If You Liked Silverman…
When you send your manuscript to agents, you are encouraged to describe it in terms of books already on the market. These are your “comps.” For better or worse, I came up with the following: “Silverman shares the sexual questing of Fleishman in Trouble, as well as the missing wife; the intense early connection once enjoyed by Jacob and Julia of Here I Am; and a freewheeling artistic husband paired with a wife who tries to hold it all together, despite her dark past, as seen in Fates and Furies.” I doubt I was supposed to put it this way; a simple list probably would have been preferable. But who can label their work that way? To be clear, the experience of comparing myself to such accomplished, established writers made me writhe.
Later, I had more objective input from someone more experienced in such characterizations, who suggested Taylor Jenkins Reid and Claire Lombardo as comp authors. Having not yet read Lombardo, I ended up thinking of Silverman as Daisy Jones & The Six meets Fleishman is in Trouble. Which it is. But I am now in the middle of reading Lombardo’s The Most Fun We Ever Had and feeling a kinship with the author, whose quirky and hyper-articulate sense of humor made me laugh out loud. She’s written a family saga about the troubled lives of four daughters, each aspiring to the happiness of their parents’ marriage, which looms over them like a blessing—or a curse. Lombardo believes in love, favors character development over plot, and writes fearlessly about sex (a topic so necessary I will blog about it just as soon as I get over my fear of doing that). To say that Lombardo operates from a position of acute psychological awareness is an understatement. She specializes in mixed feelings, and doesn’t shy away from devastating losses, treating them with the empathy and sensitivity that defines her work.
The novel takes a close third-person point of view, alternating from one member of the Sorenson family to the next, and including flashbacks to key moments in their history, so that you find yourself sinking deeply into the life of this family, almost as if it’s your own. By the end, you’re rooting for the most troubled of the sisters, hoping for the best for their offspring, and marveling at the continued interest of the older generation in sex. More on that later!
For now, check it out: The Most Fun We Ever Had.
And nope—nobody’s paying me to say this.