About our mothers, by Susan Breen

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The idea for my novel, The Fiction Class, came to me when I was at a funeral for someone I didn't know. Not only didn't I know the deceased, I didn't know anyone at the funeral (except for one person, and she was busy.) So, I was sitting in the pew, beginning to get that anxious feeling I get when I think I should be doing something friendly, but can't think what, and out of nowhere a woman launched herself at me and began to tell a story about her mother.

It was a funny story, and as soon as she had done, I shot back with a story about my own mother; then another woman came along and told a story about hers and soon there was a cluster of us, all of us bonding over our mothers, laughing and forming friendships. (Actually, none of us knew the deceased, but that's another novel.)

When I got home, I couldn't get the memory of those conversations out of my head. For some time, I had been thinking of writing a novel about a mother-daughter relationship, but I had been framing it as an angry story-one of those "this is how she ruined my life" things. What I realized that day, however, was that although we were all complaining about our mothers, we were laughing about them too, and obsessing over them, loving them, and proud of them. It was all so much more complicated and entertaining than I had realized before. I knew then what sort of book I wanted to write-something with yelling, but with laughter too. Something that would make my mother proud.

View more information on Susan Breen's The Fiction Class.

Susan Breen

The Fiction Class

mother

writing

New York

story

Penguin Books

books