BOOKS
19
If you go
Readings COURTNEY MAUM SPLITS HER TIME LIVING IN NEW YORK CITY, PARIS AND THE BERKSHIRES. COLIN LANE
July 14, 8 p.m. Franklin Bar & Beer Garden, 618 St. Johns Pl. 718-975-0196, www.franklinpark brooklyn.com July 16, 12:30 p.m. Bryant Park Reading Room, 42nd St. & Sixth Ave. www.bryantpark.org
This summer’s hottest book is no beach read Fiction. Courtney Maum’s novel is one of the buzziest of the beach read season — but it’s not fluff. It all started with a note taped on the outside of a French art gallery. The note read (in French), “Mr. Architect, you were wearing an elegant hat and you wanted to buy the blue bear. Please contact me.” Courtney Maum was living in Paris at the time and experiencing years of writer’s block, but that one note sparked the idea for her new extremely buzz-y novel, “I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You.” The protagonist is a British artist named Rich-
ard who paints rooms as they appear through a keyhole, but he is more obsessed with pining over his ex-mistress than his art — or his wife. He starts regretting his affair about the same time his wife is done with him. “In my family history, everyone cheated on everyone else and got divorced. I found myself wondering, ‘Did anyone try to work it out?’” Maum tells us. Because the book addresses infidelity, early readers are dissecting it, trying to pull marital lessons from these fictional characters. “I’m pretty flattered by that,” Maum says. “I remember thinking that people who are married or think about marriage a lot would like this book. ... It’s a bumpy road. Marriage is freaking awkward. You’re not psyched after eight years to get into bed with
the same person.” Maum says she wrote as if she were sitting there with Richard and his wife in the kitchen, with the baby upstairs: “I wrote with my heart,” she says. That’s probably why you can’t help but root for Richard — despite his many flaws. That’s not to say that creating a balanced character who was funny, dark and likable all at the same time was easy for Maum. “When I wrote the first version, I got a lot of rejection letters,” she says. “All the editors thought Richard was too unlikable. At first I just thought they just weren’t risk-takers, but when I read the manuscript again 10 years later, I realized they were right.” EMILY LAURENCE @EmLaurence
emily.laurence@metro.us
Quoted
“In my family history, everyone cheated on everyone else and got divorced. I found myself wondering, ‘Did anyone try to work it out?’” Maum