The characters in Ellen Feldman’s latest novel set in the days following WWII almost seem to emanate from the page. Set in post-WWII New York City, the novel is in fact “a love letter to midcentury New York” as author Ellen Feldman states in our most recent Q&A. In a day where women were being sent back to the kitchen/bedroom after taking up the work to support their husbands who had gone to defend their country, seeing the determination and resilience of Fanny Fabriant (based on Feldman’s mother) fills you with hope.
When were you first inspired to write your latest novel, The Trouble with You?
It’s always hard for me to pinpoint when a novel starts to take shape in my imagination. According to my journal, sometime in April 2022, I gave up on a novel I’d been struggling with for several months and suddenly started work on The Trouble with You. However, looking back, I know the word suddenly is misleading, if not dead wrong. The girl Fanny was and the woman she would become had been germinating in my mind for years. I simply hadn’t heeded their siren call.
How different do you feel life in post-WWI and post-WWII were from each other or how do you feel they were similar?
Where do I begin? The sheer number of returning vets – almost eight times as many in WWII as in WWI – made a huge difference. Few families had a son or husband fighting in WWI. Almost every American had a relative, often more than one, in service in WWII. The numbers were reflected in postwar social and economic policy. During WWII millions of women went to work in offices, on assembly lines, and even delivering planes. Now that the men were home and the government feared unemployment and depression, the women were sent back to their kitchens and bedrooms and the men again took over. WWI led to no such major shift and reshift in women’s lives. WWI ushered in Prohibition, an infringement of personal freedom that led to a nation of lawbreakers, both criminal bootleggers and ordinary citizens who were simply thirsty. WWII gave rise to the G.I. Bill which made it possible for returning vets to go to college, start businesses, and buy homes. The result was a vibrant middle class, who could have bars in their spiffy new houses if they chose.
There is, however, one major similarity between the two postwar periods. In both, America went looking for, and found, leftwing bogeymen – the red scare after WWI, and McCarthyism after WWII. But perhaps the biggest difference between the two postwar periods is one that has tremendous consequences for us today. After WWI, America retreated into isolationism and refused to join the League of Nations. After WWII, America was instrumental in founding the United Nations and forged a network of alliances. Now America is in danger of turning its back on the world again. We would do well to remember that the dire results of the post-WWI America First movement helped lead to WWII.
Why did you choose New York vs Chicago or Los Angeles for the novel’s setting?
I have written novels set in other cities – Paris, Berlin, and various towns in Alabama. Those venues were unique to the stories I was telling. As you point out, I could have set The Trouble with You in virtually any American city. But not only do I know New York more intimately than anywhere else, I have greater affection for it. The novel is, in a way, a love letter to midcentury New York.
Did you listen to any post-war radio serial for inspiration or did you go purely off of research?
I did listen to a few old soaps, read a great deal about them, and drew on my own experience in the soap world, which I’ve written about in a piece on my “scholarship” to “soap school” for Literary Hub.
What was the most interesting thing you found during your research for the book?
I began the book with a vague sense of the social oppression of women in the period because much of it still lingered when I was growing up, but I was surprised to discover the rules were more extreme and the misogyny worse than I had imagined. Women who worked outside the home were demonized. Books and magazines told them to defer to the “man of the family” even when they knew he was wrong. Advice columns laid out absurd spirit-killing dating rules for girls. The zeitgeist said girls must remain virgins until their wedding night. Then magazines and books asked why American wives were “frigid.” For the women of the era, it was a no-win situation.
Was there a particular person or persons who inspired the main character, Fanny Fabricant?
Fanny was inspired by my mother. Widowed with three children before she was forty, she was continually reassured by family, friends, and the world that she was fortunate not to have to go out to work. I took that judgment as gospel, but as I grew up, I came to realize that work might have been if not her salvation, then a help. It would have broadened her world and filled a small corner of the huge hole my father’s death had left in her life. The book is my fictional attempt to give my mother a do-over.
If The Trouble with You were to be turned into a feature film, who would you imagine in the role of Fanny?
I would love to see Lilli Kay play Fanny. Her acting has such range and subtlety that I think she would be brilliant in bringing Fanny’s struggle for self-realization to life.
New York Times bestselling author Stacy Schiff called The Trouble with You an “indelible novel suffused with heart and history, fresh, fast-paced and exhilarating.” How does it feel to hear a fellow author’s praise of your work?
It’s always heartening to win accolades from another writer, but in this case, it’s intoxicating because I admire Stacy Schiff’s books hugely. The brilliance of her writing, the depth and scope of her perceptions, and the exhaustive research behind all her work are traits to which I can only aspire. Praise from a writer’s writer is praise indeed.
Are you currently writing your next book and if so can we get a sneak peek?
Like the proverbial shark that dies, if it stops swimming, I don’t function well if I’m not writing, so I’m well into another novel. Beginning in 1963 and going up to the present or at least 2022, it’s the story of a young woman and her two close friends whose private lives are shaped by the tumultuous public events of the day in which they’re passionately involved. I realize the description isn’t very specific, but that’s because the characters have reached the point where they have minds of their own and won’t let me push them around to serve the plot, a situation every writer hopes for.
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