Q&A with Andrea Simon

 

 

 

Andrea Simon is the author of the new novel Did You Have the Life You Wanted?. Her other books include Esfir Is Alive. She lives in Manhattan.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write Did You Have the Life You Wanted?, and how did you create your character Anita?

 

A: A similar event occurred in my real life that forms the prologue of the book.

 

One of my husband’s patients had seen my books in his office and mentioned that she lived in the West Village and was a member of a book club that had been meeting for 50 years. When she wrote me a note inviting me to her club meeting with her address, I noticed it was the same building I had lived in as a young woman in the late 1960s and 1970s.

 

I then revisited the area with my former roommate of those younger years, and the experience brought back a flood of memories of that heady and revolutionary time. Later, at home on the Upper West Side, I went through old stories that I had written about events of that era and sketched out a narrative.

 

Anita emerged as my doppelgänger, and her roommate was based on a combination of my friends. Soon, they developed into their own characters with unique stories.

 

A new world was born, populated with a mixture of real and fictitious people responding to a rapidly changing time in social and political life when women were seriously examining their personal relationships and career paths.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: My parents’ generation included immigrants and those whose life choices were based on financial security and established norms. As a young person, I was struck by a sense of disappointment among my elders, a feeling that their genuine desires were stunted or bypassed.

 

As I grew older, I realized I didn’t want to go through my life with the same sense of failure and regret. I questioned my past choices and started asking others of my generation if they had the life they wanted.

 

Q: The author Ruth Pennebaker said of the book, “This provocative novel will urge readers of any age to ponder their own pasts and the underlying forces that shaped their lives—patterns that are often indecipherable until they look back closely on the decades they have lived in.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I think Ruth Pennebaker’s description perfectly captures the major theme of the book. As Anita aged, she realized how her past events and familial ties often negatively influenced her life decisions; she tried to rectify them even if was “too little, too late.”

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I hope readers will identify with Anita and the characters in the book and perhaps examine their own life choices. For the older readers, I hope they are inspired to make the most of their coming years; and for younger readers, I hope they learn to pay more attention to their desires and options in life.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Now I am basically writing personal essays and preparing for the launch events for this book. I am always adding, subtracting, and revising my essay collection that I have been working on for decades called Nobody Sprays Me in Bloomingdale’s. I hope this will be my next published book.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I am very grateful to my new publisher, Sibylline Press, whose founding women and staff are devoted to the work of “brilliant women” over the age of 50. In this age of obstacles and frustrations for female writers in the publishing world, it is heartening to see new and workable models that provide authors with a comfortable and supportive “home.”

 

And thanks so much to you, Deborah, for your wonderful writing and your dedication to so many authors.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Andrea Simon.