JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Author Cara Bastone is used to writing love stories. She's written three. Her latest novel is "No Matter What," and it starts with a gut punch. Roz, who's married to Vin, comes home from work and finds an apartment lease pinned to the table by a can of tomatoes.
CARA BASTONE: She is someone who feels extremely compelled to feed people and to cook from her pantry. And so when I was thinking of what is the most poignant imagery that could affect Roz - a thing to pin the lease to the table - it was this thing that is of her, which is food from her pantry.
SUMMERS: It is a choice to start a romance with a separation, but Roz and Vin are legitimately struggling. In the aftermath of a terrible accident they both endured, their marriage has become strained. And while the couple doesn't talk much, what they do say to one another is ripe for misinterpretation. That plays out in a variety of ways throughout this book. So I asked Cara Bastone about how she constructed the dialogue between Roz and Vin.
BASTONE: So there is miscommunication in this book, and I worked really hard to make it not be a miscommunication that could be solved by one repeated sentence or one quick conversation. You know, there's that frustrating thing that happens in a lot of movies and books where it's like, oh, gosh, why doesn't one of them just say the thing? I really wanted this to be a much more layered miscommunication in that they are not good at communicating with one another post this accident because they've both changed post this accident. So they actually have to meet each other anew. To be in love with a stranger - it was just what's happening with them, is that they are still in love. They love each other very, very much, and they are confronted with this new version of this person they've made vows with. And the journey of this story is how that honors their vows. It's not a betrayal to their vows.
SUMMERS: I don't know if it's the age that we're at or the stage of life I'm in, but I can't help but notice there are so many novels and memoirs right now that are focusing on the fact that marriage is hard and messy. There are separations. There are divorces. Why was this dynamic something that you wanted to explore?
BASTONE: Well, I'm never going to write a big flashy coincidence - it all comes together in this one big grand moment at the end of the book - scene because I don't really buy those when I come across them. My goal is always to find the romance in everyday moments. I think that makes the world feel bigger, is if...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
BASTONE: ...We can see what is romantic about a couple who decides to sit down and have the argument. For me, personally, this book is not autobiographical at all, but I did realize that my husband and my kids and I had been through a pretty wild year of unrelated medical emergencies, one after the other. And when I was coming through the other side, I was writing this book. And that space that opened inside me, where I realized I was different post those experiences, I worried that being different meant I wasn't resilient. If I wasn't the same at the end of it, then I hadn't passed the test, I guess. And this book helped me to see, by changing, I was becoming more resilient. And Roz and Vin popped up from that space. What if there were two people who were struggling with this, and they were in the same place I was at when I started writing this book, where they thought that having changed meant they were too fragile to go on as a couple?
SUMMERS: There is so much tenderness between Roz and Vin, and they are both flawed but fundamentally good people. The way that they talk about each other, the way that they treat each other and show up for each other throughout, even in these moments of uncertainty, is so loving. Can you talk a little bit about that?
BASTONE: Yeah. Well, thank you. I take that compliment to heart because it's not something I necessarily set out to do, but it flows. I am not interested in romanticizing abusive dynamics in any way. It's just not interesting to me, and I think that especially with, like, you know, prestige television and stuff like that, it doesn't need me to shine any more light on it. And I really enjoy writing characters that look like normal people who are trying their best and treat each other well, and I really want to give them the most amount of swoon as I can. I want people to read these quieter moments, that are the louder moments in the book but quieter moments in real life, and be able to relate them back and think, that was really romantic when my partner did that for me, or I remember when my mom did that for my dad, and I - you know, now I can see that back through this lens as one of the greater probably romantic moments of their life, that sort of thing.
SUMMERS: Yeah. I know you said that this book is not autobiographical, but I do wonder, is there any ways in which writing this book and conceiving of these characters and all the things that they go through made you think differently about your own marriage or relationships you've had in the past?
BASTONE: Yeah. I'm really lucky to be able to write my husband into all of my books. The litmus test I always use is, like, would my husband do this thing? Not does it fit his character, but is there any world in which he would do this thing? And if he wouldn't do that thing, it usually doesn't make it into the book because I really trust - not his literary character - his actual character of person. If I'm talking about, like, what did I learn about my personal relationship, it was just a reaffirmation that I'm in the right one (laughter), that I was able to play and dramaticize (ph) things that didn't have drama in them in my relationship. Like, there's never any of the tension between Roz and Vin. But because of my relationship being very strong and sweet, I was able to use it as a playground a little bit for this book.
SUMMERS: Cara, as longtime listeners of this show know, I'm a huge romance reader and I especially turn to these kind of books when times are hard because you know that there's a happy ending at the end of these books. And I'm not going to spoil the ending of your book, but there's some complexity to the way that this story ends. I'll let you go as far as you want to go here, but can you talk about that a bit?
BASTONE: Yeah. The journey of PTSD is very much in this book, and one of the main things is this idea of being different after a traumatic event. And it's all in the title. The title is "No Matter What" - no matter what will happen in the future, but it's also no matter what has already happened. And that phrase in reference to this book is - it's about vows. And when you make vows with someone, you don't know what's going to happen. And so you also, turns out, don't know who you're going to be after those things happen. So it's - the title, "No Matter What," it implies this strength and flexibility at the same time that's required of any long-term partnership. And that means that the growth can be really uncomfortable. But it's a very solid, happy ending that I think has a real foot in reality here of what it means to make promises that you intend to keep.
SUMMERS: Author Cara Bastone. Her new book is "No Matter What." Thank you so much.
BASTONE: Thank you.
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