Women's Fiction, Love & Relationships - Fiction

Ready to Fall: A Novel

Name: Ready to Fall: A Novel
Author: Claire Cook
ISBN: 9781882593484

by Claire Cook

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Overview

A witty tale of marriage and midlife longing, as a taken-for-granted wife pursues a fantasy love via e-mail.

About the Author, Claire Cook

Claire Cook

"Late starter" Claire Cook is an inspiration for aspiring writers and women in midlife transition. She wrote her first novel when she was in her 40s, sitting in her minivan at 5 AM, waiting for her daughter to emerge from swim practice! Since then, she's gone on to limn the lives of plucky middle-aged women in a series of bestselling romantic comedies like Must Love Dogs.

Biography

Raised on Nancy Drew mysteries, Claire Cook has wanted to write ever since she was a little girl. She majored in theater and creative writing at Syracuse University and immersed herself in a number of artistic endeavors (copywriter, radio continuity director, garden designer, and dance and aerobics choreographer), yet somehow her dreams got pushed to the side for more real-life matters -- like marriage, motherhood, and a teaching career. Decades passed, then one day she found herself parked in her minivan at 5 AM, waiting for her daughter to finish swim practice. She was struck with a now-or-never impulse and began writing on the spot. By the end of the season, she had a first draft. Her first novel, Ready to Fall, was published in 2000, when Cook was 45.

Since then, this "late starter" has more than made up for lost time. She struck gold with her second book, Must Love Dogs. Published in 2002, this story of a middle-aged divorcee whose singles ad produces hilariously unexpected results was declared "funny and pitch-perfect" by the Chicago Tribune and "a hoot" by the Boston Globe. (The novel got a second life in 2005 with the release of the feature film starring Diane Lane and John Cusack.) Cook's subsequent novels, with their wry, witty take on the lives of middle-aged women, have become bestsellers and book club favorites.

Upbeat, gregarious, and grateful for her success, Cook is an inspiration for aspiring writers and women in midlife transition. She tours indefatigably for her novels and genuinely enjoys speaking with fans. She also conducts frequent writing workshops, where she dispenses advice and encouragement in equal measure. "I'm extraordinarily lucky to spend my time doing what I love," she has said on countless occasions. " The workshops are a way to say thank you and open doors that I stumbled through to make it easier for writers coming up behind me.''

Good To Know

In our interview, Cook shared some fun and fascinating anecdotes with us:

"I first knew I was a writer when I was three. My mother entered me in a contest to name the Fizzies whale, and I won in my age group. It's quite possible that mine was the only entry in my age group since "Cutie Fizz" was enough to win my family a six-month supply of Fizzies tablets (root beer was the best flavor) and half a dozen turquoise plastic mugs with removable handles. At six I had my first story on the "Little People's Page" in the Sunday paper (about Hot Dog, the family Dachshund) and at sixteen, I had my first front page feature in the local weekly."

"In the acknowledgments of Multiple Choice I say that even though it's probably undignified to admit it, I'm having a blast as a novelist. To clarify that, having a blast as a novelist does not necessarily mean having a blast with the actual writing. The people part -- meeting readers and booksellers and librarians and the media -- is very social and I'm having lots of fun with that. The writing part is great, too, once you get past the procrastination, the self-doubt, and the feelings of utter despair. It's all of the stuff surrounding the writing that's hard; once you find your zone, your place of flow, or whatever it is we're currently calling it, and lose yourself in the writing, it really is quite wonderful. I've heard writers say it's better than sex, though I'm not sure I'd go that far."

"I love books that don't wrap everything up too neatly at the end, and I think it's a big compliment to hear that a reader is left wanting more. After each novel, I hear from many readers asking for a sequel -- they say they just have to find out what will happen to these people next. I think it's wonderful that the characters have come to life for them. But, for now, I think I'll grow more as a writer by trying to create another group of quirky characters. Maybe a few books down the road, I'll feel ready to return to some of them -- who knows?"

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Editorials

Kirkus Reviews

A lackluster debut, written in the form of e-mails, attempts drama but simply illustrates through its own flatness the detachment of online relationships. Forty-something Beth begins a quasi e-mail romance with her next-door neighbor after a chance meeting at the library. Her increasingly revelatory postings, which begin innocently enough, tell of her dulling marriage, the drudgery of driving her daughters to swim practice at five o'clock every morning, and her less-than-exhilarating profession of cataloguing quotes for desk calendars. Not an exciting life for Beth—or for the reader to share in. Then into her still-undiagnosed mid-age crisis comes Thomas, the neighbor in question. At first glance (all Beth really gets), he seems wonderfully breezy, spending much of his time out of town writing travel guides, but not the Morocco-Bali-Peru kind: his latest effort is a walking tour of Laughlin, Nevada. To Beth, however, Thomas seems the epitome of daring adventure, and the assorted sprigs of humor in the story are born from the inflated opinion she has of Thomas (only Beth's e-mails are available, yet hints of Thomas's personality can be gleaned from her responses to his). Although he e-mails her rarely, Beth writes constantly, going so far as to take a laptop on her first-ever sans-family vacation, a kind of Outward Bound for middle-aged women. She offers an almost instant replay of the day's events, which challenge her physically and spiritually, presumably enabling her to find the goddess within. Well-intentioned, and at times quite prescient in the analysis of the holes women dig for themselves—Beth creates a quite obvious caretaker relationshipwithThomas—Cook's debut nonetheless plods. Even the surprise denouement isn't enough to combat the doldrums Beth experiences and passes on to the reader. A modest first effort in need of greater depth to ballast the weight of its subject.