What Makes a Love Story: Jessica Soffer On Her New Novel

This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer (Dutton, $29) emerged shortly before Valentine’s Day, but it’s not a romance novel in the traditional sense. The story centers around a couple, Jane and Abe, reflecting on their 50 years of marriage–some sweet, some bitter, many both. Love, however, takes many forms throughout the story: tender, joyful friendship; yearning for a beloved deceased mother; a complicated parent-child dynamic; a lifelong devotion to art. Often lyrical in form, and rich in detail about Central Park, Iraqi-Jewish culture, and memory, it’s a story one can see, hear, smell, and taste, as much as read. Readers agreed: it swiftly became a New York Times bestseller and was chosen for the TODAY book club, Read with Jenna.

I had the pleasure of learning from Jessica Soffer in creative writing classes as an undergraduate at Connecticut College–the last time we were face to face was in the classroom, her black lab, Scout, napping under the table. Nearly a decade later, we reconnected to talk about her book, nostalgia, the current moment in fiction, and New York City’s most iconic foods. 

ASW: Let’s start in Central Park, which is essentially a character unto itself! If the Park were to “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” into a character in human form, what would that person look like? How would they act?

JS: When I was a child, my father would take me to Central Park. Because he was an artist, he would observe, and because I was a child and had to do what he did, I also observed. As he got older, he would sit in a wheelchair at the mouth of Strawberry Fields and observe in a different way. Central Park feels like a person who bears witness to so many things, so many moments, the changes that happen in people, the changes that happen in the world. I think there’s a kind of freedom that people feel there to exhale. My dad was somewhat similar: a quiet observer, a sponge, incredibly non-judgmental. He might be the embodiment of Central Park in human form. 

ASW: Speaking of family, there are many details about Iraqi-Jewish heritage woven throughout the story, like the sound of Jane’s mother’s Arabic, “curling the outside of her letters like heat.” Can you talk a bit about what this heritage means to you?

JS: My father left Baghdad in the 50s, fled through the Iranian mountains, and eventually came to Ellis Island. He never went back to Iraq because he had fake papers that said he was from Bahrain. He never saw his mother again.

The Iraqi-Jewish population gets smaller and smaller; I don’t even know if there are any left in Baghdad. When I was writing my first book, [Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots], which was deeply reflective of that culture, there were something like five. The culture loomed very large for my father and therefore for me. It feels shadowy now–I don’t have much access to it because he’s not around anymore, so it stays in my head like a mythical creature or like a distant memory. 

I think it’s the same experience for Jane, that she feels this life that’s really apart from her but it stays alive for her through her mother.

ASW: I’m interested in your choice to create characters who have already lived most of their lives and are narrating parts of the story through memory–what led you to create characters at this particular season of their relationship?

JS: I seem to be drawn to older characters–I’ve always been curious about nostalgia. It can fuel a novel and it certainly fuels my life. I remember being a child and feeling nostalgia, which was inappropriate at a young age, but felt very natural to me. 

I’m also interested in memory; we have such a forward-moving culture, and there’s not all that much time for space for reflection. And yet I find it to be the most cathartic and meaningful part of a life. The natural progression of that was to write characters that are moving towards the end of their life and are deeply entrenched in nostalgia and reflection.

ASW: I can relate to that. I’ve always been so nostalgic and sentimental–I have boxes and boxes of keepsakes that I can’t imagine parting with.

JS: I have a daughter who’s five and she creates so much. Every day she writes me five or six tiny notes and they’re so beautiful and sweet. But they add up. What to do with them is one of the constant struggles of my life.

ASW: Let’s talk about parenthood–it’s a key theme in the story, especially in relation to being an artist. As a writer and a mother yourself, I’m curious how you find balance between the two and how they might inspire each other. 

JS: I thought that the two things would be diametrically opposed because of how all-consuming each one of them is, but I find it easier than I expected. Now that my daughter is in school, I know that there’s a set amount of time I have to be creative, and I have to drop into that state very quickly. I’ve been grateful for that because before there was a way in which time had no limits, but now the limitations are kind of liberating and creative-making. My next book is about four mothers, and being part of this community of mothers has been eye-opening and a real gift.

I find that being around a person who has no self-consciousness about her own creativity–which kids don’t have–is so revelatory. I’ve taught for so many years and I went to an MFA program where you’re constantly aware of your creativity. And so, to see someone who’s completely un-self-aware in that way is really beautiful and has given me a lot of life force and inspiration. Also, she was born just before COVID, so we were home a lot without many distractions, and I was able to write while I was with her; it felt like there was a Mobius strip of creation and parenthood and creation and parenthood. 

ASW: This reminds me of some coverage we did at Lilith of mother and daughter artists in conversation.

JS: Interesting–my mother is also a writer. She has written true crime for most of my adult life, and she had a novel come out this year called Word Hunter. Now we have three generations of writers to a certain degree, because it feels like my daughter is moving in that direction, at least for now. As far as a five-year-old can move in any direction. But my mother and I work so differently. She has more of an analytical mind than I do. I am much more abstract. I’m grateful that we are such different writers; I think we each offer each other something. She is the most supportive and I’m so grateful to learn from her. 

ASW: When I was your student, you assigned my classmates and me each a different author whose work you thought we should read to strengthen our own writing, and I do always find that my writing is stronger when I’m reading authors whose styles I connect with–what did you read while working on this book?

JS: Michael Cunningham–I feel like he gets New York so right; the beauty and the sadness of New York feels very Michael Cunningham to me. I also read Julie Otsuka, Rick Moody, and Lorrie Moore. And I love Elizabeth Strout; I was reading a lot of her while I was writing–and people have said that it feels synergistic, which is such an honor.

ASW: What about poetry? The parts of the story that focus on memory read like poetic stanzas.

JS: Yes, I’m always reading poetry. I read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong in the middle of writing and I was reminded that novels can be poetic. I don’t typically read my reviews, but sometimes I have a lapse in judgement and I do; I got a one-star Amazon review the other day from someone who felt misled because this was actually a book of poetry. I thought, if that’s the worst you can give me, I’ll take it!

ASW: That’s funny! It sounds like that person just doesn’t like poetry…

JS: Right, which seems more like a problem for them than for me.

ASW: Speaking of reading to fuel your writing, we seem to be in a renaissance of love and romance fiction. What do you make of this?

JS: I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day about the distinction between romance and a love story. One can really lose their head in a romance, but I think a love story requires some sense of the bittersweet and what happens after loss or how love is earned. That’s what interests me the most–the redemptive quality of love and coming through something, sometimes with someone and sometimes all alone. A love story contains all kinds of other stories: a grief story, a sadness story, a hope story, a hope deserted story. I think we’re at a moment right now where we all feel really lost and like there is no love guiding the world—we look to fiction to remind us that it does exist.

ASW: I love how the book explores so many different forms of love, too–the longing for a lost parent, the love between best friends, and so on.

JS: I think that’s something that we often forget. When we think about a love story, we imagine such a narrow scope of love, but we all have friends. We all have family, however complicated. And this book does not turn a blind eye to the ways in which love is complicated. Part of what I meant to say with this book was that love always has undercurrents of complexity. But it does come in so many forms.

ASW: Something else the book has a lot of is food! What foods have you been obsessed with recently?

JS: Lately, I’ve been hankering for bagels and cream cheese and lox, Chinese takeout, and I’m also dying for a black and white cookie. Those are all really central to This Is a Love Story but they’re not terribly central to my life right now, which is why I have this nostalgic feeling for them.