
Lilith Q&A with Nora Dahlia, author of Pick-Up
Not every hectic parenting moment makes the perfect meet cute. But Nora Dahlia accomplishes just that in her funny and touching new rom-com, Pick-Up (Gallery Books, 2024), a Zibby Owens’ Most Anticipated Book of the season. A modern love story, Pick-Up follows Sasha, a divorced mom, as she navigates the ups and downs of Silly Sock Day, Halloween parties, a once-in-a-lifetime work trip to the Caribbean, and her burgeoning feelings for the cute but annoying dad that keeps popping up everywhere.
Here, Dahlia (a penname for the author’s first foray into romance) talks to Hanna Neier about the birth of the “mom-com” genre, the challenges of getting a Jewish-mom main character out of her own way, and the great divide between appearances and reality.
HRN: You’ve described your latest book as “mom-com”— is this a new genre that we’re seeing now? Why do you think it’s resonating with readers?
ND: As far as I know, the term “mom-com” was coined by my author friend (and yours!) Emily Barth Isler during a notes call about Pick-Up when it was still in early stages. It may be that the term existed before, but I had never heard it and I thought it was genius.
I do think this is a genre that we’re seeing more of and I think it points to growing popularity around contemporary romances/fiction with slightly older female characters or even just characters who have lived more life (and maybe who are antiheroes and not ingenues). We’re ready to get real about our identities as women after kids—and about the fact that we’re not just boring blobs. We’re still cool and interesting and funny and all the things (at least some of us are). We just have more short people to take care of.
HRN: I love that Sasha does not have her life together—she’s a very relatable character.
ND: Thank you! That’s definitely influenced by my own experience. As a freelancer, I have always felt kind of pulled between being available for kid/school stuff like a stay-at-home mom and being too busy at the office like moms with corporate careers outside the home. Often, I wind up trying to do both and failing. Not ideal! That has resulted in a lot of dropped balls. So, I wanted to reflect that in Sasha. She’s just doing her best—and as a single mom, no less!
HRN: You use setting so well in this book. We start off in Sasha’s family-friendly Brooklyn neighborhood and then jet off to an exotic private island. Why was it necessary to get Sasha out of her natural environment in order to move her story forward?
ND: Great question! In order for Sasha to rediscover her identity outside of parenthood, she needed to be lifted out of her day-to-day and have a chance to be autonomous. It’s amazing what happens when all of those responsibilities drop away for a second. So, why not on a Caribbean island? I’m also a travel writer, so, in order to create that setting, I tapped into a few different experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have over the years.
HRN: This is not an overtly Jewish book, but you do make it a point that Judaism is one facet of our main character’s identity. Why was it important to you to include this sort of incidental Judaism?
ND: I’m Jewish and so that’s a thread that runs throughout my life, impacting everything from what I eat for lunch (often matzo ball soup) to the fact that I tend to use humor to cope with difficulty. So, I think I write Jewish main characters often because it literally doesn’t occur to me to do otherwise. Though I’m not especially religious, that’s part of what frames my experience of the world, especially culturally. And it’s a particular lens.
HRN: At one point, Sasha faces antisemitism at work. It puts her in a tough spot, but she doesn’t even hesitate to react. Have you ever encountered this kind of microaggression?
ND: I wrote this book before tensions erupted so cataclysmically last fall. So, interestingly, that means I wrote that scene long before instances of antisemitism rose so sharply.
One thing that’s really fascinating that I’ve learned about romance, in particular, is that because the books come out more quickly than in most other fiction genres, they have the opportunity to reflect the current culture in a more immediate way. I guess I must have already had rising antisemitism on the brain, since this wound up popping into my head.
Fortunately, I have not had too many experiences like the one Sasha has in the book. In college, I remember meeting people who said they’d “never met a Jew before” or used Jewish slurs/expressions without even realizing they were doing it. That was pretty mind-blowing.
I guess the most notable situation I can think of is that I was sitting at a sushi bar in LA with my husband like a decade ago and the guy sitting next to me—a young man in his 20s—started talking loudly and unabashedly about how he had to work with these Jews and how Jews are the worst and all of this stuff. When we left, he was outside having a cigarette. My husband was like, “Oh, God. Please just let it go.” But I couldn’t help myself (which is how I roll), so I just went up to him and said politely, “Excuse me. But if you’re going to say horribly offensive things about an entire ethnic group, please do it at home and not in a public place like a restaurant. You just ruined my dinner.” Fortunately, he was apologetic and seemed suitably embarrassed.
HRN: One reoccurring theme in your book is the differing expectations we put on moms versus dads. Sasha is constantly feeling torn in multiple directions while her love interest, Ethan, seems uniquely able to separate his dad-duties from the rest of his life.
ND: Yes, clearly gender issues were also on my mind. I find the whole concept of the mental load endlessly fascinating. I live in a Brooklyn bubble where multiple families have stay-at-home dads vs. moms etc. and, yet, there are certain responsibilities that still always fall on the mothers. I guess I wanted to question why and how that happens—and push both genders to question how we are all complicit in that.
HRN: The double entendre of the title, Pick-Up, is so perfect. In addition to the romantic meaning, I love how it nods toward that moment after school when parents’ worlds collide. There’s such a difference, sometimes, between the judgments we make from these brief interactions and what’s actually happening behind closed doors.
ND: Exactly. I am endlessly fascinated by the chasm between what we think people’s lives look like and their realities. Pick-up—and drop-off—at school is a sort of social experience—all these people thrown together in this sort of highly intense moment of transition. We’re largely well-behaved in that scenario because we want the other parents to think we’re responsible and functional and have it together—but most of us are more complicated than that. And isn’t that complication what makes us interesting? What heightens life experience?
Sometimes our children misbehave or react or we’re having a terrible day—and suddenly we can’t hide the truth. That life is messy. That parenthood is REALLY messy. And that—especially in this highly complex and chaotic time—we’re all just trying to muddle through.
You know what helps? Escaping into romance!