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How often do you finish a novel, only to find yourself flipping back to the first page and thinking, I really ought to start that all over again? Alina Grabowski’s debut Women and Children First, a new and remarkable book (out this week) from SJP Lit, Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint at Zando books, prompts that kind of reading.
Set in a struggling New England town, the novel unfolds through interlocking stories—something like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge or Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. One of the local teenagers, a girl named Lucy, has died by falling from a roof during a party. Did she jump? Was she pushed? Did she suffer a seizure? The book is divided into “before” and “after” sections, and each chapter is narrated by a new character with their own perspective on the untimely death. You might assume that the stories help unravel the mystery bit by bit, but the effect is, in fact, the opposite: Each point of view only further complicates the realities of these characters. It’s a rich and textured book, with shades not only of those female authors, but also Mary Gaitskill or Lorrie Moore, through its investigation into female agency, power, and vulnerability.
Parker has always been an avid reader—to put it mildly. Last year, she described her lifelong habit of reading anywhere and everywhere, even when she’s on set between takes. “For many people, it’s a curiosity because it seems like it removes me from the work I’m doing,” she told Vanity Fair. “But actually, it keeps me focused because there’s so much chaos on a set. Sometimes I feel that it appears that I’m antisocial, but it’s just what maintains calm for me.” Still, it’s another matter entirely to be vetting books for an imprint that bears her name. I caught up with Parker (speaking from New York) and Grabowski (speaking from Austin) about what goes into choosing and publishing books in general, and this book in particular.
Vogue: Sarah Jessica, how did you pick this book? And how do you pick books generally?
Sarah Jessica Parker: I get a weekly update on available manuscripts from Zando, and sometimes there’s some cover letter—often just a letter from the agent and a brief synopsis of the book. I think in this case it was just that, without any coverage, and I was immediately intrigued. I can only read in hard copy, so I have to print everything out. I read it immediately and I thought, Well, there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to want to help shepherd this. I was just stunned by Alina’s ability to find a way in and stay interior, but also talk about these larger themes about connections and women and girls and the way they see themselves and the way others see them.
The setting of this book is really striking. I had to google it to make sure it wasn’t a real town that I had never heard of.
Alina Grabowski: I was definitely inspired by where I grew up, which is a small coastal town in Massachusetts, toward the Cape. We moved there when I was three, and there were a lot of people who had been living there for generations. When you live by the ocean, you’re also just so aware of the absolute power and domination of nature. One of the scenes that I drew in the book is during a blizzard—waves are breaching the sea wall and flooding the nearby homes. And that’s something that actually happened in my town. It made the cover of The New York Times. I love character and creation, but I’m not super creative when it comes to creating whole worlds; I feel like I can’t conjure that sort of thing up from scratch. So I was able to sort of draw on this geography and landscape that I knew really well, and I felt like that freed me up to play more with the characters.
I would loosely argue, maybe, that there has been a little bit of a flattening of gender dynamics in public discourse in recent years. But the first story in this book is very complicated; you don’t feel bad for this girl at all, even though she is having an affair with her teacher, and you are also a little bit twisted up in your guts about it. What did you feel was going on there?
SJP: She’s such an incredible, strong character because she’s so smart and she’s so observant and she’s kind of wily. She’s like this scrappy girl that I wish I had known. But the story shows that even the most knowing girls can get caught up in affection and being seen and feeling that there’s something unique and special about them, especially when there’s larger questions looming about life and friendships and how other people see you. Alina just did such a good job of not placing judgment, not telling us, This is dangerous. I didn’t want that story to go away. And I’m not suggesting I want young women to have affairs with teachers—at all—but I wanted to understand it. I wanted to understand her because I think she’s not alone.
In the first chapter, you meet a concerned woman who just seems vaguely annoying. And then when she later comes back as one of the narrators, you understand a lot more about her, and why she might have that kind of concern. How did you build all these layers?
AG: It was a lot of revision. At one point I had every single character’s name on my whiteboard in my office. I was just drawing lines from character to character to map the connections and to sort of make sure it was somewhat distributed in a meaningful way. And it was a lot of just going back and thinking: What are opportunities for these people to overlap? And it opened up new ways for their characters to reveal themselves to me, too, through these relationships that I maybe hadn’t initially envisioned. As I’ve said, I grew up in a small town, and I was thinking about that experience of running into your teacher at the grocery store or your neighbor at church, all the ways we just wove in and out of each other’s lives seamlessly, and thinking about how I could replicate that on the page.
This book sort of straddles genres. If someone had described it to you as a mystery, do you think you would have wanted to publish it?
SJP: I don’t think of myself as someone who runs toward a mystery novel. What I’m always pulled toward is literary fiction; I love being deeply embedded in a fictional world. I think if someone had told me it’s a mystery, I might have been less inclined. It’s not a judgment, it’s just a destination that I seem to respond to. But I do think that for those that are engaged by that, this book fulfills that in a lot of ways because it’s a very sophisticated approach to it. There is this question that lingers and it’s a deadly important question, but it allows for a sort of calm, contemplative approach that is thoroughly absorbing.
An easy question to end on: What are your favorite bookstores?
SJP: Oh, my gosh. Well, Three Lives is my home away from home. It’s right here in the West Village, and it’s physically a beautiful place. But the people that work there, they’re just incredibly smart and informed. They love books and writers. They love their customers, and they have a fantastic, fantastic newsletter. And I would say my other favorite bookstore is the public library.
AG: I’ll name two smaller ones in Austin which deserve love and recognition. There’s this small bookstore called Reverie, which is close to where I live, and Ty, the owner, was a very early supporter of this book. I came in with an advance copy right when they got printed, and she read it and reviewed it immediately. It was super kind. Then we have an incredible bookstore called Alienated Majesty, which is near UT’s campus, and they just have the coolest selection. I just read this book, My Death by Lisa Tuttle, an NYRB re-release that I bought from them. I walk in there and I recognize nothing and always come away with the coolest stack of books.
