“The depth of Gross’ portraits, and the nobility she imbues both moms with, renders a thoughtful account of how, for modern mothers, there is no easy choice.”
— Boston Now

Cara Seitchek: What audience did you have in mind as you wrote the book? It seems to have been written with a female audience in mind, but it’s definitely not chick lit. Did you also hope that men will read the book, perhaps to gain insight into women?

Gwendolen Gross: I started writing The Other Mother(which was, incidentally, originally titled The Mommy Wars) in 1999, soon after my first child was born. I felt as though while there were nonfiction titles about this divide between working and Stay-at-Home (SAH) moms (though this was before mommy lit, and there wasn’t yet so much nonfiction exploration of the subject), the personal, psychological impact was even bigger than the abstract and political. The fact of motherhood changes women’s choices—influences us, via hormones, emotion, the absurd elastic stretching of time, and changes our self-perception. Not only that, but there’s the wisdom of the ages that visits in the form of judgmental ghosts and neighbors. It’s a blissful time, new motherhood, and as difficult as it is tender. Our biological purpose becomes evident, but we’re still women who have thought about our own lives and desires and friendships independent of dependants for all the years leading up to this change. The battle seemed more internal to me than external, though the snappy comments fly, and people settle into camps, people I never expected began lecturing on good and bad mothering.

I hoped (and still do) all parents (as well as all adult children of parents) would be interested—because although men’s changes via parenthood are different (not to say there aren’t SAH dads etc, but that’s a whole other story), they are also, if they are paying attention, aware of the divide. And of their partner’s changing roles. There was an extremely gratifying review in the Book-of-the-Month Club newsletter—and I’m paraphrasing here, by someone who wrote that he wasn’t a mom, nor woman, nor particularly sold on the idea of having children, but he couldn’t put the book down. I was hoping to create a suspense that kept readers engaged, while revealing through two very particular characters the current state of post-modern motherhood—as their lives detail it (and I am very much aware of mothers in different financial and social states—and have received fan mail from single moms who “got” the characters just the same).

The issues have made for fascinating book group fodder—I’ve attended many. Personal stories emerge (and sometimes surprise the other book group members), and with a little wine or chocolate, the tension becomes more of an open discussion. Also, many mother-daughter pairs have read the book together—again, fascinating fodder in their own experiences as illuminated by Thea and Amanda’s.

CS: The two points of view are well-balanced, with neither Amanda nor Thea dominating the book. How did you handle writing in two voices/two narrator’s points of view? Did you have to apportion alternate days for each narrator or were you able to write in both in the same sitting?

GG: Thank you so much! When I first started writing The Other Mother, I thought, what a terrific challenge, to have two first-person narrators, one on each side of the fence. I’m a little of both, as a mom who works but has a flexible schedule. There’s some of me in each character and much that’s entirely invented. Of course, once I started writing, and rewriting, and rewriting, I realized the challenge was substantial and entirely worthwhile. It was difficult to keep the characters individual—to give them their own voices via my own. And a great pleasure. My wise agent Jennifer Carlson, told me during one revision, “more wars, less mommies.” It helped me keep them from being too nice; a warning I always give my students. You need friction to create electricity.

I revised this novel many, many times. Sometimes I lived with just one character through an entire draft, then the other. Sometimes I looked specifically at alternating chapters to show the same time through different senses. I had many frames to view before I felt the work fit.

CS: I noticed that one of the jacket blurbs refers to your characters as desperate housewives, and the television show did leap to mind as I read the book. Were the seeds of this book planted before the series started or did it perhaps serve in some way as inspiration?

GG: I started writing The Other Motherin 1999—quite a while before Desperate Housewives! When the show came out and was a hit I thought—they’ll have to buy my book now! I think The Other Mothercould make for great TV, actually—the alternating points of view would be easier with actors and all action and dialogue (though the omniscient voice-over’s fun, too). There’s so much potential conflict even beyond the suspense and story of the novel. Plus, I think the characters would be delicious and complex to inhabit for some of the talented actors over thirty out there—so many recently minted mom-actors are juggling, too.

CS: At one point in the book, Amanda says that her new normal is juggling guilt and longing, which is a central theme to the book and the characters. Did you set out with this theme in mind or did it emerge as you wrote?

GG: New normal. It’s funny, I was recently packing away some notebooks, and looked back (my notebooks are often full of whinging and quotidian detail—getting it out of the way to get to the good stuff) and noticed that I’d written about my own new normal after our son was born—and before I started the book. I’d thought it emerged as I mined my characters for their beliefs and the tenderness, in Amanda particularly, of new motherhood.

CS: The insight into the minds of these two women is heightened because much of the story is told through narration and shown through dialogue that is their perceptions of conversation. Did this technique evolve as you wrote and you got more into their minds?

GG: Yes. I had all sorts of intellectual ideas about what I could do with two first-person narrators, but it proved more challenging than I thought. I probably wrote 400 pages that were eventually cut—or never made it into the book. When I was revising, or between particular revisions, I’d give myself the assignment (I love giving myself assignments for writing—writing is wonderful because you can continue to get better regardless of your age—unlike, say, figure skating. And all of life is eventual material to be mixed in with the flour and sugar of imagination) of writing a series of dialogues between Amanda and Thea. Many of those assignments never made it past the notebook, but they helped me hone the techniques. It was hardest to let them say—or think—what they were really thinking. I wanted to keep respecting them, but I had to make them cranky sometimes (but not too much). Or at least fallible. Though I didn’t think of Thea as all that perfect even on the outside before readers started to say so.

CS: I found Amanda’s situation to be truly heart-wrenching between her morning sickness, the destruction of her house, and the uncertainty of her job – she never seems to be able to get ahead. Did you base any of her experiences on real-life events that you experienced or witnessed?

GG: Okay, a few facts provided mortar: I had hyperemesis (I barfed incessantly) with both my pregnancies—and we moved into our house when I was pregnant with our son. When my son was an infant, a tree fell on a neighbor’s house. No one had to move out; the damage was contained to one room, but the idea of the safety of houses was very intense for me then, with a newborn. I did work in children’s publishing, but left quite a while before becoming pregnant. So I did use some real anecdotes (and I use my Franklin Day Planner to this day), only I fleshed them out to make them more interesting (I hope!).

CS: The other characters and families of Thea and Amanda seem one dimensional in comparison to the two women. Did some of the characters want to come to life more than their ultimate appearance in the book? Did you feel that you “got to know” the other characters as well as the two main ones?

GG: You have to be one of the most perceptive readers ever! I had character sketches, pages and pages of back story, and a lot more dialogue between the men, but ultimately, this was the women’s story. And in order to stay true to first-person narration, I wanted to wander around looking through their eyes only. I tend to get attached to secondary characters, to write into them more than suits the book. But I had some expert help (my agent and also my utterly fabulous editor, Sally Kim) in honing the story. And the other characters will have to wait for another book.

CS: On page 203, Caius asks Thea if she expected Amanda would join the “other side,” which I thought was a good phrase to express the tension that exists between Amanda and Thea, as well as introducing the male perspective. How did you come up with this phrase that expresses this central conflict?

GG: I think that particular line came out of a revision—maybe a middle revision among the many—where I tried writing more dialogue between Thea and Caius. While I was sometimes afraid of doing a disservice to men (I love writing male characters as well as female—my first novel, Field Guide, has a close third-person narrator (as well as two female.), ultimately it came down to the selfish first person–which we each inhabit. First person narrators are more confessional, and therefore more instantly readable—as readers, we want to be told a story, and a single person telling it from an “I” perspective is the simplest to follow. But first-person narrators can’t be too empathetic of the other characters (unless it’s a fantasy about dragon riders or something), or we won’t believe they’re reliable.

CS: Why did you choose 9/11 as a key moment with which to end the book?

GG: I was pregnant for the second time (my daughter) on 9/11. My son had just started preschool and my husband was running late for his new job—downtown—because I was too sick to drive my son to school. He was turned back at Hoboken, but there was an envelope of dead time when I didn’t know where he was. Many people in town lost people. You could see the wreckage of the towers burning as you drove down Route 17. It was all too real and too close, and I felt especially fragile, as I imagined Amanda might, during that time. Still in revisions, I wasn’t satisfied with my ending, and when I came to it again some months later, I felt as though this was an important part of suburban New Jersey history—and a turning point for many people, either because of their losses or the closeness of other people’s losses. We lived it and it changed us; it would have done the same for Amanda and Thea, who would be forced to zoom out of their intensely selfish frames for a day or two. The ashes were on our clothes, and while I worried at the time (having not read any 9/11 literature yet) that it might be a bigger statement than I intended, the real event ended the women’s story for me, gave it a finishing point that allowed for hope and change, at least in the context of the novel.

Essential Links
Gwendolen Gross’s Website
Learn more about the author’s writing workshop
SSN Reviews The Other Mother

Dubbed “the reigning queen of women’s adventure fiction” by Joanna Smith Rakoff in Book Magazine, Gwendolen Gross is the author of the novels Field Guide, Getting Out, and most recently, The Other Mother. She graduated from Oberlin College, received an MFA in fiction and poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and was selected for the PEN West Emerging Writers Fellowship. In addition to her novels, Gross has published poems and stories in dozens of literary magazines, as well as essays in collections including It’s A Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons and It’s A Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters. Gross is also an award-winning writing instructor and has led workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and the UCLA Extension online. Her guest lectures include appearances at the Fashion Institute of Technology, at Barnes and Noble’s Educator’s Night, and The World’s Largest Writing Workshop. Gross has worked as a snake and kinkajou demonstrator, naturalist, opera singer, editor, and mom. She lives in northern New Jersey with her family.

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