Q&A with Simi Monheit

 

 

 

Simi Monheit is the author of the new novel The Goldie Standard. She lives in Northern California.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Goldie Standard, and how did you create your character Goldie and her granddaughter Maxie?

 

A: The Goldie Standard started almost by accident, but it was something that, once started, felt inevitable. My sister and I came to the painful but realistic realization that our mother couldn’t live on her own anymore.

 

On the day that we brought her to the assisted living facility where she eventually moved, I witnessed her reactions: “Everyone here is so old.” This from an 89-year-old woman leaning on her walker. We sat with her during her intake interview, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

My mother was sharp, funny, incisive ,and honest. And she did look at the interviewer as if she had two heads. When I came home, the words poured out on the page – not how I saw it – how I imagined she did. And Goldie came into full fierce being.

 

Growing up, my mother was shameless about trying to set me up with “nice Jewish boys.” Especially doctors. When my sister married a neurobiologist, her comment was, “why not a REAL doctor?” 

 

And there was the time she answered a personal ad (pre apps) on my behalf. She wasn’t duplicitous, she actually wrote, “This is Simi’s mother. She won’t write herself, but you should go out with her.”

 

These were gems that had to be treasured and shared.  And celebrated. And don’t get me started on our ongoing relationship with my hair and clothes.

 

Goldie is fiction – the things in this book didn’t really happen, but they could have. Goldie was a character waiting to land on the page.

 

Maxie was a harder nut to crack. I wanted to bring in a younger voice to address issues of identity, family traditions, and generational differences. I wanted her to be a real person, with questions, insecurities and ambitions that young woman have.

 

Growing up with such strong family expectations and weighing them against her personal growth and beliefs, beliefs that her grandmother didn’t know she inspired, was the challenge and balance I was trying to convey with Maxie.

 

Goldie’s is a generation that we’re losing. Maxie’s is on the cusp. I tried to find their intersections.                
                                             

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between the two?

 

A: They adore and exasperate each other. Maxie had advantages that Goldie never had, Goldie faced challenges Maxie never had. How would each of them have been different (or the same) if their roles were reversed? Both are women who love deeply and fiercely, and who question the world around them.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: Lots of changes along the way. I’m a pantser – not a plotter. I did know that Maxie would end up with T-Jam, but I wasn’t sure how she’d resolve getting there. And how Goldie would come around to it.

 

There were a lot of surprises as I wrote. Some twists I didn’t anticipate. I had a framework to tell the life of an older woman who lives in her past and present simultaneously, but the present was unfolding for her and me in real time.

 

Q: The writer R. Cathey Daniels said of the novel, “While this novel reads like a romantic caper, Monheit doesn't shy away from examining the most fraught of our human complexities.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: R. Cathey Daniels absolutely “got” the book. I love what she had to say about it. I’m asked if this a romcom. And it is. But it’s also a drama, and a comedy and at times it touches on some tragedy and trauma. I think that’s a reflection of a real life.

 

If there is a category for this book, I’d label it a “dromedy.” Dramatic Romantic Comedy. The story of a life fully, richly, lived – realistically.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have two projects going on. One is about a young ultra-Orthodox girl on the verge of her year of dates leading to an arranged marriage who is questioning everything she knows and more about what she doesn’t.

 

The other is a steminist work set in the ‘80s, about a female computer scientist in the very early days of AI who stumbles into a career and a fascinating scientist – wrong and absolutely right for her in every way.

 

Q: Anything else we should know about?

 

A: I love to write, I love telling stories. The whole world is a canvas, isn’t it?

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb