Zibby interviews celebrated author (and veteran literary agent and editor) Betsy Lerner about SHRED SISTERS, her wry, intimate, riveting, and bittersweet debut novel about family, mental illness, and sisterhood. Betsy calls the novel a “love letter to loneliness” while reflecting on her own experiences in New York during her twenties. She shares other personal connections to this story, from the loss of her mother to her own bipolar diagnosis to her complex relationships with her sisters. At the end of the episode, she reveals what she is working on next and shares her best advice for aspiring writers.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Betsy. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Shred Sisters, your debut novel.

Congratulations. 

Betsy: Thank you. Thank you. 

Zibby: Can you please tell listeners what your book is about? 

Betsy: Absolutely. It is about a toxic sister relationship. That's the overriding story over 20 years. It's also really about how a family is in denial when somebody has mental illness in the family and how that reverberates.

And then I also like to think of it as a love song, a love letter to loneliness. Uh, especially in New York in your twenties, very much came out of a lot of that, uh, for me. 

Zibby: Oh, I have to say this book just got me so much. And when I finished reading it, I started crying because I felt so connected to your characters.

I felt like some of that deep disappointment that they felt in sort of the way life turned out for sort of, for all the characters in different ways. Even, I mean, I don't want to give things away, and it's not intended to be sad, but just the losses that life brought and how poignant this one moment was, like, I don't know if I can talk and I can delete this, but when the mother passes away at the end, how she said, I keep picking up the phone to call her and remembering that she's dead.

I mean, it's just like, I don't know, it all just really got me. It was so well done. 

Betsy: You know, that moment is something that I feel all the time. And people always ask me, is the novel autobiographical? And it's a made up story. But every little detail like that is autobiographical. Do you know what I mean?

Like, the details are autobiographical, but the story is fiction. But that's definitely, I'm so happy you picked up on that. No one's mentioned that. And it's such a powerful fee. I don't know if you have your, you said your mom just called. 

Zibby: So my brother had just got, my mom is still with us, but my husband lost his mother, um, a couple of years ago to COVID.

And I've sort of lived through that with him and I know how he feels and that, instinct that he has. And I can just, you know, imagine, you know, and even I saw on one of your social posts or newsletter somewhere, I don't know where you said something like, well, I don't have my mom to share. So I'm going to just share all these accomplishments with all of you because I need the external validation.

Yeah. Yeah. I related to that, too. It's like, I said that to somebody who was just telling me about her really fractious relationship with her mother. And I was like, well, but like, how do you get your praise? Where do you go? 

Betsy: Yeah. I mean, you can only brag to your mother in certain ways, like especially about your kids.

If you did it with anyone else, it would be so disgusting. But you know, my mother was really big on, you know, quelling. And so, yeah, it was. She loved good news, which is really she was a huge, big fan. 

Zibby: And the fact that the mom. Doesn't get to enjoy some of the things that come later in the book in this story.

It just kind of broke my heart. I don't know. It was, it was just so good. And I know it's about the sister's relationship, but I feel like it's also so much about the parents. It's, it's like this one family's journey through the trials and tribulations and, and You know, Ollie's behavior is just a catalyst, right?

It's just, you know, the shattering glass in the first scene is so emblematic of what happens to the family throughout the book. It's like such a perfect image. 

Betsy: Yeah, I, that actually also kind of comes from a slight moment in, in real life when I was very young, say 10 and 12 fighting with my older sister and I kicked her out of my room and she was walking out as slowly as humanly possible just to further irritate me.

And I slammed the door and a full length mirror came down and shattered. And my dad woke up and screamed at us, which he normally was very cool. And. Many months after I wrote that scene, I remembered that real scene. So I think there was so much in my subconscious at work writing this book. So I, I didn't realize it would be that, but it, it became that.

So yeah, it was shocking writing the book, having so many, some people say, well, you wrote a coming of age in your sixties, which is, you know, from the late bloomers club. But I think that it's really, you know, a lifetime of. Memories and images and, you know, just things that happen that just kind of came up through the book.

And that's definitely one. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, I read The Bridge Ladies, your memoir, when it first came out. When did that come out? Because I read it and loved it and my mom read it and loved it. We talked about it. When was that? Nice. I think it's almost like seven, eight years ago now. Oh my gosh. Well, that was also amazing.

And so I feel like we get to know this mother daughter relationship in several lenses through that. And now through this particular, you know, kaleidoscopic sort of view of another mother figure. So tell me about Well, wait, so much. I want to ask you the sister with mental illness. Did you have mental illness in your own family and you don't have to talk about this?

And maybe I read the memoir a long time ago, so I don't remember, but I'm bipolar. You're a bipolar. Okay. 

Betsy: So everybody thinks that I'm Amy. Cause I'm also a good girl or I've presented as a good girl for most of my life. And I've been stable for over 30 years. I haven't had a single episode, but my teens and early twenties were marked by.

You know, tremendous episodes of mania and depression, so I'm really both characters. That's the narcissism of of Betsy Lerner. And I also, in retrospect, realized how much my behavior impacted on my family when but when I was in it, I just really. Didn't think they understood and I sort of hated them and didn't feel that they were helping me in any way and in fact harming me in some ways so when I was younger at a lot of animosity toward my family and I a lot of resentment and and Then of course as I became a mother and as I stabilized and as I grew up and and of course as a parent I now realize oh my gosh, if my daughter had been behaving the way I was behaving, of course I would have completely flipped out or been in denial or tried too hard to help.

There's, there's no right way to react when, when somebody is suffering through mental illness, it's just such an impossible thing to cope with. So I think that the, the, the, I hope one of the things that comes through in the book is that there is a lot of compassion for the parents and the siblings. It's the situation that they were in, trying to deal with this daughter who just starts, you know, really becoming very out of control.

Zibby: Well, that, first of all, thank you for sharing that. I didn't realize that and that now puts a whole nother spin on the book. But with the parents and the compassion for them, you really do such a good job of showing us like, well, what could. You know, I'm a mom. I put myself in their shoes reading it first thing.

Like, well, what could they do with her? Like what, what could they do? And Ollie, you know, disappears for days on end or just says like, I'm not going to do this. Or I'm, you know, like all of the things they have to let go. And yet it's so hard. It's not like they ever really let go. 

Betsy: Right? Yeah, that's the thing when somebody is in your family and they disappear, sometimes it's a relief because there's, they ruin everything all the time.

I mean, Holly, every time she comes back, she's, it's a disaster, but they still long for her and you still feel tremendous guilt or. Longing. It's just it's so complicated. And I think that for the mother and the father each each dealt with her differently in the in the book. And that's I mean, it's not how my parents dealt with it.

But my dad always thought he could fix things with money. So he's sort of bankrolling Holly behind the scenes to keep her going. And my mother was more angry. You know, because the, when somebody is ill in a family, it sort of pulls the curtain back on everybody. And there were a lot of secrets in my family about mental illness that no one shared with me until I was much older, which it would have been helpful.

And so I was trying to depict that more extremely, you know, how, how a family member and the mother in this case, um, just. Does not want to deal with it. And then, of course, the younger sister, Amy, is caught in the middle and she's constantly fluctuating back and forth with wanting her sister and wanting her sister gone.

And I don't know if that's how my older sister or my I have two sisters. I'm in the middle and, you know, I know they had a lot of complicated really feelings about my illness, but I mean, yeah, of course we've discussed it a lot over the years, but but that in the book truly is fictional, you know, Amy is a fictional projection of of all of us.

Zibby: You have one scene towards the end where Amy sees Ollie just like take, you said something like three pink pills and pop them back and she's thinking, that's it? Like she just takes these pills and all of that is gone and under control? Like how is that possible? Has that been your experience? Or tell me a little bit more about that.

I know that the book takes us through so many attempts at treatment that were just completely. 

Betsy: Yeah, I think even to this day, medicating people with bipolar or depression is trial and error. And basically, they don't know what is going to help you until it helps you. It's a sort of. 2020 vision is perfect in hindsight or however that that goes.

So Ali is somebody who medication isn't helping, but they're also not giving her the right medication. They really are not diagnosing her correctly. But on top of that, a lot of people with bipolar illness go off their meds all the time because they don't like how it makes them feel. And I sometimes think of mental illness or bipolar illness as sort of a cancer where you can keep it under control, but if it wants to come out, you know, it's going to, and it often does in the form of a person going off their meds and, but Ollie never stayed on any meds.

She just refused. And her mania was sort of, she was hypomanic actually. She was more manic than. than depressed. So diagnosing somebody, keeping them on their meds, it's a lifelong challenge. I was very, from 15 to 25, I rejected all my medications. I hated the doctors. I hated how things made me feel. Finally, actually, when I had my daughter, that was when I committed to staying.

And, and I also finally found a brilliant psychopharmacologist who understood how to medicate me and keep me stable, but. I was still able to access my creativity and, you know, for a lot of bipolar people, they're also highly creative. They feel the medication takes that away from them and that's, you know, they can't stand it.

But I've been so fortunate with this doctor who's kept my levels perfect really for over 30 years. So I really consider myself, and he considers me, really, a huge success story, and I am. I mean, I've been well, and I've been, I've written many books, and I've edited many books, and I'm tethered to the world, and I was able to, my daughter's never seen me manic or depressed because I've been stable for her whole life, and that's just a miracle.

Zibby: Wow, that's amazing. Well, that's, I'm so happy for you for that. You mentioned the loneliness, which I agree. It just like, you can feel that so deeply when you read the book, how Amy is trying so hard to find her way and not just with boys slash men, but with girlfriends and in school and all the, the bullying and taunting and sort of inappropriate behavior that.

Comes from gentlemen as they're behave, not like gentlemen, and just all the the ways. She's just such a good person. Like you're just so rooting for her and then feel so disappointed on her behalf over and over again. Tell me a little bit more about that. 

Betsy: Well, I mean she's a know-It-all, she's a goodie two shoes.

She's an easy target when she's young. She's overshadowed by this really beautiful older sister who's charismatic and athletic and everything Amy isn't. The mother doesn't value what Amy has. The mother wants a beautiful, attractive daughter who's going to marry well and all that. So, the father sort of appreciates Amy, but she's just in the shadows.

And she's fighting for her whole life to come out of that shadow, but she's, you know, She just doesn't really know how to connect and she's sort of lost and things always disappoint her and my husband says, you know, you've written, you know, more ways of how a person could be disappointed in this book. I will tell you something my editor helped me with, which is a lot of people who rejected the book said that Amy didn't change and they want the character to change, you know, to have that arc.

And I really resist that comment because I feel people don't change that much. They, they're sort of the same. Often they get worse. When I met my editor and I, we talked about this and she said to me, Betsy, Amy doesn't have to change, but she has to learn. And that was the key that opened almost every scene for me where Amy's disappointment, she doesn't like learn like, Oh, I figured it out.

But she, evolves. And I think that, you know, all that disappointment when you're in your teens and twenties, if you're not, you know, part of the popular set, if you're not, I didn't go to the prom, like if you miss out on all these things. It just really, it stays with you. And I'll just also add, I actually was pretty popular because I needed, I needed it, but I always felt that I was faking it and that I was really alone and I preferred to be alone, but I was a real chameleon.

Amy's not good at that, but I was. And I, but I thought about all that a lot, you know, how you fit in and what you have to do to fit in and I could, but I never felt like it was the real me and it took years and years and years to come to connect myself with my public self and it feel real. 

Zibby: So take me through your life. So what happened? Like, how did you get to here? And why is this novel coming now in your life? And the memoir not so long ago, like what happened between your bipolar stabilizing and now, like professionally and personally, I guess, but. 

Betsy: Well, when I graduated college, I don't know if you want to go back.

I was really, it was a mess. I couldn't get a publishing job, couldn't type fast enough. I was ill prepared for every interview I went on, and I wound up taking this crazy job at Morgan Stanley in their library as the corporate file of something or other. And I worked there for two, two years through my ups and downs and still trying to get a lot of help and all that.

Finally, I miraculously got into Columbia grad school for my MFA. And promptly had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for six months. And. I have to say it was probably the most important experience of my life because I hospitalized myself against my parents wishes. I got the help that I needed, though they misdiagnosed me and I came out and I still continue to have episodes.

But I finished my degree and I got the scholarship into Simon Schuster as an intern. And that began my publishing career and I could always cover and sort of do well enough somehow. I don't really know how I think I'm very strong on a lot of levels and I was desperate to succeed in publishing to have something a real a job.

People needing me something to tether me. And I was always, my husband and I were always breaking up at that time. So that was very unsteady and, but eventually I did find this doctor and I did find the medication and I was able to stabilize and then I got married and I had my daughter and my, I started to write again, by the way, when I finished my poetry, MFA, I never wrote another poem, , and I completely stopped writing and I put all my energy into editing and being an editor, and I loved it.

I loved helping writers, being writer adjacent. I was so, I mean, I'm, I feel like I do have a lot of tools with language and with helping people and with structure poetry teaches you a lot. Um, and so I just sort of took everything I learned about poetry and, and, and applied it to book lengths. projects.

And I just got so lucky. I have some tremendous authors. And then when I became an agent, many of them came with me. So I right away had a really wonderful agenting career. And, but I did start writing again in my late thirties. After this long period of not writing, I wrote The Forest for the Trees, my advice book to writers, and then, all non fiction though, that was the thing.

I was completely into non fiction, and, and then this novel, yeah, it really surprised me. I did not, plan or expect to be to do it and it came about actually after an incredibly sad episode in our life, not episode, a tragedy. My younger sister's two children were killed by a drunk driver and My older sister and I took turns living with her in the aftermath of that, and then COVID happened.

So we couldn't be with her anymore, and we were very anxious about that. And so I had this idea that we would start working out in the morning, get her up, and over FaceTime. And we started working out, we called it shredding, and we called ourselves the Shred Sisters. And I guess that was really all going through my mind as the book started because what it brought into stark relief was that no matter what animosity or resentment or jealousies that we held against each other, when push came to shove, the bond was there.

And yeah, that has, I think that this book in a lot of ways came out of that wanting to explore that bond with my sisters. And yeah, it was, it's, it's five years later now and it's, it's as if it could have happened last week, it just doesn't, and that does not get better. But I guess the book must have helped me in some ways because there's a lot of death in the book, which I also, you know, I hadn't planned or thought about, but both parents die and her best friend dies.

And so I guess there was a lot of that. I also did lose my best friend to suicide. Um, right after the kids died. So, and our mom died right before that. So there was just this period of times completely encased in grief for our family and for me. And I think the book must have been a product of all of that.

Zibby: So sorry. Oh my gosh. You've been there so much lately. That is just, I'm so sorry. My heart is breaking. And you did put it all in there. That's, you know, when I was like, the book gets you, and now I understand where it's coming from for you. Because there is that heaviness in it, not in a negative way, in the most sort of human, real, authentic way, and you can feel it through everything.

Anyway. It was very powerful. All the different ways that you showed it. Actually, now that I'm flipping through, can I read this one passage? Is this okay? It said, Ali stayed with mom during the nights. In the morning, I would arrive with coffee for the two of us and find her asleep in bed with mom. My mother had adamantly maintained that what Ali had done to our family was unforgivable.

But in those last days, I saw how she needed Ollie, and how natural it was for Ollie to soothe her as death drew near. I had been afraid to touch mom, but Ollie polished her nails, combed her hair, and swabbed her mouth with a sponge on the end of a stick. Was all forgiven? Her golden haired child returned on a crescent moon.

The day before she died, my mother padded the bed and asked both of us to sit with her. When we were little, she'd read to us separately at bedtime, calling us Bedbug 1 and Bedbug 2. Ollie would only listen to adventure stories, Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe, while I loved Charlotte's Web and Black Beauty.

The one story we both could agree on was Great Expectations. Mom would impersonate the convict Magwitch, her impressions so convincing that we'd scream and beg her to stop. And then you say, Olly promised that we would take care of each other. Oh, it's so powerful. It's just so powerful. It makes me like choke up to read.

What was it like to write? Like, did you find yourself getting choked up yourself? 

Betsy: Oh, for sure. I could get choked up right now, which is so embarrassing. I was crying. To write my own book. 

Zibby: No. 

Betsy: But um, yeah, my mother's great wish was that we would be best of friends. My younger sister, by the way, is 10 years younger than we are.

So my older sister and I grew up fighting for many years and continued not to get along. And my, it broke my mother's heart. She just wanted us to get along so badly. She wanted us to be married. First of all, that was her number one hope. And then that we get along and it really killed her that we, That we didn't.

And she kept saying, Oh, you'll be friends at high school, you'll be friends in college, or you'll be friends when you graduate, you know, when you're adults, or you'll be friends when you have children, you know, when we just, we just had so much friction or such different kinds of people. But then when my mom died, you know, My older sister came through big time because she is the leader and she does take charge and she took charge and we needed her to do that so desperately, but she needed us to help her do it.

And, and my little sister was reading Chekhov to my mother, you know, at her, uh, the final days of her life. My younger sister, so gentle, so sweet. My older sister taking charge and me with all of that. All my conflicted feelings about my mother, you know, my mother and I never said I love you to each other, but we did.

It was a very strong bond, but we never said it. And I was just, you know, I was the one who lived near my mother. So I had done a lot of all the daily stuff and we were very close and we played became bridge partners for goodness sake. But all of this was swirling around in our lives. And then, and then in the book, yeah, it was, it was a lot to kind of harness.

all of that. And then, thank God, I had an editor who was able to pull a lot of it back and make it really powerful, because I overwrite. I overwrite. It's my terrible sin is I overwrite. And she really helped me, I think, make it much more effective and powerful, um, you know, just from a literary point of view.

Zibby: Wow. Well, the end, the end result is really fabulous. Do you want to write another novel now, or do you feel like you got out what you wanted to do? 

Betsy: Well, I, Really, I've always wanted, I got kicked out of NYU film school freshman year, and I've always wanted to be in the movies. I've always wanted to be a screenwriter, and I've written many over the years, and I've had some close calls, but my dream is to get to write the screenplay for Shred Sisters, to have it optioned.

So I'm hoping for that, if anyone out there is listening. But I have started on something new. I do find it really fun to now access my imagination, and Also, I've been reading my diaries from my twenties, which I read on Tik Tok. And now that I'm going through them, I see, Oh my goodness. I was, I was starting novels and short stories all the time.

And I totally forgot because poetry became such a big thing for me. But yeah, I think on some level it's. It's, it's been sort of lifelong desire, but I was, I'm so dazzled by Hollywood. Like that's where I've always really wanted to be so embarrassing books my whole life. And you know, I, I do like, I do like this writing.

Yeah. 

Zibby: Um, I don't think it's embarrassing to have a dream. I mean, why, why? Put things away that you always wanted to do. I mean, if not now, when? 

Betsy: Yeah, well, I've kept doing it. I've kept, you know, I've kept at it all. I've always had a writing project. You know, if I wasn't writing in all those years when I said I wasn't writing, I was keeping diaries.

So, You know, as you probably know, like if you're a writer, whatever it is, if it's a letter, if it's an email, you just, that is how you want to communicate. And so I'm always writing something, but I am working on a new novel and it's really fun because, you know, having gotten the coming of age one out of my system, it's fun to deal with some adult ideas.

Zibby: Well, I can't wait for that. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? 

Betsy: Keep your day job keep your day, write every day, try to write every day, even 20 minutes that adds up and that works and become part of your literary community to the best that you can go to readings, go to workshops, get on book talk, become a part of a writing, reading community. Um, I think that's. Because it's so lonely and it's so difficult.

And of course, you love the lonely, you have to love to write. I know so many writers who say they hate writing. And I just think, A, you're lying and B, why are you doing it? You know, I think, I don't think you should ever have to make yourself right. You know, people do all kinds of things to make themselves right.

And I just, That's not something I subscribe to. It's just something you have, you, you do, you just need to do it. But yeah, becoming part of a community and having stability and structure are all really helpful. 

Zibby: Betsy, thank you so much for coming on. That was amazing. Such great advice. Such a fabulous book.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Betsy: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.