MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The first thing to know about Sophie Pattison is she's invisible. Sophie works as a sound tech for a literary festival - the person who mics famous authors in the wings before they step into the spotlight. These famous authors - think David Sedaris, Ann Patchett, George Saunders - they never make eye contact. They never notice her. OK, those authors are, of course, real people. Sophie is not. She is the protagonist of the new novel "Sophie, Standing There" by Meg Mason. Now Mason knew that even though she was writing fiction, she would need permission from these real-life superstars for her, at times, prickly depictions of them. She was braced for rejection. But instead, Meg Mason told me she received a treasure trove of support.
MEG MASON: One by one, every single one of them came back and said, yes. And I have this little file now of emails in which they all wrote back in their own style, and I swear I'm going to be buried with it.
KELLY: (Laughter).
MASON: It's the most precious thing I own.
KELLY: All right. So let's go to Sophie, your protagonist. Introduce her to us and say a little bit about how she's doing as this novel opens.
MASON: The only way I can describe her is my own feelings towards her. I have such affection towards her and such admiration. And all I want - you know, when people - if they read this novel, is for them to feel something of what I feel about her. She's 37. She is such an innately cheerful, optimistic person. She's like the spiritual inverse of the sad girl protagonist, you know, which was on purpose. But when we meet her, it's been four months since her hideous husband, Paul, decided to end their relationship. You know, he sort of announced it was over, and he didn't take his AirPods out while he was, you know, having this conversation with her.
KELLY: He is truly hideous. And she's taking a shower, so talk about feeling vulnerable, as he announced...
MASON: Yes.
KELLY: ...I want out. And in fact, I want you to move out, not me.
MASON: Exactly. I'd love you not to live here anymore, I think were his exact words. So she is, you know - she is obliterated by this. She didn't want it. She didn't really see it coming. So suddenly, the baby she wanted, you know, that's not going to happen. She's now moved into this flat - as we would call it - apartment. She's 37. She doesn't own a coffee table.
So even though she is, you know, delightful and optimistic and stoic, she's putting herself back together. And the way that she does that, she presses into literature, and she comes across this novel that she'd read a long time ago. It didn't really mean anything to her in that moment. And she rediscovers it, and it becomes everything. But more than the book, it's the author. You know, I guess you could describe it as a parasocial relationship. I'm going to go with emotional preoccupation or imaginary friendship.
KELLY: She has a crush on her, just to spell it out. This huge...
MASON: Exactly.
KELLY: ...Literary crush.
MASON: Yeah. But also, all of her thoughts are now being directed towards the author, you know. And she has done such a careful and close study of everything that's there on the internet. She knows what the author would say. And then Elizabeth Strout gets COVID - with Elizabeth Strout's permission. And this author has to now come. You know, she's coming, and she's doing the festival, and that's when we find out her name. Because the point of the novel is that we have the author who is Sophie's creation, and now we have the real Lilac Dunne, who is not at all what Sophie has, you know, put together in her mind.
KELLY: Yeah. I have to ask - has this ever happened to you? Have you ever developed a huge literary crush on an author, where you're like, well, I'll never meet them. They'll never write me back, so this is fine.
MASON: I can't even list them for you 'cause we don't have time. But like Sophie, I was a real latecomer to reading. I didn't read voluntarily for pleasure until I was 17, and it was only a product of sudden loneliness. And I came across Nancy Mitford, and it was one of the first times that I was like, oh, a novel can be funny and painful. You know, you didn't have to pick one. And so I just, you know, then read all of Nancy Mitford. And at the time - so she was - obviously, she'd been dead for a million years. But I had this sense in that egotistical, 18-year-old way that if we met, she would identify something in me, you know, she would...
KELLY: Yeah.
MASON: ...From my manner and bearing, she would be like, there's Meg. That's who I want to talk to. And at 48 years old, I've been in conversation with her for so long now that I find it hard not to believe that.
KELLY: Really.
MASON: I still think she kind of would. Do you know what I mean (laughter)? Like...
KELLY: Yeah.
MASON: ...'Cause, like - 'cause we're friends, and I was in this - I was doing this signing the other day. And this woman came up to me, and she must have heard me, you know, mentioning that Nancy Mitford thing somewhere. And she came, and she went, oh, we have a friend in common. I'm Nancy Mitford's other best friend...
KELLY: (Laughter).
MASON: ...And we just kind of fell on each other. But, I mean, that just says everything to me. Like, I was 12,000 miles from home. I just got off a plane, and I met Nancy Mitford's - you know, our mutual friend.
KELLY: Yeah.
MASON: And it was just like, that's what books do. Like, that's our code, and that's our language, and these are our people.
KELLY: Sophie, your character, who does the same thing - develops this literary crush - but she also aches for human touch, human hands on her. There's a scene that just spoke to me, where she's walking down the sidewalk, and she passes a hair salon, and through the window, she glimpses the hairdresser who's at the sink washing a client's hair, and that Sophie just stood there aching. Take us to that scene and what you were trying to capture.
MASON: Yeah. So we pause on the pavement, and she's looking in, and she's watching this hairdresser kind of cradle the woman's head, you know, and sluice with warm water, and he's set her up with, you know, a lovely towel and everything. And then we leave her there. And it says, in a sort of list form, three weeks ago Sophie had a blood test, and the phlebotomist had to tap there - an elbow. And, you know, last week, somebody at work clutched her wrist when she said they could have time off, and then someone bumped into her in the street. And then it says those were the three times, you know, that she'd been touched in the last two months, or something like that.
And I just think we've all felt that, and we've all had moments where we're not having enough touch and human connection. And what I hope now is that Sophie is so lovely, and she's so kind, and she's so well liked, and yet her world is entirely depopulated. And I just hope that people who read it put together the fact that it, therefore, cannot be her fault. Because she - if anyone, deserves, you know, the best, the friends, whoever she wants.
KELLY: And somebody to run their hands through her hair and touch her...
MASON: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Who she's not paying because they're cutting her hair.
MASON: Exactly. And I think that that's what I know of loneliness and when I've experienced it myself. On top of the loneliness is the shame that goes with being lonely and, you know, the acute embarrassment, almost. Nobody ever really say I'm lonely. They might tell you retrospectively that they were at one stage, but it's a hard thing to say. I don't know. I just feel so passionately that we can see it's a season for her, and it's undeserved, and there's no shame because she didn't do it to herself. And she'll survive, and the books will be part of the way she gets herself there.
KELLY: Yeah. Well, it's so clear that you're rooting so hard for Sophie, and without giving away the many twists and turns this novel takes, I think it's OK to reveal, like, she ends up OK. She's going to be just fine. Sophie...
MASON: She does end up OK.
KELLY: Yeah.
MASON: She gets there. And if anyone's read it already, don't worry about the trousers.
KELLY: They were great black trousers.
MASON: The book's already been out here for a month in the U.K...
KELLY: (Laughter).
MASON: ...And there's a real movement - justice for her trousers. So hopefully that will spread across the ocean.
KELLY: I'm so glad. Yeah. To fill people in, there is a quite dramatic scene...
MASON: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...At a literary festival where she is literally stripped of her trousers. So I'm glad to hear that the trousers have a happy ending.
MASON: Yeah. Exactly. Thank you so much for reading the book and letting me talk about Sophie. And she's been such a gift to me, and I'm just so happy to hand her on now.
KELLY: Meg Mason, the pleasure was mine.
MASON: Thank you so much.
KELLY: Meg Mason talking about her new novel, "Sophie, Standing There."
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