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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In the latest novel from best-selling author Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, one woman's affair has long lasting consequences for the rest of her family. The book is titled Lake Effect.

Nina Larkin is living in Rochester in 1977 when a friend hands her a copy of a spicy book, The Joy of Sex. Suddenly, Nina begins to question her marriage to Sam, which has been lacking in passion for many years. She starts an affair with a handsome neighbor, Finn. He owns the big grocery store chain in town and is in an unhappy marriage with a woman named Honey. One day Finn and Nina elope, heading to the Dominican Republic for a quickie divorce and remarriage.

Their kids are left behind to deal with the fallout and the gossip. Nina has two teenage daughters, Clara and Bridie. Finn has a son named Dune and a daughter named Fern. What Nina and Finn don't know is that their kids have been falling in love. Dune and Clara have been secretly dating. In the wake of this affair, Dune breaks up with Clara, leaving her heartbroken. Years later, now living in New York City, Clara still can't manage to forgive her mother for the affair, even though everyone else seems to have moved on. When Clara receives a shocking invitation, she might have to finally confront the past she's been clinging on to for so long.

Lake Effect was our April Get Lit with All of It book club selection. I began my conversation with Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney by asking her what the inspiration was for this novel.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: The original seed of the idea came from me going home one weekend to visit my parents in Rochester, New York, and my mom telling me about a friend of hers who I knew who was helping his 80-something mother with estate planning. She was doing this because her husband had recently died. Her husband was her second husband, someone she had had an affair with and left her first family for.

She wasn't just doing estate planning for her children, she was doing it for his children, and it was absolutely chaotic. There was so much anger, arguments, resentment. There was significant resources in the family, and there was a real battle that was not about the money at all. It was about everyone just being still so angry at what had happened to them when they were younger.

I just thought to myself, "My God, being a parent, it never ends, it never stops." You're in your 80s and you're trying to plan for your kids' futures when you're gone and they're still so mad at you. It's something you did 30 years ago, let's say, a big thing you did. Still, I just thought, I don't know, so you ever, in your children's eyes, get to be a full human? That was the kernel of the idea.

Alison Stewart: It's a Catholic enclave that you set the story in. Why did you want to set it in a Catholic enclave? What did you want to examine about Catholicism?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I mean, I think the easiest answer is that I grew up in a very Catholic community. I went to Catholic school my entire life. I know that world, and I know that world in Rochester. I know that world particularly in Rochester in the '70s very well. I am the exact age as Clara in the book. In 1977, I was a senior in high school.

It was an interesting time to be in a Catholic community because the church was changing a lot. My parents were very progressive, very liberal, very activist kind of Catholics. I liked that part of the church, but I also really disliked so much of it. I think that, as a teenager, I was trying to understand what parts of Catholicism and organized religion in general made sense to me and which didn't. I also was very interested in how people's belief systems, how that governed their reaction to things they weren't expecting to happen, either in their lives or in the lives of their friends.

Alison Stewart: I would have to imagine, in the '70s, I was 10. It was a big deal if you got divorced.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: It was a big deal. I remember vividly when my friends' parents started getting divorced. I remember when my parents' friends started getting divorced. It felt very threatening to me and very destabilizing. There was so much drama and so much judgment. I couldn't help but notice and really take in that no matter the circumstances of the breakup, the women were judged much more harshly in every scenario.

Alison Stewart: What did you want to capture about Rochester in the '70s?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I think that Rochester is so interesting to me because when I moved to New York City, which I did the second I could, like 12 minutes after graduating from college, I learned that Rochester isn't really upstate New York. People would ask me where I was from, and I'd say upstate and Rochester. In downstate New York, upstate ends at Albany. Then to the left, there's just nothing. It's just snow until you get to Niagara Falls.

It took moving to New York for me to understand how Midwestern that Rochester is, like, how it's really, really-- when I moved here, people kept asking me if I was from Chicago, because the accent starts around Syracuse and really picks up in Rochester and then makes its way to Chicago. It's of New York State, but it's very different from a lot of New York State. It's a sophisticated community with a great history of really interesting-- Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, George Eastman, people who change the world in really significant ways. It maybe takes itself a little too seriously, and it's very smug. It's a very smug kind of town. I wanted to write a little bit about that.

Alison Stewart: The '60s and '70s were cultural turning points for characters in your book, and now they've arrived in the '70s. Sam, who goes to San Francisco, he's closeted, and he tries to fit in with younger people. That seems harder than being gay to him. What did you want to examine about the cultural shifts that happened during this time?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I think just how destabilizing it was to everyone, how it really threatened your sense of security and safety. I thought about that a lot when I was writing about Nina, which was that-- and I just think that I saw this happening with my mom and her friends, where you thought that you'd set up your life according to the way you were supposed to. Then the world changed around you, and all of a sudden, there were opportunities and options that previously were not on the table, but you are in this box. How do you get some of those things without blowing everything up?

I think that's also true for Sam. When he has the opportunity to live as a gay man, he can't. He doesn't have the skills. I have one friend in particular whose father was closeted his entire life. At some point, he kind of got caught. [laughs] She said, "Well, dad, do you just want it? Do you just want to get a divorce? Do you just want to be gay?" He was like, "No, I want my wife, I want my house. I want my kids." I don't even think he would have had a clue how to do that.

Alison Stewart: For people who haven't read the book, Finn and Nina are neighbors. They have an affair. They run off to get a divorce in the Dominican Republic, but then they come back, and they have a very typical marriage with ups and downs. Why did you want their marriage to be typical?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I think that's what would happen. I think, in some ways, I just wanted to show that they were just choosing to have a fulfilling, happy life and not so much rejecting the social mores or anything, but just actually choosing happiness. Like, "I can't stay in this marriage anymore. I am desperately unhappy, and I see a chance to be happy and I have to take it." I just wanted them to be happy, but not unreasonably happy. Being married is sometimes happy and sometimes hard. I just wanted them to be normal.

Alison Stewart: The book switches perspectives. Who is difficult to write?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: Oh, Sam was difficult for me to write because he's such a self-contained person, and I think he was the hardest. Finn, a little bit, because he's just a big character, a big presence. I'm not sure how much is going on inside for Finn.

Alison Stewart: You do have some funny names in the book, Honey, Dune, Bridie. What's your process for naming your characters?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: It's very tortured. I will say, I've been trying to get the name Bridie, which is short for Bridget, into a book forever. I grew up--

Alison Stewart: Let me tell you, a spell check changes it to Birdie every time. I have to change it back every time. [laughs]

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I have a friend who also grew up in an equally as Catholic Irish-Italian community that I did. She said that one of her friends had read it and had never heard the name Bridie. She said, "Imagine that degree of non-Irishness." I love the name Bridie. Honey just came to me. I just thought it would be funny to name this brittle woman Honey. Then Dune, I knew that he was going to be named after Finn, and I was trying to think of something creative form of Junior, and I went into a Reddit thread and someone said, "We call our son Dune instead of Junior." I was like, "All right, I'll take that one." [laughs] I have a terrible time naming characters, so it's maybe my least favorite thing to do.

Alison Stewart: When was the first time you saw The Joy of Sex?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: Oh, well, I was probably 11 or 12, and I found it in my parents' bedroom on their bookshelf and, of course, was horrified. Then I also thought, "Maybe they left this here for me as a instruction booklet." [laughs] Then I thought, "Okay, well, that's good, it's here. I don't need it now, but I'll probably need it eventually. It's good that I have it," but that book is bonkers. I think it scarred a lot of people. I've been out on the road talking about this book long enough to-- everyone has a story about finding that book and their feelings about it.

Alison Stewart: How does Nina feel about the book?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I think the book scares Nina, but also shows her that something that she already knows about herself is true and makes it impossible for her to stop knowing that about herself.

Alison Stewart: Explain a little bit more.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I think that Nina knows that her unhappiness is because there is something that she doesn't know about her marriage and something she doesn't understand. Some wall she can't get past and that she's sort of given up and become complacent as a mother and someone in the community. Then, for whatever reason, I imagine it's the timing of when she gets that book, when her children are getting ready to leave the house and she's looking down the road and seeing her and Sam in this house alone. I think something cracks in her, and she can't ignore that eventuality, which is going to be tough.

Alison Stewart: Finn has a near-death experience. He has this massive heart attack. How do you think that brush with death changed him?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I think that anyone who has to confront their mortality in an unexpected time and in an unexpected way, I think that changes you. I think it obviously depends on who you are and in terms of how that will change you. I have certainly had enough friends who have had to face their mortality in unexpected and sudden and scary ways. It really changes what you think is valuable in life and how you want to spend your time and where you want to put your focus. I think it brings into focus what makes you happy.

Alison Stewart: Why can't Clara forgive her mom? Why can't she forgive Nina for trying to have a life of her own?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: Well, Clara is definitely like many 17-year-old narcissist and sees the world through the lens of, "How does this affect me?" I think she just was so deeply hurt and so angry. She is stubborn, and she was unwilling to try and see her mother as having the scope of humanity, of being flawed, of having desires, all of that. I think it's hard. I think that's a hard transition from being a child to being an adult who can look at your parents when you have a little knowledge of being an adult and say, "Oh my gosh. They went through all this stuff that's so hard for me. They had to go through that, too."

I remember understanding at some point, because my mom had me very young, that when she was my age, she had four kids. I maybe had one kid who I was struggling with. Just seeing her, it was just something went into focus in my brain, seeing her so differently as this very, very young mother with all of these children and just having compassion for her that I had never had, certainly, as a teenager.

Alison Stewart: At one point, Nina says something to Clara that she can't let go of. She says, "I truly hope that this is the last time you hurt yourself by exaggerating the importance of your presence." What's truthful about that statement?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: It's true. [laughs] I mean, but this is teenagers, right? Sometimes this is your children. Their lives are very big until they have to integrate into the world, as all of us do as adults, and you realize that your life isn't the big thing. The world is the big thing, and you're trying to find your place in it. It's such a harsh thing for Nina to say and for Clara to hear. I can't imagine saying it. I can certainly imagine thinking it. I guess I can imagine being so frustrated and so hurt that I would blurt it out, which I think is what happens. There's a long tale of repercussions for that.

Alison Stewart: All I have under Dune is, what's Dune's deal?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I don't know. He's just a guy. He's like a guy. He's a guy who's going to work in the family store and find a wife and have some kids and go to the club like his father. He's just one of those people who's never going to leave town.

Alison Stewart: Yeah, Honey is kind of a tough character to like, but you reveal more about her past later on in the book. Why did you want to include this as part of her background? Why did you want us to know what had happened to her?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I didn't want Honey just to be a stereotype. I think that people are the way they are for reasons, and that doesn't excuse their behavior. Sometimes if you can open up your heart a little bit to understanding what's happened to someone, maybe you can at least have some perspective on their behavior. I just thought it was fun. I thought it was important to offer the reader a little something more of honey other than her incredibly frustrating behavior in the present of the book, and also to give her a moment when we move into the future to have this nice thing happen to her and to see her soften a teeny little bit.

Alison Stewart: You're listening to my conversation with author Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. Her new novel Lake Effect was our April Get Lit with All of It book club selection. We'll have more with Cynthia, plus audience questions after a quick break. This is All of It.

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You're listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's continue my conversation with author Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. Her new novel Lake Effect was our April Get Lit with All of It book club selection. I spoke with Cynthia earlier this week in front of a packed house at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. As usual, our audience had some great questions for our author. You'll hear some of those in just a minute. First, here's more of my conversation with Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney.

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There's so much about food in this novel. You have cooking, you have food styling. We have dieting, we have Weight Watchers, we have food poisoning. When did you know food was going to play a key role in this book?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: Pretty early on, I knew that Nina, much like my mother and like many, many women in the '70s, was going to turn on the TV and see Julia Child and, all of a sudden, become a gourmet cook like my mom. When we were younger, it was either Italian food or it was American food. Then all of a sudden, we were having like, beef bourguignon and coq au vin, and everyone was coming to parties with elaborate puff pastry things. I liked that for her. Then I liked food being a battleground for her and Clara.

Also, when I finished my previous book, my friend, the writer Rumaan Alam said to me, "I think you have more to say about family and food." He just planted that little idea in my head. I thought, "Yes, I think this book is going to has some things to say about family and food," and so it does. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Let's go to the audience for questions.

Audience Member 1: I think that Fern is kind of the steady, almost unspoken beating heart of the story, especially toward the back half and the very end. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what inspired her, particularly her role as a caregiver.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I think when I started writing Fern, I just immediately understood that she was a caregiver, that she was a caretaker, that she was somebody who had been put in the role of taking care of people against her will, but then took it on willingly. I really felt like she was going to be critical to-- she has a few very, very important moments in the book. I just thought she was so strong and had such a sense of herself that she could carry those moments and she could carry these broken people to the end of their story where they needed to be.

I think some of the strongest people I know are caregivers. I'm just thinking about this as I'm talking about it, but perhaps that this was a novel that was started during COVID and having that experience of seeing how the caregivers in our lives are so important. I have a few nurses in my family, and I also wanted to honor them by making Fern just a real badass.

Audience Member 2: Can you talk a little bit about your decision for them to go to the Dominican Republic and have the quickie divorce and do it under cover of night?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: Well, it was really driven by the fact that this is pre-no-fault divorce. If you wanted a divorce and your spouse wouldn't grant you one, that could have gone on for years. For Nina, I think she felt like this was just going to rip the band-aid off and do it. She could have moved out of the house, but she didn't have any money. That just would have become legally a very complicated thing.

The reason that this divorce tourism existed first in Mexico and then in the Dominican Republic was because people didn't want to go live in Las Vegas for six weeks. They sat that up the minute no-fault divorce kicked in all these places, just had to sort of shut down shop. It's such a fascinating thing. When I first came across it in my research, I couldn't actually believe it existed, and it does. That's what people did. It was really a function of the legalities of the time.

Alison Stewart: You came on our show earlier this month, and I asked you for an Easter egg or something about the book that was very specific that you wanted readers to pay attention to. You said that you were really proud of the last 75 pages of the book and that you had to dig deeper in yourself than you had in your previous novels to write that ending. Where did you have to go to do that?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I had to go to losing my mother under very different circumstances. I had to go to the death of a parent and to everything that that brings up and everything it allows, everything it opens up within a family when something like that happens. I knew probably halfway through the book that what I wanted to do was narrow and narrow and narrow the aperture until those last pages were Clara and her daughters and Fern, and that it was going to be these women in a room, hopefully giving someone forgiveness in a beautiful death and, at the same time, allowing themselves to break open in some way that would carry them forward.

Alison Stewart: My final question is, what do you like about writing families?

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: I mean, what's more interesting? I listened to your interview with Angela Flournoy, and I love the way she put it. You asked her about writing a multiple point of view, and she said, "I like networks." I like networks, too. I like groups of friends. I like families, but families. Man, families, you are connected to them not by choice. You are born into this story that is someone else's story. You are given other characters to live out this story with, and you have no control over that. You have to somehow figure out what part of that family narrative that you're born into and sometimes assigned. You're the smart one, the athletic one, yu're the troublemaker. How much of that is true and how much of it is not, and how much you're going to accept and how much of it you're going to rewrite and what that rewriting is going to do to the organism. It's just endlessly fascinating to me.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with the April Get Lit with All of It author Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. We spent the month reading her new novel, Lake Effect.

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