Author Susan Rieger joins Zibby to discuss LIKE MOTHER, LIKE MOTHER, an enthralling novel about three generations of strong-willed women unknowingly shaped by the secrets buried in their family’s past. Susan describes how her own family secrets and complex relationship with her mother inspired this story and its central character, Lila, a brilliant, career-focused executive editor at a major newspaper who feels inherently unsuited for motherhood. Susan also talks about her journey through psychoanalysis, the power of introspection, and her journey from law to writing. Finally, she shares the news of a TV adaptation—and who she hopes will be cast as Lila!

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Susan. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Like Mother, Like Mother, which I loved just getting that out there now. Congratulations. 

Susan: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: I was so delighted to hear your story when we met at the Dial Press breakfast, and I was so taken with your description of the book then.

I couldn't wait to read the book, and then once I started, oh my gosh, I couldn't stop. So give everybody else the pitch that you gave it at Dial Press of why you wrote the book and what it's about and all of that, please. 

Susan: The book is about, I always say the beating heart of the book is a woman named Lila Pereira, who's an editor of a big Washington paper, and a woman who admits she is completely ill suited to be a mother.

Her own mother disappeared when she was two, her father was abusive, and she solved the problem of having children by marrying a wonderful man who's a wonderful father. And as she is the beating heart of the book, the pulse of the book is her daughter Grace. The youngest of her three daughters, who longs for a conventional mother and wants someone to pay her attention.

And so one of the things Grace does when she's almost 30 is to write a book about her mother. Which does nothing to assuage your own hurt, but hurts other people. And so what we do is we're waiting to see how grace grows up as you have to it and how you have to deal with your parents. One of the things I always say about parents and children is that you have to bury your parents twice the first time when you put them in the ground. And the second time when you say. That's who they were. They're never going to change. And that's very hard. I'm 78 and I'm not sure I buried my parents completely for the second time. My mother is always in my brain some ways, you know, either helpfully or not. So, so that's, that's the story of the book and there's other people too.

There's friendship. I think it's important. Very. There's a lot about work. I think work is very important to most women and there's a lot about friendship and the importance of friendship. And I, I think it's one of, I like that friendship a lot between grace and her best friend. Oh, and grannies. Since I've become a granny myself, I'm, I'm very particular towards grannies.

And there are, there's one really, I think, remarkable granny, who is named, Frances, who may be my favorite character. I love them all. Even when they're difficult, I love them. Well, except, except one, except one. 

Zibby: And where, like, where did the germ of this idea come from? What was the spark? 

Susan: I always say that there would be no Lila Pereira without my own mother, Roma Jovanidi.

My mother is, um, much, is, is, is not, was not so career bound. She came of a different generation. She was born in 1913. And she was, uh, much more active in our lives, but my father's Jewish and my mother's Italian, and they both don't conform very much to the stereotypes of Jewish and Italian parents. My father was the warmer one, as in this book, and my mother, my mother supported, my mother always had her back.

She wasn't warm and cuddly. And as I grew up, I came to realize that I think of her more as a person than as a mother. And she was a terrific person. All my friends adored her and she was like nobody else's mother. And she was like, Lila, she had an exotic name and exotic background. She was beautiful. My sisters and I are not nearly as beautiful as she was.

I mean, we were okay. I'm not, I'm not, we got through, I got married twice, but, um, but my mom is, I think, but Lila, Lila is my mom to the nth degree, if she's my mom at all, but she's smart and funny like my mother. So I suppose that's the seed and secrets too. There were always family secrets in my, I mean, for instance, my grandparents were never married.

My mother's parents, they were, they were anarchists. And so I found out when I moved in with my first husband, before I was married and my grandmother told me, and we were talking and she said, Oh, you're moving in here. Very nice. She said, I want to buy you a housewarming present. And then she said, you know, your grandfather and I were never married.

And I said, no, no, my mother had never told us that. And you know, like all children, I kept my mother's secret. You know, we didn't talk about it. I once raised it with her when we were talking about family secrets. She also had a sister. She had never told us about, I said. You know, your parents were never married and she said, Oh yes, that was it.

End of conversation. We never talked about it. She didn't look back. She didn't look inward and she didn't look back, which is a big part of this book too. Who looks inward and who looks back. 

Zibby: Wow. And yet you have done so much looking inward that you've created like 10 different characters who are all looking, you're looking into all of them.

Susan: Of course, when everybody says, who are your characters? I always say, they're me. They're all me. You know, where else would they come from? But I spent 10 years at Analysis. From the time I was 35 until I was 45. And I've sort of exhausted the inward looking. I use it. Use it. But at the moment I'm just, I'm just looking forward more than looking back.

Oh, this book is clearly an indication that that's not true. 

Zibby: Was analysis really helpful? I always wonder about that. I know there's a rigor to it. 

Susan: It was hugely helpful. I had a wonderful analyst, went through all the stages. I mean, she was, she talked to you, she helped you, and she would sort of drop pieces of advice.

And yes, and I think it made me a better mother and that was part of it. Yes. I think it was hugely helpful. You know, I was, I was, you know, I'm still neurotic, but you know, unless you're, you can't be analyzed unless you're neurotic, you can't be pathological or, or sociopathic. 

Zibby: So, I mean, if I wasn't Neurotic?

Who would I even be? 

Susan: Who would I be? Given my background, what were my chances? None. 

Zibby: For a while I was writing, like, a neurotic New Yorker's guide to Disney World. A neurotic New Yorker's guide to whatever. 

Susan: It has a huge audience. 

Zibby: Oh yeah, I mean, you know, it is what it is. 

Susan: It is what it is. I'm just admitting that mobs don't have time to read.

Zibby: It's always putting it out there. Well, I have to say your book had like, not only an effect on me when I was reading it, but it's one of those books where it actually changed my behavior in real life because the part where Lila's marriage and I don't want to give anything away, but she gets more and more consumed with work and spending time at the office.

You unravel this and that's not the right word, but you sort of show us how it ekes into her personal life gradually and not all at once, but just a missed dinner here, another missed dinner until it got to the point of sort of unsustainability for her husband. And one day he's like, okay, you know, so I'm reading this and in the morning my husband says to me.

As I'm about to, like, go to work, he's like, Hey, do you have any interest in, like, going down the block and getting a coffee? Which, of course, I had no time to do. And I was like, why would I do that? And then I was thinking, Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go get the coffee. I'm gonna get the coffee. So we went to coffee and it was lovely.

And the whole time I was thinking about you and your book and how if you don't make the time and you let work consume you, gradually, then you lose the things that are perhaps the most important or the underpinnings of everything. So anyway, thank you for that. 

Susan: No, and I think in my own marriage too, my husband's also a writer and is very absorbed in his own writings.

And I finally said to him, we're going to go to a movie once a week. We're going to go to lunch at Lupa and go to the Angelica and see a good movie. And, and he, he said, all right. All right. Now I'm not sure. We did it for three weeks once and then it sort of petered out. But I'm trying, I'm trying to make sure that we, we spend time together.

Though I do a lot also with my friends by myself. He doesn't like the theater. I don't like music. We go our different ways. I'm amusical, I really should say. I don't hear music the way people do. I, I love, I like music with words. I like Sondheim. I like things like that, you know, but I don't, it's like, but I love the theater and I think the theater, my book has a great deal of dialogue and I think that comes from my love of the theater.

Zibby: Interesting. I love the theater too. 

Susan: You reveal characters through what they say. And, and less about how, what their inward thoughts are. 

Zibby: Mm hmm. Interesting. I know. And I saw that as I was reading the book, the news of the adaptation came out, so that's hugely exciting. How do you, how do you feel about that?

What can you reveal? 

Susan: Oh, that, that, that was, um, you know, when you, you know, you just want to hope that, you know, you know, people will read, will read your book and like your book. Um, that was really sort of stunning. And, um, yeah. I never expected it. And then what the other problem is, is that it takes very long for these things to get finalized, you know, the television world.

And, and so by the time you're allowed to talk about it, it's been going on for months and you sort of say, Oh, that. But yeah, it, it, it, it is, it's really lovely and, and I, I wrote to, I have wonderful producers, uh, Sue Nagel and Allie Frug, and I wrote, and I said, what about Scarlett Johansson for Lila? But I'm putting it out there.

Zibby: Yeah. Putting it in the universe. Right. Yeah. We all hear it. We all heard it here. 

Susan: Yeah. So, yeah. So, uh, it would be fun. It would be fun. And I've, I've said I have to let go. It's, it's their project and, and I'm going. Have you seen the, did your children read the book or did you read to them the Wild Robot? 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, I was actually just reading it.

Um, it's right over there. My son is obsessed and the movie we were about gonna go see the movie and he said, you have to read the book first. And I was like, okay. So I started reading the book. 

Susan: But they're very, my daughter who loved it and owned a children's bookstore in New York when she lived there, they loved it.

I read it to them any number of times. I loved it too. I haven't seen the movie yet. She said the movie is different from the book, but they're both wonderful. And so I, I just feel they're making it, they know what they're doing, what works as a television. I don't know what works as television. So I, I think I pretty much, you know, I'm interested, I want to see, I'd love to be on a set.

I think it would be fun. It's up to me, Scarlett Johansson, but it's theirs, you know. 

Zibby: What children's book story did your daughter own? 

Susan: She owned one in Brooklyn called Stories. And it was all flatbush and she, it closed during COVID because she, you can't have a children's bookstore without having children come in.

And that was hard and I, and that was one of the reasons I think they wound up moving to rhinebeck. 

First of all, you know, Brooklyn is, it's very expensive. Private schools are crazy. And, um, and the kids now go to Rhinebeck schools, which are fabulous. And she grew up a lot of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts.

So she likes small towns. I don't like small towns. I like large cities. I like New York City, so. But I think it's exactly right for her, and of course I miss having them so close, but I think it's been great for them. 

Zibby: I mean, it's a drive. 

At least they're not across the country. Tell me a little more. I mean, I read your bio and all of, you know, all the other stuff.

Add a little color to, how you got here. Like, as you just said, you're 78 years old. This book is such a triumph. It's so amazing. I'm, like, totally obsessed with it. But what, what has, what came first and what were the biggest zigs and zags of your career? 

Susan: Oh, all right. I, I'm a lawyer by training, but I've never really practiced.

And I certainly don't give advice because it would be completely untrustworthy. When I, I, my first job out of law school was teaching at Brooklyn Law School teaching legal writing and I had a baby and I didn't want to work in a firm. And one of the things we had to do was make up a moot court brief so that the students could argue it.

And you had to make up the facts and you had to find cases and I had so much fun doing it. I said, someday an epistolary novel about law would be fun to write. And about seven or eight years after I got divorced and I was at Yale, where I was a dean of one of the residential colleges, I started writing about a divorce as an epistolary novel and that became the Divorce Papers.

Which is my first novel and I had done a lot of journalism, you know, op ed type pieces, um, and I never thought I would be a fiction writer and, and then I discovered there's a tremendous pleasure in making things up and shaping a world to the world you want it to be. So I wrote that and then they said, write another one.

So I wrote another one, which started as an epistolary novel, but didn't, but didn't become an epistolary novel because I, as part of the epistolary novel, I wrote a short story and my editor said, no, no, I like that short story. Make that the novel. So I did that. And then this one, I don't know where this one came from.

I was working on a different book and that wasn't gelling at all. And so I just, and my agent said to me, write another book, start over. And so I did. It wasn't the one I was contracted to write, but they were happy. They were happy with it. 

Zibby: Well, I mean, I can't imagine disappointment. So that's great. 

Susan: It's a very accidental career.

You know, I've, um, I've taught undergraduate law. My best job was as a residential college dean, Dean Investor Stiles at Yale. I love that. I did it for 11 years. 

Zibby: Wow. 

Susan: I had to get back to New York. 

Zibby: Um, I, I was in Davenport, by the way. 

Susan: Were Yeah. . But you were there I think after my time. What? Yes. 

Zibby: I graduated in 98, so.. 

Susan: Graduated.

Zibby: Mm-Hmm? . 

Susan: Oh, I, I left. Oh. I was there from, I left in 2002. I came there in 92 to 2002. 

Zibby: Oh yeah. We were there at the same time. 

Susan: Right. 

Zibby: Oh, I didn't, I didn't have that many friends in Ezra's in styles, but obviously walked by it a billion times. 

Susan: Yeah, no, it's, it was a wonderful job and I loved, I loved Gail's students.

Um, I thought they were really a great group and it, but it was before phones, before iPhones. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Susan: When the phone, there was one kid who had an iPhone in our dining room and it went off once and everybody stood up and, you know, like the game pig and pointed to him. You know, no fun. It makes a whole difference if you have phones in the dining room.

Zibby: I got email, my, this is really dating me, email came like second semester freshman year or something like that with the Minerva accounts. Do you remember that? 

Susan: I don't, I don't remember what, I had a, yeah, I don't remember what kind of account I had. They gave it to me when I showed up. 

Zibby: Yeah. Yeah. These were, uh, different times.

Susan: Different times, right. 

Zibby: Although I do remember spending quite a lot of time trying to find friends at various parties on the weekends and never knowing, and like, how much easier would it be to just look as opposed to trying to go all over the place. 

Susan: And also, what would we do without Professor Google and Professor Wikipedia?

Zibby: Yes, exactly. Who are some of the authors that you most admire? 

Susan: My favorite books when I was little, I loved, I loved Nancy Drew. And I think a lot of women. With careers and, and who write love Nancy Drew. She was, I love the original ones too. They, they rewrote them. And then the original one, she's 16 years old.

She has a blue roadster. She has a friend named George who wears trousers and a friend named. Bess who has frilly louses and she solves mysteries and her mother's dead. She's a half orphan and she has her father to herself. I mean, it's just perfect for, you know, a 10 year old girl to read a book like that.

I just think having, that I could have a life of my own and I love Nancy Drew. I think that was very important. Then the next book, That was very important to me was Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was in a rage and I had never read a book about a girl in a rage. And I felt, oh, that's very comforting. And then I moved on to, um, you know, I mean, I love Pride and Prejudice and I love Portrait of a Lady.

But recently I've read, the books I've read recently that I really loved was, um, Northwoods. 

Zibby: Mm hmm. 

Susan: By Daniel Mason, I thought that was wonderful. It sort of reminded me of the Grimm brothers, whom I'd always loved reading to when I was young. And then I also read The Postcard. Have you read The Postcard? 

Zibby: I, literally, it's next on my list.

And I'm interviewing Anne Burrest, we just scheduled it today, about her new novel that's coming out. 

Susan: Oh. I, I thought, I thought, I just held me in a way. I'm not sure I believed it. . Right. It just held me in, in, in a way and I just had to read it. And, and both those books I read very quickly. I have other books sitting on the side that I've put aside.

It's very hard when you have a book coming out to think of anything else at the moment. 

Zibby: Yes, I understand . 

Susan: It does. And you know, you had your, your blank. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Susan: And um, so it's, um, but I did read Politano and I, um, and I did read Alleger Goodman's because they were. They were sort of colleagues, and they're both wonderful writers, and that was good.

But so I'm, I just bought Navalny. I think he's the hero of our time. And I, I, I just admire him so much. I think that I'm going to read that next. I think I have to go off fiction for a bit. 

Zibby: You depicted the abusive relationship in the book with, well, many abusive relationships. The abusive figure of the father and the effect of it on not only the mother and, but all the kids and all of it.

It was quite vivid and really impactful emotionally. I mean, it's hard to read. I almost wanted to you know, you just can't, you almost can't believe it. But of course, it happens all the time, which is horrific. But tell me a little bit more about that. Because, you know, when you talk about it seeming like a play or very vivid, or this is a, that was a particularly, some of those scenes of abuse were very vivid to me.

Susan: I had to figure out how Lila became who she was. And I decided that she was motherless. And had a terrible, terrible father. And, and it impacted her sister and brother differently. And, uh, I don't, I mean, it's hard to talk about it. I don't want to give away some of the story. I don't, I mean, I, I have had no abuse in my family.

I mean, we were a family of yellers, but nobody, nobody, no, we were never even hit as children, my parents didn't. And they just, we, we were sent to our room and then we, we were asked if we wanted to come out and were we ready to apologize. And mostly I went back into my room for another half hour. 

Zibby: I always liked, I liked that.

Um, I was like, I love my room. There's no place I'd rather be. 

Susan: Yeah. But so I wanted it to be vivid because I needed, I wanted, I wanted Lila to know, you know, the epigraph is don't look back, something may be gaining on you. I, I, this is who Lila is. She's not looking back. And so she, I needed a background she didn't want to ever have look back on. So that's why I made it so vivid. 

Zibby: And Grace's friendship, tell me more about that. And did you have, do you have a, a close friend from your past who was particularly formative for you, for you growing up? 

Susan: You know, I, I, Not my oldest friend and who's still one of my closest friends. Um, we, we met when we were, when we were 22, 23, um, we were both married to assistant professors and, um, promising young men, and she is one of the smartest people I know, and one of the sanest, and she's always been someone who talked me down.

It's very good. I'm more excitable. And, um, she's always been there to talk me down and to support me. And we are still incredibly close friends. I had dinner. I mean, she is, and I love her husband too. So that is really one of the gifts. And because I do have very strong women friendships, I wanted that to be a part of the book.

They, they are so important to you. I don't know how you go on without them. I mean, I love my husband and he's a lot of fun, but I talked to him to be, in fact, I always think I like being, I think it's easy to be living with a man because they don't really understand you, so it's very restful sometimes.

Right? He's not going to get it. He's not going to get it. So, you know, just go and read a book and leave it alone. Whereas your friends are capable of understanding you. And sometimes you don't want to be understood more than you are. So, anyway. 

Zibby: I love that. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? 

Susan: Read.

Read everything and read fiction, but don't only read fiction. I am a Jane Austen Completist. I am a Dickens Completist. I mean, I've read all, I think the great 19th century novels can't be beat. I love, I love, um, Thackeray. Now there's a book that's been very influential to me. Vanity Fair. Becky, Becky Sharp is really one very naughty girl.

And he doesn't punish her. Oftentimes bad girls get punished. And he doesn't. So I've always loved that book. Um, I, I, I, there's a theme here that I like bad girls. I mean, not awful, but bad and read men as well as women. I mean, I've, I, um, I've read a lot of women novelists and love them. I mean, and I, and I think middle March is up there at the top, but I love Philip Roth, not everything, but I can't get through Sabbath theater, but I saw a play of it, which was wonderful, but I love that.

He's so wild. And I think that's just great. And I love, um, what's his name? Oh, Joseph O'Neill's book, Netherlands. And he just has another one, a good one, which I want to read. And my daughter's a novelist. I wrote a wonderful book, yeah, her name is Maggie Pouncey and she wrote a book called Perfect Reader, and she's a wonderful writer, and now she's doing children's books, um, so, the whole family's a writer, my, my ex husband wrote a novel, which he published when he was 67, called Rules for Old Men Waiting, which is a great novel, and I published my first novel at 67, and, and our daughter beat us to it, but her novel, but, I think she's the only girl in the world who had two parents publish novels at 67.

So, that's the other thing is, you have, you can do certain things. I don't think I could have written a book when Maggie was a little girl and my, my stepson whom I raised was a, was a, was, was young. They just take up time. I don't know how you did too much room in your head. I could go to work and do a discrete job, but to sit down and spin your imagination, I just couldn't have done it.

And then I, then I had to, I've always worked and I've always had to have jobs. And I always need a job where I have life insurance and a 401k plan. So that's, that's hard too. And I, I mean, when I went to Yale, I had to teach the first couple of years, I had to teach two courses, one course each semester plus Dean.

And when they cut us down to one course a year, then I began writing. Oh, and I'll tell you what else helped me. It was a great course at Yale called daily themes where you have to write a theme, a week for 13 weeks and I took it twice because my upstairs neighbor was teaching it and he read my themes and it's like writing aerobics because you got the prompt on a Monday and you had to hand it in by a Tuesday.

You had overnight to do it. And then they had the rest of the time, the TAs to read it. And I writing a theme that someone else gives you a prompt was hugely helpful to get you going. The other thing is, if you want to write, the best way to write is to, we, my agent and I call it a Tushin chair. You have to be sitting in your chair to write.

You can't be thinking about it, you know, so address the computer and write. That's what I say, but reading and reading, reading is probably the best training because I'm so late in life. I never went to, I never took an MFA, which my daughter did. And the benefit of an MFA is you have good readers reading your stuff.

So, and, and I, and she had a whole group of fabulous friends from, she went to Columbia, so that was very good. Try it.

Zibby: I love it. 

Susan, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. Your book was wonderful. I was so hooked. I loved it. I just, I can't stop thinking about the characters and, you know, I finished it, I don't know, whenever, a couple weeks ago or whatever.

So anyway, it was great. Congratulations. 

Susan: Oh, thank you so much for all the good you do for writers and books. Thank you very much. 

Zibby: Oh,.. Thank you! 

Susan: And your own book. I'm going to plug your own book, Being Jewish Now. Yes. 

Zibby: On Being Jewish Now. Yes. Thank you. 

Susan: And, uh, that's, I really think, I thought that was a very important book to get out wherever you stand on any of these issues.

And it's all very complicated and, but I thought that was, was a very good thing to have done. 

Zibby: Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Susan: And I like your dog. 

Zibby: I do, too. 

Susan: Very sweet. Very well behaved. 

Zibby: Yes. All right. Well, thanks so much. Have a great day. 

Susan: Thanks so much. Bye bye. 

Zibby: Thanks for your time. Bye bye.