Poured Over: Elysha Chang and Sarah Jessica Parker on A Quitter’s Paradise

By Jenna Seery / June 24, 2023 at 6:00 am

Elysha Chang’s debut, A Quitter’s Paradise, is the story of one woman’s journey through family secrets, grief and love told with humor and heart. Chang and her publisher, Sarah Jessica Parker, join us live at Barnes & Noble Union Square to talk about the challenges of writing this novel, what they look for in books, getting into the publishing industry and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Featured Books (Episode):
A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysha Chang
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
The Dinner by Herman Koch
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters by J.D. Salinger

Full Episode Transcript:

Barnes & Noble
Barnes and Noble Union Square, a warm welcome to author Elysha Chang, publisher Sarah Jessica Parker and the host of B&N Poured Over, Miwa Messer.

Miwa Messer

Hello New York. It’s really good to see you guys. We’re taping this for Barnes and Nobles podcast Poured Over. The other thing is to if you gave us a question when you registered for this event through Eventbrite, I have it in my hand. If you gave us an index card I have in my hand, I’m also the kind of person who does not like to hold audience questions until the end, because that’s boring. That’s not how we do things here because we’re just going to nerd out about books tonight. I’m Miwa Messer the producer and host of Poured Over and it is my great good pleasure to share stage tonight with Elysha Chang is the author of A Quitter’s Paradise. And also, her publisher, Sarah Jessica Parker, who is the publisher of SJP Lit. And Elysha’s novel is a debut and I’m going to tell you now we are going spoiler free in this conversation because it came out yesterday. And I love this book, and it’s very funny. And when you meet Eleanor, you will understand why I’m not going to give anything away so y’all can enjoy the books that you have, because you really should be able to read it without spoilers. Cool. Okay, good. All right. That said, Elysha, I’m going to ask you to set up the story for us. A Quitter’s Paradise, spoiler free. And let’s start with Eleanor. We have to start with Eleanor. We have to start with our girl Eleanor.

Elysha Chang

Sure. Yeah, A Quitter’s Paradise starts off with Eleanor, who is a young woman in her mid 20s. Things are not going great for her. She just dropped out of her grad program in neuroscience, maybe that’s great, I don’t know. And her marriage is definitely on the rocks falling apart. And when her mother passes away is really am I spoiling? I’m not spoiling. I think when her mother passes away, is really when she has occasion to kind of confront or be confronted by a lot of what she’s been really meticulously avoiding for much of her life. And that process of confrontation of grief takes us through her childhood in New Jersey, her family upbringing, it takes us back all the way to her parents’ immigration, from Taiwan to New York. And ultimately, it’s an intergenerational book. It’s about self and family and everything in between.

Okay, so I’m gonna ask both of you, because Eleanor is one of these characters, right? She is so great. This this woman, she is a hot mess. Oh, she is messy. The part of me that’s Taiwanese American is very excited to have the representation. Okay, just straight up. It’s nice to have the representation, science was not my bag. This is how I ended up being a bookseller. But Elysha and SJ What was it about Eleanor that made you say, like for you, obviously, you’re talking about the creation of a character, right? But you’re going to bring this character to the world. So how do we do that? How does it start? What was the thing about Eleanor that made you go oh, yeah, this is it. This is the voice.

Sarah Jessica Parker

I’ll share with you. I think it’s important for Elysha to share how Eleanor confounded you. And I think when you explain how she eluded you at times, I’ll share with you why I love her so much. And that doesn’t, that’s not a spoiler either.

Eleanor was, you know, the first voice that really came to me as I was writing this book. She was, as SJ has put it very elusive and very slippery as a character. It was really hard for me to get her right. And I couldn’t really understand why exactly as compared to all the other characters which sort of were flowing and kind of a normal progression of writing. And I think over time, I came to understand that this was the crux of Eleanor’s personality and identity was that she was really wily and very capable of deceiving herself deceiving others, in a way to guard herself and protect herself that really, I mean, to answer your question, that part of her really drew me to ask more about this character because she was so she presented kind of puzzle, I think that was really just like, pleasurable to write and satisfying to keep searching for.

SJP

And I think as a reader, because that’s how I feel as a publisher is that I am first, just a super greedy reader. And so what’s interesting, what’s compelling to me about Eleanor is, first of all this, this internal monologue that is shared or hinted at, and because we have such a gifted writer, in Elysha, even though she is slippery in even though she is withholding the fact to the very people that she loves, and wants to try to communicate and asks herself, why she doesn’t, we are not distanced from her. And I think that’s a very tricky thing to do to try to describe somebody who is far away sometimes from herself, and those she loves, and yet the reader can be with her and care about her. She’s deeply funny. She’s compassionate, she’s surprisingly compassionate. She has great curiosity about who she is, I will say that the mother, who Elysha just mentioned briefly is also a beautifully illustrated character. She’s so interesting. And because Eleanor is asking these questions, the author forces us happily into this intergenerational story, which is such an interesting, important story and is a story that is not unique. But it’s not it’s not been told this way because of this writer, and I think Eleanor is just a beautifully drawn character that brings us in and pushes us away at the right time. It’s a real beautiful dance for the between this author and a reader.

Eleanor is wonderfully surprising. Just when you think she’s gonna zig she zags. And I have to be very careful, because I almost said something that was going to get me in trouble, with myself, mind you, I’m the one who said Can we please do this spoiler free. Elysha, would you talk about Eleanor in the context of her sister and her husband, her parents, we’re gonna put Eleanor’s parents off to the side for just a second, right? But you give her a really interesting sister. And yeah, her husband is. She really means well, he’s a good guy. He’s a really good guy. And she is just so lost in her own grief and some other stuff, that she’s not all there for him either. But I think those relationships were two of the freshest moments for me as a reader, especially because we are talking about a very classic sort of coming-of-age story, right? Like a coming-of-age story isn’t limited to a 16 year old learning how to drive right? Like, if you’re lucky, you get to come of age at some point in your life. I think we’ve all met folks in our lives who maybe haven’t done that yet. But can we talk about that in the context of basically her peers? I’m asking you about Eleanor’s peers?

Yeah, I love that question. Because so much of the narrative is centered around her, her parents and their past and history. But I think because it’s narrated parts of it are narrated from Eleanor’s perspective, her first person perspective, which kind of gives us that closeness to her. There is something about the way we see her, interact with her peers, exactly people she loves or is purported to love, and people who love her in return, and how she kind of how she not only reveals to us information about how she feels about them, and then kind of triangulating that with what she ultimately does to them or says to them. I think for a reader to see the difference between those two things, really tells us a lot about who she is, and also who those characters are and I think it actually reveals a lot despite being in her own perspective.

So I know both of you have talked about Eleanor being slippery, but we had a couple of folks in the audience who were asking what the biggest challenge was for you writing this book. And somehow I don’t think Eleanor was the biggest challenge. I think there’s something else there. And I just, I’m curious, too.

I will say I think the biggest challenge for me, Eleanor was very challenging, actually. She was, you know, at once very close to me, and also very different from me. And so writing things that at times were, you know, something that I would do would absolutely lead me astray. Because I had to keep in mind that she was not me. And over time that became more and more clear. But I think another difficult part of it, for sure was knowing when to move away from her and kind of shining a light on something that she would never ask you to do that she would be actively trying to avoid. So essentially when to kind of listen to her and when to kind of move away and find other ways to understand a broader narrative about her family about the context of how they lived and how they came to the States, but also just to her.

SJ, do you have a favorite character besides Eleanor? I mean, we are all team Eleanor, I think we’re clear on that. But do you have a favorite character besides her?

SJP

I’ve shared this with Elysha, but I really love her mother, Rita, which is the name she chooses when she comes to this country, I also do want to share that Elysha does this very clever thing in the book where I don’t think I’m wrong about this, there are things that Eleanor doesn’t know. And sometimes we’re clear, she will never know. And sometimes we’re not certain that this is information that will ever make its way back to her. And it’s just important because, you know, family informs so much of who we are. And it’s not always the things that are shared with us. It’s not the stories always sometimes it’s just simply within us or it’s been a culture in which we live and that means like literally inside your home. So I just think it’s a really interesting way of learning more about Eleanor, but also equally important, equally importantly, is learning about her family because they play such an active role, even when they are not on the page. As a reader, it’s a really, really interesting thing to learn about this family. I really love Rita. And first of all, the exchanges are so great. They’re so funny. They’re so touching. They’re so upsetting. They’re sad, they’re wry. They’re mean, they’re translated. So they’re it’s, it’s especially special, her story, I just I kept saying it to I’m so touched by what I learned about her life before she came to this country. And it’s told, not academically, but there is history there. Real History. But it’s so it gets so small about a house, a road, a well, a cigarette, a suit, a smell. It’s just so rich. And she brings that with her and I just, I love it and all the hopes she has for Eleanor and the ways in which she conveys what she sees as shortcomings or bad omens, or even just the way she sort of gives these really grisly predictions about Eleanor’s future, but it’s so touching and funny. So I love Rita, I love her.

It’s also kind of how you know that your Asian mama is really trying to make a point because she’ll say a really gross thing and you’re like, Oh, you do love me. And I say that, as someone who’s very, very fond of her Asian mom. My mother is awesome. But you said something earlier, Sarah and I would love to get both of you riffing on this. Because one of the things that I love is all of the sort of classic elements of a family story that you turn on its air. And Sarah, you also published the Fatima Farheen Mirza novel that I loved. And I have to look at that I always get the title wrong, which is A Place for Us. Which if you haven’t read it, please go read it. It is so satisfying. It’s really beautifully with this book. Yes. But these family stories, right? We never get tired of family stories and, right. There’s that line, All happy families are the same, right? Okay. But we never get tired. And I’m wondering, is it the universality? Is it you get to point at someone else’s story and say, well, at least that’s not me. I mean, what is it? But no, seriously, what is it about these family stories that keeps us coming back over and over and over again?

I mean, for me, I love a family story as well. So this certainly pertains to my reading tastes. Every family has such a unique culture. And as you read the book, or any story about a family, you kind of can peel away all the sort of stereotypes and monikers and ideas of oh, this type of like ethnic background or kind of even timeframe or class situation and really see when it’s told well, the culture that the parents created and the culture that the children created and how that ties into dynamics of power, how that ties into what Justice looks like in the family and who’s allowed to speak and who’s allowed to set the rules and all of that is so particular to one family that I think it’s really easy to read them over and over again because they and we are so diverse and so different.

SJP

I think the thing that I always like about these two books in particular is that and other family stories is when they actually feel unfamiliar to me, right. That’s what I really like. And you know Elysha and Fatima take us so beautifully inside a family that just simply isn’t my own for a variety of reasons. And it’s not just curiosity. It’s a real interest in how other people live, and also how it shapes children, and how children love and struggle against love and how the love binds you and how you have to fight to be an independent person. And when you toss in culture, and religion and faith and ideology, and politics and home far away and expectations, it just keeps getting more and more interesting. And so then, but then within all that is this very unique family that is maybe shaped by, for instance, a new town in New Jersey, or the people that they meet or what their house looks like, or how much money they have, or what do they smell like? Or what do they eat? And how does that affect them at school? Like there’s just always such interesting layers to families? And, yes, we know where we are, most of us, not all of us are part of a family, or a family that we make or was created somehow. But the difference is what I’m really interested in.

Part of that. I’m wondering too, when when the two of you are reading, right, just as just enjoying the act of reading, right, enjoying a great book. What are you reading for first? Are you reading for character? You’re waiting for story, reading for language, reading for voice? I mean, what’s the thing that makes you say, oh, yeah, this is the one for me.

I feel like first I read for language tied in with that is voice for sure. You know, when I when I start a book, first chapter I, I really want to feel like I’m hearing the author, though, you know, we talk a lot about how it’s not necessarily the author’s book, it’s the characters books. But I do want to I do want to hear that it’s being written by someone who knows their voice and knows that they’re in control of the atmosphere of the book. And I like books that that are right and make me laugh within the first couple of pages.

SJP

I think I sound like I’m really being repetitive, but I really like to be away. I like to be transported. I can be transported in this into this country, sometimes different. I like often global voices. I like authors that take me to places that I’ve likely never get to go. And sometimes that’s inside their home, or a home that they’ve created with their imagination and their own lived experiences. So that’s what’s I think, once again, really special about Elysha’s book is that she does transport us to other places outside this home of ours this country. But she’s primarily inside a home, the home has played such a big part in Eleanor’s life, even when she’s not in it. She keeps being drawn back to this home this home. And there’s so many questions that I think she’s waiting to have answered the home. That I think that’s what I really like as a reader is take me away, not that I’m miserable in my life at all. I just like to if I don’t have a chance to travel the world and meet everybody and see into windows uninvited, this is the best way. A book just takes you there, a good book.

There’s so many people who think of reading as a solitary act, right? Because you’re it’s you holding a thing, right? Whether it’s a physical book or a device or whatnot. And the reality is readings an act of communion. I am not the only person in this room who talks about fictional characters like they’re real. I can’t, I refuse. I just I know who I’m sharing the stage with. I do want to talk about some style choices you made switching between the first person and third person because I quite liked it. Sometimes people find it a little jarring. I liked what you were doing and I think I know why you were doing it. But can we talk about those choices for a second because you could have made it a little easier on yourself. Just saying, could have made it but it’s a really good smart choice and slippery characters aside.

There were many afternoons of kind of like very chaotic cutting with scissors rearranging on the floor, no one needed to see that. You know, so I mentioned I started with Eleanor and felt you know, at once close and also sort of distant from her, and when I realized that she was this character who was withholding and who would not really give access, not just to the reader, but even to me, her author, I kind of began looking elsewhere, of course, and one place I understood that I needed access to and I needed to fully comprehend was certainly her family life, even the parts of her family life that she never saw never had access to, was never told about or maybe was and forgot, or misinterpreted, you know, was told in another language, was told from someone who has a lot of regrets, right. There’s so many ways that we receive information about not just our parents, but anyone that we’re close to, you know, it’s always mediated by their feelings on the matter. So, for me, the third person leaves this question open of you know, who really has this information about Eleanor’s family? Who is telling us this information? Does Eleanor know what it is? Is she the one sharing it? Is she inventing it? I think third person narratives always leave that open. And I think the juxtaposition with the first person certainly helps kind of clarify that that’s what’s going on.

I want to change gears just a tiny bit, because I realized we have lots and lots of questions about getting published and being at the start of your career. So confession, before I did this, I was the director of the Discover Great New Writers program here at B&N. So I have a visceral interest in developing new talents. So actually, I’m curious to see how you respond, Elysha, to some of this. As a writer, do you follow a routine? What is your favorite place to write?

Oh, wow. I do not have a routine and I would not tell anyone to follow what I do. It’s very chaotic. I think any person who you know works regularly would be horrified by my work situation. I think I just do what I feel which is good or bad. You know, some days I feel like writing with pen and paper. Other days, I feel like I really just need to write quickly and type and be able to erase quickly. And there are definitely days when I forced myself to sit down and just write anything. I’m a big proponent of you know, letting the faucet run, so there is that. And I take really long breaks of doing absolutely nothing or doing painfully dull household tasks, watching bad TV, I do all of it. I think it’s important to let the brain kind of ferment.

What resources or habits do you recommend for beginning writers looking to hone their craft? Are there some books we can turn people on to some resources?

Oh, I would just read anything. I would read books that you think are bad, like, first chapter and you think it’s bad, find out why it’s bad. At the end, read the whole thing. Read a book that you think is amazing, obviously. And always, I think if you’re beginning, always try to finish the books, and know how it gets how it ends, whether it ends well, whether it ends poorly. I think reading anything is the case for that, graphic novels like whatever. I think it all really helps.

SJ, we have a question for you. I followed your love of books and reading, would you touch on what led you to the world of publishing?

SJP

Good fortune, a lucky encounter? I was invited to— I’ll try to do this very quickly. I was invited to a lunch I was told it was an intimate lunch. And I grabbed a cab, threw on a dress, went, maybe covered a zit. Like, no, no presentational effort. And then I got to where this intimate lunch was. And there was a crowd of people outside and paparazzi and I was like, this doesn’t look intimate at all. And but there I was and so I went to the lunch and it was really nice invitation. And at the end of this lunch, which was I would say 100 people, all women all very like powerful women, you know, like one of those, you know, you go to them all the time and I don’t. And at the end of the lunch, this very nice person came and introduced herself and she said her name was Molly Stern. And I had been photographed I guess, walking around carrying a copy of the then just published, Gone Girl. And so she introduced herself and said she published Gone Girl and was in fact with the writer Gillian Flynn, like right there, which was a thrill. And we quickly started talking about books and I don’t know how the conversation turned toward this, but I started talking about some books that I was hoping to find. And I always scrounge around trying to find books that are published in Europe and all over the globe before they get here and try to get a translation or, and I mentioned a book that I was trying to get my hands on. I called bookstores pretending to work for magazines and it was a book called The Dinner by Herman Koch. And it had been getting a lot of attention overseas and she said, That’s my book. I’m publishing that book. And I said, Oh, my gosh, she said, I’ll send it to you. And so I sent, she gave me her card and I emailed her, and I said, Here’s my address. And very soon after that, she sent like a parcel of books. And it was a nice healthy stack of books. And in among these books was, of course, The Dinner. But there was this other book tucked in and it was called A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon by Anthony Marra. And that is the book I reached for first, I have no idea why after begging for The Dinner, and I started reading this book, and I was I’m going to say, 40 pages in and I was gob smacked. I had never read a book like this. And I reached out to Molly and I said, Forgive me, this is really presumptuous and I don’t know that there’s anything I can do, but you have this beautiful book in your hands. And it’s about Chechnya, before, after, during a war, and I don’t know how you’re going to talk about it. But because that’s complicated thing to market, and I said, if there’s anything I can do to help, just getting this book out into the world, and thus began this relationship, and we just started reading yet to be published books, how can we get attention around, especially literary fiction, which is my favorite. So we spent years, she created a book club, and we all met and it was the greatest thing in the world. And then I would say, two years into this book club, she said, would you ever like to publish? And I was like, I can’t I don’t know how. But she walked me through the process and had this incredible experience publishing. And then she, you know, moved on and started her own imprint and once again, asked me to come along, which was a thrill. And we began to search for great new books by important, incredible authors. That’s it.

How many books do you think you want to do a year?

SJP

I think we want to do about four or five a year, right? Molly’s back there, five, four, three to four. Well, I guess I want to do five. I want to do five, she wants to do 3-4.

It’s a good range. It’s a really good way to do it, Molly.

SJP

I’ll do what Molly says, can’t over publish.

We had a couple of folks to in the audience, both through Eventbrite and index card, asked about how we get people to read in some cases, that someone asking very specifically about younger folks in their orbit, and someone else asking about professionals making time to read now some of us just do it, because hi, we build our lives around it. But it is a real challenge for some folks, it is a genuine challenge. And Elysha, you teach writing, and I know you just said read everything, which really just read everything you get your hands on. But reading is kind of a discipline, you kind of have to practice. So I’m wondering if you guys have any ideas, or suggestions for folks who are looking for a little bit of help on that front?

SJP

Well, I think maybe people think there are rules about reading. And if you’re out of the habit or haven’t developed the habit, sometimes it’s like people are like: I can’t pick the wine. I don’t know anything about it. There’s too many rules. And I think the thing about the gateway in, is if you’re wanting somebody to read because you know, the pleasure it gives you and they just haven’t found their way in really listen to what who they are and what they like and don’t try to impress your own tastes more so consider lots of things and like you said, sometimes it’s a graphic novel, sometimes it’s nonfiction, which is, which doesn’t ask always the same of a reader and often, it’s your favorite book, often is just saying, I know you don’t read. But this book is not a chore. And it’s going to be easy. You just need to take the time or grab it. And if someone says I don’t have time, you can say like, are you ever waiting for a meeting to start? Or do you ever wait to pick up your kid? Or are you ever bored and don’t want to look at your phone for 20 minutes or I mean, there’s lots of ways you can suss it out. I think just don’t give up on people because there’s just too many stories of those who came back or started.

It’s kind of nice to remember that books give you a very specific entertainment or intellectual experience. And it’s not always just about kind of passively enjoying something like scrolling through your phone or watching a show which provides a very different and enjoyable experience. But, you know, books offer something other than just that, right? So thinking about what you want to get out of that reading experience and how it would be different, I think would really also help you pick a book, right are not always looking for exactly what you would look for from a show or a movie.

That emotional terrain is really important. It’s really, really important. And I think, for a lot of folks, I mean, that’s one of the reasons why not everyone loves short stories the way some of us do, because the terrain changes with every story, right? That’s the whole point. But every now and again, you get like a collection that’s so unified, and it’s so connected. It’s just like, oh, right, I get to sit in this space, and I get to experience things that I might not otherwise ever take part in. Right. I want to step back for a second and go back to you guys as readers, the two of you. Who are some of the sort of great names that you find yourself turning back to again and again kind of thing like the folks that are really, and maybe they’re not the Pulitzers or the Nobels I’m just saying the names for you that you just sort of say, oh, you know what, I’d like to go revisit that I’d like to go hang out with that person again.

Oh, man. authors that I revisit books a lot I didn’t used to, but I think it’s a really great way to get back into the mindset, to get excited about writing again, when I’m not feeling it. Chang-rae Lee is someone that I really admire, Edna O’Brien, Iris Murdoch. Those are kind of my heavy hitters I kind of returned to and even re-read the whole thing. Sometimes I just like, I just want to get back in with them, you know, with that voice. That’s so particular and such a pleasure to revisit kind of like a friend.

Wait a minute, Don’t roll your eyes at yourself. That is not that is a totally legitimate reason to pick up. And there’s a totally legitimate reason.

SJP

I’m very bad at this. I totally should, like I never read a book twice, ever. And I think it’s because especially the books that I love, and I love books, there’s something about reading a book for the first time and having that experience, and I don’t want to touch it. And I told Elysha, we have another author, and it’s highly irregular, I’ve read this book, almost three times now and every time has been, like, I’ve stopped and told people like, I just can’t tell you how much I love this book. And I’ve been I’m in it and I’ve read it already. And you know, and that’s really unusual for me. So I don’t tend to go back. I will say the one person and maybe it’s just because so many decades had existed between the first time I read it and reading again, I did read all of Salinger again. And I think that’s because there was a time where we started really young reading Salinger, maybe too young sometimes, and especially Raise High the Roof Beam, which is a really, really hard book. And I just decided, you know, I have this idea about Salinger, I have this whole idea about Holden Caulfield, and you know, the nine short stories, especially Raise High the Roof Beam. And I was pretty much wrong about all of it, you know, reading it, that in seventh and eighth grade is right. And so I have reread all that. And that was a absolute pleasure and a complete surprise, and much harder than I thought sometimes, but I really like a book one time.

No, I absolutely. I get that. I can absolutely say there are times to where I’ve gone back to reread something, and it was really meant to be experienced when I was 18. And that was good. Yeah, it was good. And I have not been 18 in a minute. So there are times where it’s like, oh, yeah, and you recognize exactly why you fell in love with the thing. And then you just put it back on the shelf. There just there’s some things but that is I mean; we are the luckiest women in the world. We get to live this every single day. You know, yeah, I get it, Eleanor was a little slippery. I’m glad you figured her. Glad you have the right team behind you. Before I let you guys go though, I do have one question about Eleanor that I really sort of specifically wanted to save until the end because our girl makes some bad decisions. She makes some spectacularly bad decisions. I mean, really, you guys are in for a treat. Like this girl is a mess. And I say that with love but she’s a mess.

SJP

But I want to be make sure— she is a mess, but she’s not. I don’t think of her as like recklessly a mess.

Yes, that is absolutely true. She is not reckless.

SJP

She’s legitimately at sixes and sevens, you know.

But isn’t it the grief? I mean, it’s really the grief, like, part of me just wants to know if Eleanor is okay. Do we think she’s okay? I need to know.

I don’t know if she’s, I think she’s okay. We’ve talked about this as well, I think she’s okay. You know, we’re all okay. We’ll be okay. She has to face a lot. And she’s really not equipped to do that, as of yet. She’s young. She’s young, you know, in age, but also emotionally. She’s very young. I think grief is definitely a part of that. But so is I mean, it’s so baked into who she is that she would kind of be so slippery, and that she would not be able to face whatever it is, that would help her come of age. Right. I think that’s her biggest block. So yeah, she’s okay.

I really do think she’s, I genuinely think she’s okay. I think she really, I think she’s gonna figure it maybe not by the very — but I think somewhere in an alternate universe, Eleanor is just fine.

SJP

Well, there’s a thing that happens. Maybe I’m reading into it too much, because I care so much about her and I want her to be okay. There’s this moment, at the end of the book, and to me, because of choice, she makes an observation on her choice. I think it means she’s okay. Yeah, I think it suggests a kind of maturity, a kind of lack of irrationality that we might have seen earlier in her life as we’ve known her as we’ve been invited in. So to me, I think that means she’s okay.

So, here you go. You got three opinions. Right. And now you guys get to have your book signed. And then you get to go home and read a very, very great novel by Elysha Chang, thank you so much for joining us, Elysha Chang, Sarah Jessica Parker. You guys were fun. Thank you. And you can find this episode of Poured Over later in June, later in June it will be up, so thank you.