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Indeed, at the end of the chapter, Pandy muses to Henry, “Is it human nature or just female nature to keep hoping for love, beyond any evidence that such a thing is possible?”
And then, because this is a comedy, Pandy has to do the one thing she has vowed not to:
Fall in love with Jonny.
Let’s talk about Jonny.
Jonny is representative of the dangers of constructing one’s life on a fairy tale. And because this is a comedy, I tried to make Jonny just about the worst man I could think of. I know I could think of much worse men, but Jonny was about the worst that I could get away with without turning the book into something completely different.
And I also really, really wanted Jonny to get hoisted up on the leg at the end. Not just because of the potential symbolism of Jonny dangling from the fringe of Monica’s boot, but because the image is so much a part of my comedic aesthetic. I love broad comedy. It’s really hard to pull off—you wouldn’t believe how many hundreds of hours it took to merely figure out how to get Jonny to the damn leg in the first place.
Your main character is a writer and you yourself are a writer. You also, like Pandy, grew up in Connecticut.
Yes. I grew up in sort of the country/suburbs in the 1960s. Pandy’s life, however, is completely fictional. I let my imagination run wild and described what, I suppose, would be my dream house. Originally Wallis House had secret staircases and rooms and was a model of 1920s engineering advances. Then I came up with a whole history and town to go with the house and gave Pandy a much more dramatic and interesting life than my own childhood had been. Where I’d grown up, there wasn’t even a movie theater.
What Pandy and I both share, however, is that desire to create. The whole idea of Monica came about from this imaginary character, named “Marigold,” that my sister and I were always telling stories about. We both always wanted to be Marigold. We would fight over her, and sometimes Marigold would die. But then she would always come back to life.
The other thing I gave Pandy and Hellenor was my childish anger at the world. Being a woman or a little girl in the 1960s was very different than it is now—for instance, a woman wasn’t allowed to have her own credit card.
Growing up in the 1960s, it was pretty much drilled into your head every day that being a woman meant being a second-class citizen. There was no getting away from the message because it was literally everywhere you went. As soon as you left the house in your required clothing—a dress—you began to hear the message. You heard it in the classrooms, on the television, and for lots of little girls, from their own fathers.
Pandy and SondraBeth’s relationship is explosive; when they get together, crazy misadventures ensue. This is a theme used more often with male leads in “bromances” or “buddy” movies.
Yes, and interestingly it happens in a lot of real women’s lives. So many women tell me that Pandy and SondraBeth’s adventures remind them of adventures they had once with their best friends. Maybe because of that, I wanted to send Pandy and SondraBeth on a real madcap adventure.
I loved the idea of these former bosom buddies—whose friendship was ruined by a man—being inadvertently thrown together through a series of comedic circumstances and rediscovering each other after not being in contact for a few years. Some of my favorite scenes in the book involved these two. They had tiny personal scenes, like when Pandy does her “audition” in front of SondraBeth—and enormous “spectacle” scenes with speeches. One of the hardest scenes to write was when SondraBeth finally realizes Pandy is Pandy. There are so many things going on in that moment and so many emotions for both of them. Anger, forgiveness…
Speaking of forgiveness, not every woman would agree with Pandy’s forgiving SondraBeth for having sex with “her man.”
And in some cases, I’m sure they’re right. But we have to remember that Doug sets out deliberately to ruin their friendship, playing one woman off another, figuring if he can divide and conquer, he can have both of them. I’m not sure who is more evil: Doug or Jonny?
But most of all, I love that at the end of the book, a man isn’t the answer to the women’s problems. So often at the end of a book, the woman’s reward for surviving a bad man is…another man? Hmmmm.
At the end of the book, Pandy, in a sense, goes home. Or at least back to what seems to be her old life. Why did you choose that ending?
The ending really came to me as the book progressed, over many, many drafts. I actually didn’t have the ending until I was almost at my deadline.
For me, the ending circles back to an exploration of how we all create a version of ourselves that we present to the world; how our actions and beliefs cause reactions that shape our worlds; and the power of creativity and imagination.
That, and the hope that if you’re open-minded about it, you never know what amazing adventure might come along next.
Discussion Questions
Discuss the following quotes the characters make about men, women, and relationships:
“You see? There’s the problem,” Portia said triumphantly. “You’re not vulnerable. With men, you need to show your vulnerable side. That’s why no one’s ever asked you to get married. When you don’t show vulnerability, it makes men think you don’t need them.”
“Every woman needs love,” insisted Suzette.
Society celebrated the self-made man, but the concept of the self-made woman hardly even existed. Probably because what society insisted defined a woman were her relationships to other people.
“Of course, it reminds me of how lucky I am to have my career. Because I think of my career as a relationship I have with myself.”
Do you agree with Pandy’s decision to forgive SondraBeth for having sex with “her guy”? What is Bushnell trying to say about how we make assumptions about the reasons behind other women’s behaviors based on stereotypes of female behavior?
Pandy never asks Jonny for a prenup, and yet she knows she should have. Nevertheless, Pandy tries to pretend that everything is going to mysteriously be okay anyway. What is Bushnell trying to say about how romance can cloud our better judgment?
Peter Pepper states, “Your sister was funny. And…pretty…In any case, that was her problem. You can’t be funny and pretty in Hollywood. Because if you’re going to be funny, you have to be able to risk looking stupid. Or even ugly. But then, you’re no longer pretty.” Discuss this quote in respect to how Hollywood portrays women and humor.
