"Why I stole my mother's lover" – a partial inspiration for "Women's Hotel"

I got to do a fun group interview with LitHub that’s out this week, if you’d care to read it.

What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at?

“I like writing dialogue. I’d like to be better at describing the way things look. I always feel deranged when I try to do that: “The building was there. It looked squat. They walked to the left, with their shoes on.” That can’t be right. I read books all the time that just say normal things about how a character’s hair looks, but I can’t quite seem to find my way there.”

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In 2012 The Telegraph published an essay by writer Joan Brady titled, wonderfully, “Why I stole my mother’s lover.” It’s frank and remorseless and libidinal and I return to it often. When I wrote my first novel Women’s Hotel, I knew I wanted most of the characters to be original, but three of them are (very loosely) based on real people – Stephen the elevator operator (based on Stephen Donaldson/Donny the Punk), Lucianne Caruso (based even more loosely on Lucianne Goldberg), and Gia Kassab, inspired by that Telegraph essay.

I like thinking about how physical beauty can enhance one’s sense of determination, and I like thinking about unpopular types of relationships, and what dating a much older man can provide a young woman with, socially. There’s a pleasure in being talked about in scandalized tones, a pleasure in upsetting one’s contemporaries and elders, a pleasure in ruffling feathers and holding the monopoly on youthful beauty in one’s relationship, that doesn’t always get acknowledged in what one might call “age gap discourse,” that can make for vicious and interesting fiction (Phantom Thread comes immediately to mind, as does Shadowlands).

The mother’s lover in question was Dexter Masters.¹ He was a writer too — I would say “in his own right,” although “in their own right” is an expression I loathe. It’s only ever used defensively, about a person who is best known for their relationship to someone more famous, and always carries with it the air of a consolation prize: They really were very good on their own, you know! But it’s never convincing. I can never hear that someone was impressive or talented or accomplished “in their own right” and felt like the person saying so really believed it. “In their own right” sells itself out, as a defense. Dexter Masters was a writer, and a good one too, but he never wrote a perfect essay for The Telegraph about stealing his mother’s lover, so I cannot love him in the same way I love Joan Brady.