Elena Meets the Author

A grieving young widow receives a phone call on her birthday. Her husband, Joe, died five months earlier. But before he did, he arranged something extraordinary: a year’s worth of books, one for every month, chosen to help her move on with her life.That’s the premise of Libby Page’s latest novel, This Book Made Me Think of You, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and USA Today bestseller, and the book I’m talking about in this episode of Elena Meets the Author.Before you think it sounds too sad, it isn’t. There’s a handsome bookseller named Alfie, who Tilly has to visit every month to collect her next book. There’s travel: Bali, Paris, Manhattan, Tuscany. And there’s London, drawn with the kind of warmth that makes you want to head to your nearest international airport. Libby has written something that holds grief and joy in the same hand, which is much harder than it sounds.In our conversation, Libby talks about the inspirations behind the novel, including You’ve Got Mail and It’s a Wonderful Life, and how she balanced an emotional subject with a genuinely uplifting story. She describes the meticulous planning that went into the book’s 12-month structure, the pinboards, the 80 book references woven throughout, and the themed reading lists that give the novel so much of its warmth. We also talk about what the final gift Joe leaves Tilly actually means, her views on accessible versus literary fiction, her writing habits, the rejections she had before she was published, and how she overcomes writer’s block.There will be some spoilers, so if you haven’t read This Book Made Me Think of You yet, Libby’s enchanting novel is well worth reading first.If you enjoy the show, the best things you can do is leave a rating and review on whichever platform you use, and consider subscribing to Behind the Stories on Substack. It’s the paid tier that keeps Elena Meets the Author going. Subscribers get writing craft insights, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Today I’m speaking with Grant Ginder about his latest novel, So Old, So Young. I feel like I really get millennials and their anxiety-driven yet somehow still hopeful character. The book follows six college friends across five parties and twenty years. A New Year’s Eve, a wedding, a birthday, a kids’ Halloween, and a funeral. From a night where everything felt possible to a morning where they had to reckon with what actually happened in between. It’s about people who met at Penn in the early oughts and spent two decades showing up for each other, making tiny decisions they didn’t notice until those decisions became their lives.If you love character-driven fiction — which I do — this one is for you. Think Normal People. Or, if you’re a boomer like me, the 1983 film The Big Chill.Grant grew up in Laguna Beach, worked as a speechwriter in DC, earned his MFA at NYU, and now teaches writing there while living in Brooklyn with his husband Mac and their apparently disastrous dog, Frankie. He’s the bestselling author of six novels. Grant, not Frankie.In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, we talk about where the book came from- Grant’s own midlife anxiety, waking up in the middle of the night in a deep sweat, like that Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime with the phrase this is not my life- but oh yes, it is. - We discuss how the party structure gave Grant a way to write into that feeling. We talk about what long friendships actually give us, the particular tension between millennial hope and the reality of middle age arriving faster than expected, and how New York’s changing landscape can mark time in ways the characters themselves can barely track.We also get into the craft of it. Grant talks about cutting backstory across eleven drafts with his editor, the link between his speechwriting background and how he thinks about narrative arcs, and his advice on writing dialogue: listen to real speech, avoid exposition, and pay attention to when a character over-explains. In real life when someone over-explains, like one of Grant’s NYU students telling him why a paper is late, that’s usually a sign they’re lying.The episode is out now!This Podcast is listener supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe