Zibby chats with bestselling Israeli author Noa Yedlin about STOCKHOLM, a refreshing, ingeniously plotted dark comedy about a tight-knit circle of seniors who attempt to hide the death of one of their best friends so he can win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Noa delves into the novel’s themes of friendship, success, egos, aging, and mortality. She reflects on her writing career, from journalism to fiction, and then offers advice to aspiring authors.

Transcript:

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

Noa: Thank you so much for having me, Zippy. 

Zibby: I've just noticed that my nail polish is actually the cover of your book. Thank you so much. That's pretty cool. Just it's an olive and June nail polish. Well, yours is pretty good, too. Anyway, off topic, for those listening, I'll have this on YouTube or something so you can check it out.

Anyway, Stockholm. Noah, tell listeners what your book is about. 

Noa: Well, Stockholm tells the story of five friends, four who are alive and one who is dead. They have been friends for the past 50 years, some of them even longer, and there are three men and two women, and one of them is a very, very prominent economist, and he's mentioned as someone who has very, very good chances of winning the Nobel Prize for economics.

But unfortunately, one night he's found dead in bed. Apparently it was a heart attack. No, there's no, uh, no one suspects any murder or anything like that. And his friends are the ones who find him, because he doesn't have, he lives alone, he doesn't have a family. And they find him. And the minute before they start working out the funeral arrangements, One of them has an idea.

It's only eight days before the Nobel Prize for Economics is announced. Eight days between the burial of just another, you know, professor of economics, one of many, and the burial of the world renowned economist, one that has won the biggest honor on earth. And one of them says, well, what if we don't tell anyone that he died.

It's only eight days. You have to be alive at the time of the announcement. This is something that we should mention. And this is something, this is very useful information for our viewers as well. You have to be alive at the time of the announcement. You are very free to die between the announcement and the ceremony.

There are two months there and you can die during those two months as much as you want, but you have to be alive at the time of the announcement. And so what if they don't tell anyone that he died? You know, how difficult could it be to answer a few text messages on someone's behalf? Of course, as it turns out, it's much more difficult than they expected.

First of all, because life tend to be much more difficult than we expect, as we all know, and second of all, because if. things didn't turn difficult, then there wouldn't be a book. 

Zibby: Yes, I was not expecting there was a twist sort of halfway through or so and I was totally not expecting that. So that was, you know, well done.

That was great. So this is dark. Like, where did you think about this? Because you have to go into all the details of what happens to a decaying body and moving a body and hiding a body and like, you know, masquerading as other people and I mean, I'm, I'm a little concerned about you, Noah. I mean, I don't know.

Noa: You should be. Well, I can tell you right from the start, or I should mention right from the start, that this is not a biography. I myself never hid a dead body, not for more than three or four days. So, this is another case but I will tell you where did diabetes come from because I also think that it really has to do with the title of our podcast.

It actually all started a few years ago when I met my best friend for lunch. And she has four children and at the time they were rather small. They were like, And we met for lunch and she told me she was very upset. She had a very bad mood and she told me that she went over to meet another friend of hers.

This is going to be one of those stories my friend, her friend, her husband. 

Zibby: That's okay. I'm with you. I'm with you. 

Noa: Stay focused. Okay. 

Zibby: I got it. I'm focused. I'm focused. Always. Always. 

Noa: So she told me that she went over to meet another friend of hers, whose husband is a very, very famous film director. And when she was over at their house, she saw on the computer screensaver, a picture of her friend and the husband walking the red carpet, the actual red carpet, like the Hollywood one.

My friend told me that she went home that afternoon, feeling the worst she has felt for a very long time because you know, her friend is walking red carpet and you know, and she's there, you know, breastfeeding formula, all that jazz, you know, that jazz. And she said, I have never felt less glamorous in my entire life.

And with half of my brain, I started consoling her. I started telling her that she's very glamorous in her own way and she's even going to get more glamorous, especially if she stops having children at a certain point.

Zibby: It helps. 

Noa: Yeah. But with the other half of my brain, you know, as writers, we only give people half of our minds.

We always conspire with the other half. Right. And with the other half, I started feeling that there is a novel there because I thought, well, you know, people always talk about what it's like to be a friend in a time of need, right? It's a very noble value. A friend in the time of need is a friend indeed, and it's very appreciable, et cetera.

But the one thing that no one talks about is what it's like to be a friend in a time of success. And the reason that no one speaks about that is also very clear because there is absolutely nothing in the world you're allowed to say other than I am happy for my friend. Period. End of discussion.

Right? 

Zibby: I shrugged. I shrugged. I shrugged. I am still here. 

Noa: Even though you may have other feelings as well, right? Not because you're a bad human being, just because you're a human being. Maybe you're a little jealous. Maybe it makes you look at your own life. Maybe it makes you examine your choices, your decisions.

These are all super human reactions, but still no one talks about that. And whenever I find something that no one talks about, but I believe that everyone feels, then I know I have a novel. So this was actually the, the inspiration because I didn't start with death and with dead bodies and no, I started with success and with friendship.

And then I started thinking, what is, you know, what is success in the modern world, in the Western world? And I thought that the best symbol of success or, the most vivid symbol of success must be the Nobel Prize. You know, Nobel Prize is actually, it kind of kills the whole postmodern debate of who decides who success is, you know, if your friends want the Nobel Prize, you don't go.

Oh, well, I could have cracked that chromosome just as well, right? No, you say, okay, I have some research. So this was actually the inspiration. I actually had some really, I did a lot of research, obviously, for the reasons that I just mentioned. 

Zibby: I mean, I was hoping, I was hoping you didn't know all this just off the top of your head.

Noa: I kind of did a lot of, I did a lot of research. I have actually my own private pathologies. We met over, I'm not married to a pathologist, but we met while working on this novel. He was very, very helpful and ever since then, he helps me whenever I have something that has to do with death, with bodies, with. I don't know. I don't have so much depth in my books, but for some reason it's very useful. So I had to do a lot of research, but I think that the funniest part of the research was my correspondence with the Nobel Committee. Because once I decided that this is going to be my novel, I thought, well, I should write to them and ask them some questions about, you know, about the rules about how this is all.

And I wrote like this very long email with very, very bizarre questions that. I, I don't know how come they answered and didn't alert the FBI. Questions had to do with death, dying, and dead Nobel Laureates. You know, what happens if you die a day before? What happens if you die a day after? Everything had to do with that.

But being the sweets that they are they actually answered. And now I have in my Gmail inbox, I have like me, me, coma, Nobel, which is like probably the closest I've ever going to get to me, Nobel. So this was a nice part of the, of the whole endeavor. 

Zibby: But now you're on their radar. So it's possible. Right? Now they know about you.

Noa: Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I'm sure that this is how they work, you know, they just go over their emails and they go like, we like that one for the, for the next prize. You can hope, right? 

Zibby: Yeah. We're, uh, can't find anybody this year. What about Spam? Yeah. I like it as Spam. Well, I hope you sent them the book. Did you send your, your Nobel friends the book?

Noa: You know, I didn't. Come on! I didn't, but actually Stockholm was adapted into an Israeli television series. I should say that I'm talking to you from Tel Aviv, and this is why I'm also not a fluent English speaker, so if I'm making mistakes, you have to forgive me. So Stockholm was adapted into an Israeli, a two season Israeli TV series, which was also remade in Stockholm, in Sweden.

And they had, so they know the story and they know the novel. Hopefully this is going to not hurt. 

Zibby: So why has this not been a U. S. show? 

Noa: Not yet, hopefully, and we're working, we're actually working on that and we're hoping that it will be a U. S. show because it was remade in several countries around the world.

We were super close to making it happen in the U. S. and we're hoping, we're hoping. Okay, good. We know this is something that takes time and it's very complicated. 

Zibby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know how it goes. But still, well, it's very cinematic and hilarious and, you know, frightening, all in the same, all in the same breath.

But what, what we find out, and I don't think it's, It's too much of a spoiler, but if so, I can delete this part, but one of the friends wants to keep Avishai alive, theoretically, not for the Nobel, not because he wants his friend to sort of rest in peace forever, having won it, but for his own blurb on his own book cover, which is hilarious, because his friend blurbed his book, and if he could say that he was blurbed, By a Nobel laureate, his book would sell more.

Noa: I don't think it's, uh, I don't think it's considered a spoiler. 

Zibby: Okay, good. 

Noa: But, you know, I do think that, yeah, it's funny, but at the same time, I feel that the fact that actually, They're all, or most of them, have some ulterior motive. 

Zibby: Mm hmm. Yes. 

Noa: And not only doing it just, you know, altruistically, I think that it doesn't make them any less of a good, of good friends.

I think you can be a very good friend and you can also be, again, human and egoistic, which is probably the same thing, right? I don't think it's a contradiction. I think the one who wants the blurb is, I think he still really, really loves you. A Visha, the deceased. Mm-Hmm. . I think they all do. 

Zibby: Yeah. Well, yeah in their way. . So tell me more about your career as a whole. 

Noa: Well, I used to be a journalist for quite a few years, and at a certain point I realized that the part of reality. Of speaking to reality, which is kind of a must in journalism is kind of not my favorite part. Let's put it this way. I kept pitching to my editors is strange ideas.

Like, how about if instead of interviewing a real model, I'm going to invent a model. I'm going to invent a supermodel and we're going to invent, we're going to interview that fictional supermodel and they would go. No, no, this is not going to happen. And at a certain point, quite some would say that for, uh, you know, generally intelligent person.

It took me quite a while to realize that there is, that there exists a profession where you don't have to rely on reality, you can just make it all up and the funny thing is that my books are super realistic. It's not that I go about and you know, making up these, I don't know, fantasy words or demons or never, never, everything is always super, super, super realistic, even in this book, which is probably my wildest one.

Still, they're very, very You know, like 70 year old, you know, your, it's your parents, I think it's, it's, it's my, it's my mother's friends. My mother is a clinical psychologist. It's her friends. It's her Tel Avivian friends who, you know, this, this was another motivation to write the book because I felt that I don't read about the 70 year olds that I know.

I mean, yeah, yeah, In books, I feel that 70 year old people are portrayed as, first of all, cute. I don't know what age you become cute, but at a certain point, you, for some reason, become cute. But, you know, some people are not cute. Some people are people. And the 70 year old people, Tel Avivians, that I know, they divorce, they have sex, they cheat, they turn to feng shui, they start taking law, I don't know, they do all these things, and I want to read about them.

I don't remember how to talk about that, but well, I asked about your career and you, uh, so I kind of drifted away. You drifted away to, to, yeah. So, yeah, so I started writing books and I was, I just had a lot of fortune. I mean, meaning luck, not meaning money. I had a lot of I, I, right from the start, I kind of won this big prize in Israel.

So this made it possible for me to quit journalism and actually become a full time writer as much as you can be a full time writer in Israel, which is. Not very you have to do other things as well, but you can write books. 

Zibby: That's amazing Yeah, so which other books do you want to highlight? Like what else should we know?

Noa: I would say that well my latest book is called the wrong book

Zibby: The wrong book. 

Noa: The wrong book Yes, and I think it would interest you I would I'll tell you what it is About and hopefully it's going to be published in the U. S. Soon as well. The wrong book tells the story of a young mother. She's a first time mother on maternity leave and why she's on maternity.

She's an aspiring writer. She writes very sophisticated prose, but she never. I mean, she theoretically writes sophisticated prose, but realistically, she never published anything yet. And her husband really expects her to become, you know, the next Kafka or the 21st century Kafka. And when she's, uh, while she's on maternity leave, she finds herself not only unable to write anything, but also unable to read anything.

And the threat of hope. of hers tells her, you know what you should do? You should read romantic fiction. This is so much fun. This is how I go through my, you know, breastfeeding nights. It's a lot of fun. And she's like, no, no, that's not for me. But when she tries wine, she gets hooked up. She starts reading them by the dozens and eventually she starts.

Writing them, but she does it all behind her husband's back because she knows he's going to be, you know, he's very, he's a very, I would say, stuck up pots.

Yeah, that's the maybe the best description. I think he's very intelligent. He's he's a professor. He's he has never read anything. You know, that any romantic fiction, but of course he has all these opinions about that, as men sometimes do, and she does it behind his back, and she becomes like, of course, under an alias, and things turn difficult for the same reason that they turn difficult on Stockholm.

Zibby: Interesting. 

Noa: So it's difficult here as well. 

Zibby: Wow. I have to read that. That sounds so good. 

Noa: I hope so. Yeah. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Noa: I hope it's going to get published. This was the last one I published in Israel. I have another one called People Like Us. I have some, I published quite a few novels in Israel. I have another novel called People Like Us.

Hopefully it's going to be published in the U. S. as well. I'm now adapting People Like Us into an Israeli television series uh, as well, it's about a couple, like, uh, 40 year old couple. Oh, we have a guest. 

Zibby: Yeah. Sorry. My dog just walked in. 

Noa: Yes. Perfect. It's about a 40 year old couple. They have, uh, two daughters and they want to buy their own place.

They don't rent anymore. So they go and buy a house in a very bad neighborhood in Tel Aviv, assuming it's going to be, you know, the next. Like, you know, someone who bought in the meatpacking district in the east, and they think they're like, so real estate savvy and, and they move there. And also, of course, they have all these ideals because their daughters are going to grow up in a multicultural environment and what's better than that.

But you know, being liberal is much more difficult. It's much easier in theory than it is. In reality, as we all know, uh, putting your liberalism to the test is always a bad idea. It's kind of, uh, it's a test doomed for failure and they move there and well, things get complicated. We always get back to things get complicated.

I guess all novels finally you know, circle two, things get complicated.

Zibby: I love that as your tagline. I think that's great. Okay, well, what is your advice for aspiring authors? 

Noa: Can I give two? 

Zibby: Yes, you can. Yes, you can. 

Noa: Okay. One is forget about inspiration. I think that waiting for inspiration is the best recipe for not writing anything.

If you're waiting for a trail of unicorns to hop, hop over your Keyboard and, you know, it's not going to happen. If you want to write, treat your writing as if you were an accountant, you sit down at the computer and you work working is also thinking working is also, you know, banging your head against the computer.

But this is your working hours. There is a very, very famous Israeli writer called the most. He's not alive anymore. And he used to say, At eight o'clock in the morning, I opened my grocery store. It doesn't matter if people are going to show up or not. The store is going to stay open. I feel that this is a very good description of how I perceive writing and the process.

This is 1 and the other is always give your characters a lot of credit. Also, you're the bad characters, the superficial, the supposedly superficial ones, the 1 that we're not supposed to, like, give them a lot of credit, make them say smart things and make them have good arguments because then your book is going to be interesting.

It's not going to be you know, it's not going to be cliches, and it's not going to be simplistic. Give everyone, all your characters, as much credit as possible, always, and they're going to thank you for that, I think. 

Zibby: Amazing. Noah, this was so fun. I want to, like, go have you make me laugh and go get coffee and hang out.

You're so funny and smart. And I love it. I'm just, I want to read everything. I want to go back and read everything now. So anyway, thank you so much for coming on. 

Noa: Thank you so much for having me. 

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Thank you. Okay. Bye.