Transcript for The Girlfriend Book Club's Marie Bostwick Interview on "The Book Club for Troublesome Women"
Shelley Emling: Welcome everyone to the Girlfriend Book Club's, monthly discussion. I'm Shelly Emily, the Executive Editor of the Girlfriend Newsletter. I'm also the moderator of the Girlfriend Book Club. So this month the more than 110,000 members of the book club chose. The book club for Troublesome Women. So this again, I read this in a weekend and it's one of my favorite reads of the past couple years.
It's just the writing is just amazing and the four main characters, I'm just so taken with all four of them. I just loved every second of it. So we're so thrilled to welcome tonight the author Marie Boswick. So welcome. Hi.
Glad to be here. So nice to have you here, especially since I just love this book so much.
So I just have to ask you, I think most people that are watching this have probably read the book, so I'm not gonna ask you for a synopsis, but I would like to know the inspiration behind the book.
Marie Bostwick: Yes. It's so interesting. I love telling this story. So you know, as an author, I can never really predict where a good idea is going to come from.
It can be so many things, but this particular time, it came from a source that was somewhat surprising, but also very close to me, right under my nose. So I, my mom is 92 years old and she is a force of nature. My mom continues, she continues to co to work part-time as a consultant. Oh my, yeah. Yeah. She is a close horse. She is a quick draw with a cocktail shaker. When she moved into her independent living community a few years ago she called me up in the first week and said I went to the activities committee meeting. And now I'm the chairman. I was like, oh, please.
That wasn't what you hadn't planned from the day, the first day and two years ago, she actually got another in a series of marriage proposals. Oh my God. Normally she doesn't really give these guys the time of day, but she informed me that this gentleman went to the Veteran's Day party and looked really good in his navy whites.
She entertained his proposal, but after spending some time with him, she dismissed him with the quip she has used for so many others. And that is, thank you. But I have served my time. So my mom is, my dearest friend and so much fun. And she's also an avid reader. So about three years ago, we were getting together and we were talking about books as we often do, and Betty Friedan's, 1963, blockbuster, the Feminine Mystique, came up in the conversation and Mom said, I don't know if I ever told you, but that book changed my life.
She hadn't told me, and so I asked her to elaborate, and within seconds I knew I had stumbled upon an idea for a really great book. Had you read the book at that time? I had not. I had not while I was alive in that time period, I, it was only just, so I had not read The Feminine Mystique. Now I've read it about six times and so that was one of the first things I did was get a copy and read it and it was really eyeopening and fascinating and infuriating all at the same time.
Shelley Emling: I know there's four main characters in this book, but I think Margaret is the. Yes. Center stage And you named her after your mother, I believe. Is that correct?
Marie Bostwick: I did. She is not my mom at all, but it was an homage to my mom.
Shelley Emling: So there's Bitsy, Viv, Margaret, and Charlotte. First of all, I just have to ask, your mother must be bursting with pride over this book.
Marie Bostwick: Oh my gosh. No, she is. So funny. She's like calling me every day and saying, I sold another book. And when her friends are like I couldn't get the book at the library. She's just buy it. Yeah. So she's a mom. She is very momming in her mom. And, she calls me up sometimes and it's if you get a movie, what do you think I should wear the premiere?
Things like that.
Shelley Emling: Wow, let's hope there's a movie. So how do you weave these four different story arcs? How do you merge them together?
Marie Bostwick: As far as the process, is that what you're asking me?
Shelley Emling: Yes. Because it's four different kind of storylines, but they all blend together.
They
Marie Bostwick: absolutely do, and they are four step separate stories, but each character, as you said, Margaret's the main character and I. I have long written ensemble casts. It's what I specialize in. As near as I can tell, it's because it's maybe the hardest possible way to do a book. And I apparently like to do hard things, but I love reading those kinds of books, so that's what I gravitate to.
And even when I have an ensemble, there's always one main character. And you said, it's Margaret, right? I think of the others as like nominees for best supporting actress. So they're really important but Margaret is the most important story. So what I sit down and I do is I actually write.
An outline with each character as the hero of the story. So I write four separate outlines in this case. Oh wow. With each character as the heroine of the story, because we are all the heroes of our own story. And as I'm doing that, I learn a great deal about that character and their viewpoints. I wanna know, I wanna know their history and their background.
I know way more about their background probably than the readers need to know. So I understand their motivations. I understand importantly, what is it they most want in the world? What's it's standing in the way of their getting it? And then a really. Illuminating question I wanna answer for myself is, what is it that they believe about the world or themselves that is wrong?
And so as I do this and write these story arcs and these outlines for these characters, I get ideas for connection points where the story can trade off important themes and sometimes little plot things pop up. And then once I've done all that, I write the outline again, incorporating everybody into one overarching story.
So the outlining takes a long time. I,
Shelley Emling: so I just have to ask, I think I read that it took you three years to write this book, is that right?
Marie Bostwick: Three years? It's, it probably only like from idea and research and writing probably about. Two years. Two years. But then once I finish the draft, it goes off, right to the publisher.
So even in a normal case, if you add in the time the publisher has it, best case scenario from when I start a book to when readers get it is gonna be a two year period. And this case it's a little longer. I'm not writing quite as fast as I used to because I I really wanna take more time to. To really be able to write the best story I possibly can.
Shelley Emling: So I always ask authors, was there a particular character or scene or chapter or segment of the book that was more challenging for you to write than the others?
Marie Bostwick: Ah, that's I thought you were gonna ask me. That was more fun to write The challenging one, I will say. The bits when Margaret and Walt were having difficulties, okay, were very challenging because I wanted to make it real, right and impactful.
But I didn't want to make Walt a monster because he is not a monster. Not at all. He's just a flawed man who is not having a good year in a lot of ways, who's really struggling, when you're looking at it from Margaret's viewpoint, she doesn't know about that struggle yet. And so the readers don't know about that struggle yet.
So finding that balance to make a marriage that, that feels and looks like a real marriage. Like I've been married for 40, almost 44 years. Let me tell you, we've had some fights and I'm married to a very good man. But we have our un lovely moments. So that was really challenging for me.
Shelley Emling: Yeah. So I know this took place in 1963. Was there a reason you chose that time period to focus on?
Marie Bostwick: Mostly because that was the year the Feminine Mystique came out. Oh, okay. So I really felt like that was a very pivotal year for a lot of women. And my research told me and my conversations with my mom, but I did a lot of research and I found that.
For many women, this really was what it was for my mom. An eye-opening moment when they read that book and what they felt is what we would say in modern parlance is suddenly there were women who felt seen, and I think that was it. My mother felt seen. She was like, oh my gosh, it's not just me. I, which was a relief I think for her because she was starting to think as, and as I've read accounts from many other women about their response to the feminine mystique in that time period, they were feeling guilty.
Or crazy, sometimes their doctors were telling them they were crazy because it looked like everybody else was happy and it looked like they had everything that the world was telling them should make them content. So why weren't they content? And they were just sure it was their fault. It was real.
It was really about the book.
Shelley Emling: Yeah. So you must have done a lot of research into the rights that women did not have in those days. I know you pointed out that Margaret couldn't open a bank account or get withdraw money from the bank or open a bank account because she had open a bank account.
Husbands signature. So did you do a lot of research into what rights women did not have in
Marie Bostwick: those days? Yeah, I did. I did, and I tried to look at, and one thing I take pains to point out at the end of the book is like how this experience would've been for you might very well have depended on where you lived.
Because things varied from state to state. And I actually was, I don't really read. Re the reviews of my books because, I've written it and I've been doing this a long time, so it's like sometimes it's not everybody's cup of tea and sometimes it is, but I saw something the other day where there was a woman who said she exaggerated that thing about the bank account.
I was able to open a bank account in 1963. She was single. Yeah. So of course a single woman could, right? But there were a lot of places in which, you know that a woman would've had to do that. Other things, one thing it was seemed small, but it really bugged me, is that I found out that it wasn't until fashion, I have been off tour for a while, so I used to have all these facts and figures and dates in my heads, but it wasn't until I believe 19.
In the seventies, women could be excluded from a jury simply because they were women, which was horrifying to me. And then, and and a big thing for women was of course, 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. And this made it easier for women to get credit cards and open bank accounts, but it wasn't actually until 19.
88. I think I'm, and forgive me if I'm wrong, I think that date is right 'cause it seems so, I was just horrified. There was something called the Women's entrepreneurship Business Ownership Act that allowed those same rights for women. So up until then. If a woman wanted to open a business, she could be required to have a male relative as a co-signer.
I read a story about a woman who, like her 21-year-old son, had to be her co-signer.
Shelley Emling: Oh my gosh.
Marie Bostwick: To open her business. I'm sorry. I had 21-year-old sons. Like I was lucky to get them to be able to operate the lawnmower, so this seemed ridiculous. So there were a lot of things like. Like that, that were, and of course there were things that were not necessarily codified in law too, just dealing with attitudes and women, just being, gosh, I saw something the other day.
It was a little video, and this was maybe back in the eighties where some on some television show, a man was saying a woman could never be president because, because of menstruation. And this wonderful, brilliant actress cut him down and said, really? How do you know? Can you tell right now whether I am or I amt?
And I was like, you go girl. And that's part of why, the part when, you know I was dealing with Margaret's daughter, Beth, right? Being told. You're a girl, so you get to play clarinet, flute, or piccolo. Oh, I love that
Shelley Emling: part. Yeah.
Marie Bostwick: Because that was just an attitude. It's not a rule, but it's an unwritten rule.
Yeah. And women were dealing with a lot of those unwritten rules. When I wrote that scene, I read it for my sister and she was like, thank you. Thank you. I wanted to play trombone, so yeah, a lot of us dealt with those things too. Yeah. I
Shelley Emling: played the flute and I was guided toward the flute.
Marie Bostwick: I was crying.
I ended up having to play the clarinet because they made my sister play the clarinet. And so then we had a clarinet and everybody had to play the clarinet, and I never liked it.
Shelley Emling: So I just have to ask, was Charlotte based on anybody in particular? No, not really. My characters
Marie Bostwick: are people often are like, oh, do you base them on people you know in real life?
The thing is, I've been at this for 20 years, so if I had done it only with people I know, I'd either A, run out of material a long time ago, or b run out of friends. 'cause everybody be mad at me. I did. The spark of the inspiration for Charlotte was a conversa. A couple of my friends who've been friends a long time, and this friend of mine, Susan, told the story of the first time she spotted our mutual friend Annie.
Was many years ago when Annie was like tearing up to the Montessori school and wearing her mink coat in in, in, in this convertible with the kids. And she was like, get out. Come on, hurry. Yeah, no time for a kiss. Go. And she thought, I want to know her.
Shelley Emling: Who is that mother?
And
Marie Bostwick: so something about the mink coat and the sort of, confidence that Annie had was very attractive to my friend Susan, and that's where I jumped off with her.
Shelley Emling: So I'm curious also as to you bringing in Catherine Graham and jackie Kennedy. Had you planned to do that from the very start of this when you started this whole process?
Or was it
Marie Bostwick: No, I had not. I had not. I knew, I started, and it's been such a long time ago. Sometimes it's hard for me to remember all of how the details work, but, I knew I wanted to set it in Northern Virginia and near Washington DC because I liked the. Juxtaposition of this place where things are starting to bubble and change, but in this very stayed suburb where things are not changing.
And so I liked that tension because really the Concordia is almost a metaphor for everything in a lot of ways. And then I just started thinking about, these women are gonna have to change, and of course they're gonna help each other, but I thought they need. They're gonna need bigger help.
Yes, they're gonna need somebody outside. And then, so I started looking around. I was like, oh, Catherine Graham. And that was such, also, 63 is a pivotal year for Catherine Graham, as you find out in the book. So I liked this idea of a woman who, though already powerful in a sense, is coming into a different kind of power.
And she is struggling with that too. So obviously, she begins 1963 as one of Washington DC's most well-known and influential society hostesses, and she ends it as the first woman who is a publisher of a major American newspaper. And so then once I started doing that, I was like, oh.
What other women in journalism can I, can I pull in? And I had and I had read this book and I'm reading all the time, right? I read a book called Camera Girl and I can't remember the name of the offer. It's on my shelf, camera Girl. And I do list that somewhere, I think in the you in the notes.
Yeah. That talked about, which I hadn't real, I'd known but didn't know that Jackie Kennedy really. Was seeking a career in journalism and had done it pretty seriously. And so I thought, oh my gosh. Yeah, perfect. Being able to have all those women in the room at the same time. That was a great fun scene for me to write and a pivotal one for the book.
Shelley Emling: I loved it. It was all about connections, as she said it was. And that's true, right?
Marie Bostwick: Yeah. Yeah. And nobody can do it, you've got to champion yourself, but. Yes, we can help create connections. As I think I said, I can boost you over to look at the other side of the wall, but you've gotta climb over.
Right.
Shelley Emling: And so you talked a lot about women's magazines, and I'm guessing you went back and read a lot of older women's magazines. Yes. Yeah, I wanted to know about that. But also did you read. What were some of your favorite women's magazines as you were of the last few decades? Did you read
Marie Bostwick: When I was a little girl, McCall's, I always looked forward to McCall's.
My auntie would save them for me 'cause I cut, because I cut out Betsy McCall paper dolls.
Shelley Emling: Right?
Marie Bostwick: I think it's so sad that my grand granddaughters don't have paper dolls to cut out of magazines like that was a big thing for me. And when I read Growing up, I read Reader's Digest. I loved all the fiction and the stories in that too.
As I got older, of course, it was the age of, I got 17, like every teenager of my era did. And then I went through my cosmopolitan phase, and I still like magazines. I still, I don't get as many as I used to, but I still get magazines and I think there is something I just prefer to read on a page than on a screen.
Shelley Emling: Right.
Marie Bostwick: Yeah. And I think some of it's, 'cause my, my job is on a screen, so when I'm relaxing I want to Nothing in your hand. My hands. Yeah.
Shelley Emling: Yeah. So what's your writing process like? Do you get up at a certain time and write. Five or six hours a day, or do you have some sort of routine where you're really of writing?
Marie Bostwick: I try to have a routine and, but my life is not always my own. There are meetings I, there are digital things I have to do and zooms I have to do and travel I have to do and that's fine. But in an ideal situation, yes, I try to keep a pretty regulated day. I wake up in the morning and three days a week I'm at the gym.
Because I have learned as a writer, spending so much time in my chair, I have got to move, right? And it makes me, it just makes me ha help healthier and happier in general too. So I do that first. I pray in the morning, so that is something I need to do before I get to my desk. And then once I get there, I take a quick look at the email, decide what must be dealt with, what can be pushed off till later.
And hopefully I would like to start writing by about 10 o'clock in the morning. And I'll, it takes me a little while to get into it but usually I'm a pretty, in a pretty good place by lunchtime. I'm into the work. I do take a lunch break, but I tend to eat it standing like over the sink. And I do not want to have conversations with people with skin on my husband because as I point out to him, if he talks the imaginary people leave the room.
So we need the imaginary people to stay. So then I take a break, and then I'm gonna write until probably four or five o'clock. And then check the email again, deal with the last things. I used to write, now I will say when my husband is traveling, that can totally be different.
I may work until midnight, right? Because my natural clock has adjusted to my marriage over the years. I'm more naturally a night owl. So sometimes that changes. And then sometimes what happens is if I'm coming up, especially if I'm coming up against either a deadline or I'm feeling a little stuck, I will actually check myself into a hotel or a resort or something, and I will do 14, 16 hours a day for about four or five days in a row.
Wow.
Shelley Emling: I, so everybody in the book club wants to know, what are you working on now? Can you share with us what you're working on next?
Marie Bostwick: I really can't. I can tell you I am looking at a similar time period and I am looking at, not a sequel, but something which. Would dovetail nicely with this book.
Totally different cast of characters. Lots of people have been writing me for asking, please write a sequel. I really feel that this was a complete story and that if I tried to go on with it, I don't think it could be as good as what I've done. So I don't wanna take anything away from that. But I've got a new cast I've got in mind.
I don't wanna say more about it than that. Not because I'm not trying to be coy. It's just I have learned that if I talk too much about it to civilians this early in the process, it takes the juice out of the idea.
Shelley Emling: So I have to ask also, what authors inspire you? Are there other books that you've read in the last couple months that you could recommend to the girlfriend book club?
Marie Bostwick: Oh gosh. I'm always reading a lot of books I really love Adriana Trini. I just think everything she writes is absolute gold. So that is wonderful. What are some books? Oh my gosh, there's so many books I've been loving and can I think of what they are right now? I read different d all different kinds of, okay.
I was late to the party with this, but I finally read the Women. Oh, yes. Kristin, Hannah I know everybody had read it before me and I'm not sure. I think I had maybe avoided it a little bit because I just wasn't sure if I, how I would feel about reading about the Vietnam era. And oh my gosh, it was so wonderful.
Shelley Emling: That was a previous girlfriend book club pick, and she joined us for our monthly discussion. It was.
Marie Bostwick: It was really, yeah, it was really good. So I liked that book very much. Let's see, what have else have I been, I, oh, I I've read Wayward Girls by Susan Wigs and that was really very interesting.
Also about women struggling in this similar time period. And then there's a book that's really just fun escapist that I read last year. It's a caper. I do love a caper, and so this was just joyous, escapist fiction of we talk about Buddy books. This was Girlfriend Buddy books and it was called The Starlets by Jennifer, writing team of Jennifer Thorn and Lee Kelly.
And really a I was like sending that book to people. I loved it so much. It was just fun. It was fun.
Shelley Emling: So just two more questions for you. Yeah. Is there anything that you would like readers to take away from this book?
Marie Bostwick: Gosh, there's a, I really trust that readers like know what they need.
That's something that's so magical about books. I think there is for a lot of, sometimes we're just entertaining people, but sometimes there's something somebody desperately needs in that book and it's almost a mystical thing. So there's a lot in here, but I would say for me personally, if I had to sum up.
One sentence that for me is the core of the book. It's what Margaret writes in her essay toward the end, in which she said, there are countless good and right ways to be a woman and only two wrong. The first is to assume that your way is the way. The only way. And the second is to buy into that nonsense and spend the rest of your life limping on aimless path in shoes that will never fit.
And I think that's what I want. I want, I hope that we make, as women, we make room for women to be what it is they need to be and want to be.
Shelley Emling: That's the crux of it. I've heard you say that before and it's, I feel that is true. That's the part that we wanna take away.
Marie Bostwick: That's for me.
That's it. Yeah. But there's other things, but that's for me.
Shelley Emling: So finally, the girlfriend is all about female friendship and the importance of female friendship, especially as you grow older. So I just have to ask what do you like to do with your female friends for fun?
Marie Bostwick: Oh, it's so I have a lot of female friends and I really, I write about friendship and sisterhood over and over again.
'cause I agree with you a thousand percent. It is the stuff of life. It is absolutely necessary. So just last night a girlfriend invited me down to her. She has a house with a great view and a beautiful deck and. Somebody I'm just getting to know. So she said, come for Rose, and I don't really drink.
So I brought my non-alcoholic Prosecco and we just sat there and talked. And talked. And another thing I like, I go on walks with girlfriends a lot. Yeah. So walking and talking is a great thing. And if we can bring the dogs along so much, even better.
Shelley Emling: I know I'm the same. I have two dogs.
I love to walk and talk with the two dogs with
Marie Bostwick: me. Yeah. That's perfect.
Shelley Emling: Thank you so much, Marie. Again, the book is the book Club for Troublesome Women. If you haven't read it or bought it, please do. It's fabulous. And just a reminder to please stay on the page because I'll be posting some conversation starters after this so that you all can talk amongst yourselves about what you liked and about the book.
Just a reminder that next month, September, our book is My Friends by Fred Bachman and he will be joining us the third Tuesday of September.
Marie Bostwick: I may have to join the clubs 'cause I would love to, I would love to be there for that. He's a wonderful writer.
Shelley Emling: Yeah, I can't wait. I've never spoken to him before, so I'm so excited.
So thank you Marie. Best of luck. I'm so pleased for you that this is doing so well and thank you. I can't wait for your next book to come out. Whatever it's about. I can't wait.
Marie Bostwick: Thanks, Shelly. I appreciate that. It's so good to talk to you.
Shelley Emling: Thanks everybody. Good night. Good.
