9.23.07 Curtis Sittenfeld, author of The Man of My Dreams
In her acclaimed debut novel, Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld created a touchstone with her pitch-perfect portrayal of adolescence. Her prose is as intensely realistic and compelling as ever in The Man of My Dreams, a disarmingly candid and sympathetic novel about the collision of a young woman’s fantasies of family and love with the challenges and realities of adult life.
Hannah Gavener is fourteen in the summer of 1991. In the magazines she reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah’s own life, her parents’ marriage is crumbling. And somewhere in between these two extremes–just maybe–lie the answers to love’s most bewildering questions. But over the next decade and a half, as she moves from Philadelphia to Boston to Albuquerque, Hannah finds that the questions become more rather than less complicated: At what point can you no longer blame your adult failures on your messed-up childhood? Is settling for someone who’s not your soul mate an act of maturity or an admission of defeat? And if you move to another state for a guy who might not love you back, are you being plucky–or just pathetic?
None of the relationships in Hannah’s life are without complications. There’s her father, whose stubbornness Hannah realizes she’s unfortunately inherited; her gorgeous cousin, Fig, whose misbehavior alternately intrigues and irritates Hannah; Henry, whom Hannah first falls for in college, while he’s dating Fig; and the boyfriends who love her more or less than she deserves, who adore her or break her heart. By the time she’s in her late twenties, Hannah has finally figured out what she wants most–but she doesn’t yet know whether she’ll find the courage to go after it.
About the Author: Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the bestselling novels Prep and The Man of My Dreams, which are being translated into twenty-five languages. Prep also was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2005 by The New York Times, nominated for the UK’s Orange Prize, and optioned by Paramount Pictures. Curtis won the Seventeen magazine fiction writing contest in 1992, at age sixteen, and since then her writing has appeared in many publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Glamour, and on public radio’s This American Life. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she was the 2002 - 2003 writer in residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. She lives in Philadelphia.
Essential Links
Read an excerpt from The Man of My Dreams
Visit Curtis Sittenfeld’s website
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I’m always curious about what writers read themselves. What are your guilty pleasure reads? Do you find yourself perusing the drugstore aisle for the latest paperback with Fabio splashed across the cover? or perhaps is there chick lit or whodunit murder mysteries wedged between your mattresses? And as a follow-up, which works of “literary genius” do you loathe? The ones you know you’re supposed to adore and marvel at their greatness, but you personally can’t stand? any writers you know should make you swoon but instead make you wondering what all the fuss is about?
How difficult is it (was it) to write a character who ages from age 14 to 29? Fifteen years is a long time in book years! As a writer myself, I struggle with how is this character going to evolve and change –physically and emotionally–over sometimes a matter of weeks or months– I have yet to tackle a year/years, but it’s coming in my new book.
What are some of the things you considered when writing Hannah– or more specifically, what are the things you thought about and did to convey this growth, evolution, maturity in her–over fifteen years–her voice, her mind set?
I enjoyed reading this snippet from the book.
How much of your personal life or life experiences did you draw upon to write this book?
[…] found both novels compulsively readable and heartbreakingly honest and I had the great privilege of chatting with her last year about them. So it’s no shock that I was utterly thrilled to beg beg beg my dear friend at […]