My Bridge Lady, Roslyn Lerner

Guys!! It’s my first freakin’ review and it’s good!!  I’m like dancing in the streets while watching LUTHER. It doesn’t really get much better than that. Oh wait, it does. I CARBS for dinner!!

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY The Bridge Ladies Betsy Lerner. Harper Wave, $25.99 (272 pgs)

This absorbing memoir by literary agent and author Lerner (The Forest for the Trees) is about the game of bridge, but it’s also about bridging gaps—both the generational gap and the “personal gulf” that had defined Lerner’s relationship with her mother. At age 54, due to her husband’s job relocation, Lerner finds herself back in her hometown of New Haven, Conn., where her 83-year-old widowed mother still resides. Hoping to repair at least some of the rifts between them, she somewhat reluctantly re-enters her mother’s life and begins attending her Monday afternoon bridge game, first as an observer and later—after taking lessons at the Manhattan Bridge Club—as an occasional participant. Along with descriptions of her bridge lessons, Lerner shares the histories of the elegantly dressed New Haven ladies who have met weekly for 55 years, women who came of age in the 1940s and ’50s. As Lerner probes marriage, career, motherhood, postpartum depression, aging, death, assisted living, dementia, widowhood, religion, and sex, she discovers that although her mother and her bridge companions differ in some ways from her own generation (for example, they felt that marriage to a Jewish man trumped pursuing a career), they share common values of love and kinship. She also draws closer to her mother, gaining a deeper understanding of her interior life, including the rarely discussed childhood death of Lerner’s sister. This beautifully written, bittersweet story of ladies of a certain age and era will have wide appeal. (May)

Tell me about your mom.

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I want to thank you for all the suggestions. All excellent, but I think I found the new tonic, the new obsession, the new rabbit hole:  LUTHER. A new TV series to wrap myself around in. A new detective. Toodles McNulty (oh, of course, I’ll always love you. Oh, and Ruth Wilson rears her head and her sinister lips in Luther) But I also realize as I’m writing this that I used feel this way about books. Now I push myself to read. (Forgetting that I read and edit manuscripts all day.) Though I did just buy the first Ferrante that everyone is raving about. And short novel by Heinrich Boll.

What are you reading for pleasure?  Pure pleasure.

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You’ve heard of Bridezilla? Meet me: Authorzilla. Friends, I am losing my shit. I have stopped sleeping, I play Bridge all night with strangers on my Ipad. Last night, this guy called Doug416 was my partner and when I really screwed up a hand he typed: NWP, which I think means No Worries Partner, though it could mean Go Fuck Yourself. I’m having a hard time reading people. I am a person who has a book about to come out, which means rashes are erupting on my body, my molars are begging for mercy, I can’t stay on a diet for more than six minutes and I’m exaggerating: five.

The most fucked up thing about this: I have been in publishing for 30 years. I’ve looked at love from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow.

Cures for anxiety? Help!

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I’m not saying I took this writer on because he was 19 or because he was a genius. It just didn’t hurt. Please check our Nikil Goyal‘s new book (yes he wrote his first book while he was in high school, slackers)  SCHOOLS ON TRIAL: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice. He is a passionate and brilliant young man who has a vision for the future of schools that includes learning.

I smoked a lot of pot in high school. And wrote bad poems. What did you do?

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Something I write about quite a lot in The Bridge Ladies is how the women have lost touch with popular culture and technology. I’m not exactly snarky, but it’s frustrating and sometimes sad to watch them sail away on their ice floe while the world passes by. And yet here I am watching the Grammy’s and I don’t really know who half he artists are and I’m sure that as I get older the ratio will tip the Malcolm Gladwell. Fuck. I don’t want to grow old if I can’t hold on. I’m going to bed after Adele.

Who is your last best?

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I spent the weekend with my great friend from graduate school, Jean Monahan. She’s a poet and had just started writing after a long hiatus. She gave me her poems and it was wonderful to give her notes. I was drawn to her all those years ago because of her writing. Unlike everyone who was weaving pop culture into their stanzas, she danced around the edges of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop; her poems subtle, arresting, the emotion catching you by surprise.

I always tell people that one of the most important things you should get from a writing program or conference is finding your ideal reader. Someone you can always share work with and get an honest response from. I always tell people not to trust best friends, mothers or people you sleep with. They have a vested interest. Writers need writers.

Who is your ideal reader?

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Yesterday, someone asked me how my social medial was. The same tone as, say, how’s your yeast infection. Then, what are you doing about branding. I am not Kellogs, Marlboro or Spam. I do not have a bar code on my ass. For fifteen years as an agent, I’ve been helping my authors work on their social media. My philosophy is only do what you like and therefore what you are good at. You can’t be good at it all. But now, faced with these questions and the fact that I don’t have millions of followers (preferably in purple capes and gold slippers), I fear my book will grab a shovel. Friends, I did this blog for four years to save my writing life, i.e. my life. Every night, with my boyfriend Jon Stewart cracking wise in the background, I ground out paragraphs as indulgent and florid as I could muster.

That’s all. Be my friend, like me, share, poke, prod, nod, twat, gram, thumb, or like Diane Panuzio in the fourth grade throw a hunk of asphalt at my head.

How’s your social media?

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This is it: the great pre-publication weight loss challenge. Friends, I have three months to reduce before the book comes out. Take this journey with me and you will scale the heights, plummet the depths, restrict and binge, go the gym and cry in the shower. I will try on everything in my closet and throw it on the floor, throw myself on the floor. I will try to make peace with myself but there will be no peace.

My daughter reminded me of a few choice quotes from Adele:

I’m not going to lose weight because someone tells me to. I make music to be a musician not to be on the cover of Playboy.

I don’t want to eat a Caesar salad with no dressing, why would I do that?

I’ve never wanted to look like models on the cover of magazines. I represent the majority of women and I’m very proud of that.

Then my daughter said, “Would you rather have ten Grammy’s or be a size two?

Hmmmm. How about five Grammys and a size six? Two Grammys and a size 10? How about no Grammys and I wake up one fucking day of my life and not feel like a piece of shit.

P.S. What do you want most in life?

P.S.S. Please follow me on FB or give me a big Sally Field. Apparently this will help sell books. I’m not just a whore for my book. I was a whore long before this.

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I said it would never happen, but I’ve become a nightmare. I send cloying emails every day to my editor’s assistant asking for more time, making more changes on the galleys, asking the same stupid questions about social media over and over like only a fifty-something can.  And no matter how obnoxious and ingratiating I am, this young woman remains unflappable. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough.

Meet the world’s best assistant editor aka The Slayer. She always gets back to me promptly, is always friendly and encouraging. She is also an astute reader.I trust her implicitly. And I know that she’s constantly working behind the scenes to make it all go smoothly. I always thought I was an amazing assistant, but The Slayer slays me. Honestly, I deserve an apathetic Millennial with hipster aspirations who vapes and snubs social media. The Slayer is perfect. I recently made the mistake of asking how old she is.

What kind of assistant were you?

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