful vocabulary.
I just think that’s a hilarious story because they will spend all of eternity together.
Do you believe in fate on any level?
I don’t think there’s just one person.
Do you consider the ending a happily ever after, or a happy for now?
I think this is happily ever after.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
