JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Midlife can be complicated - marriages well past the honeymoon phase, children with big questions or stony silence, careers in flux. But it can also be very, very sexy. That's the message at the heart of Robinne Lee's new novel, "Crash Into Me." It's the story of Cecilia Chen, an artist married to a director. They've recently moved their cat and two kids to Los Angeles after years living in Paris. It's a rocky transition for Cecilia, but things pick up when she runs into a model named Anouk and feels instantly drawn to her. Their relationship quickly becomes physical, and when we talked, I asked Robinne Lee what made her want to explore a relationship between two women in "Crash Into Me."
ROBINNE LEE: I did not set out to write a story about two women with this kind of relationship. I was writing about this one woman returning to America after 20 years. But the more I wrote for the characters, the more I liked them together. I liked their - it was - there's something kind of tantalizing about the way they engage with each other. And sometimes they tell you to just let your characters speak to you and lead you, and I felt that very much with these two.
SUMMERS: There's a question that's central to this book about the intersection of art and commerce, and that's something you've navigated throughout your own career. I wonder how it came up in the process of turning your writing and "The Idea Of You," your first book, into a blockbuster movie.
LEE: That's so interesting. I think that there is this (laughter) battle between, like, holding on to the artist's vision and then finding something that's going to sell to the mainstream or whatever that is. I very much wrote "The Idea Of You" for myself. It was a little bit of my history, a little bit of my fantasy, a little bit of the things I was encountering as a woman turning 40 in Hollywood and the way that we're kind of written off in a certain way of no longer being desirable. And I kind of wanted to fight back with that.
And so when they adapted the book for the film, there were changes that were made to make it more commercial. And so it is - it's something that I think about when I'm writing even now. Like, I want to be true to myself as a writer - the things that I find interesting. Like, if I find something interesting that happens to sell in a big way and feel commercial, then that's great. But I don't want to kind of change my idea of what would make a great story or what is good writing just to sell it in a large way.
SUMMERS: This book is a multigenerational, multiracial story. "The Idea Of You" featured white characters. And if I understand from reading previous interviews, that was a deliberate choice to get the book published. So I wonder what it was like to write this book, which has so much diversity and racial complexity.
LEE: For me, it's harder to write a book like this because I'm layering in so many factors and elements that mean something to me. And I want it to be good. I want it to mean something. I want to be fair and honest. I would not have been fair to my characters if I was kind of writing Cecilia in a bubble. What's really interesting is that I worked on a project prior to writing "The Idea Of You" with this Cecilia Chen character as a protagonist. And one of the feedbacks was, well, we've already got an interracial love story coming out this year. And so when I had the idea of "The Idea Of You," I thought, you know what? I'm not going to give them any reason to say no to me. And if I have to make these two white or white-appearing characters, I will do that. But he was going to be British and she was going to be French, and to me, she was French and part Algerian, as well. So she kind of had this - I hate to use the term - exotic, but she just had a darker, more olive complexion.
And it's so interesting to me how many readers would come to me and say, oh, I just pictured you. I thought, oh, this must be Robinne in the book, and she was what I envisioned. And I thought that was so interesting because being a woman - a Black woman in America, as much as I can assimilate, I can't fully assimilate. I don't walk into a room and no one sees what I am. And so I wanted to make that clear in this book. As, you know, privileged as you may be or as attractive as you may be or whatever it is, if you are not white-presenting in certain spaces, your narrative is different. Your experience of the world is different, and your identity is different because part of your identity is responding to how you have been perceived for your entire life.
SUMMERS: Some of the most moving parts of this book, for me, were reading the ways that Cecilia reckoned with how to talk to her kids about race in America, being Black in America. She talks about, at one point, how the conversations she'd had with her two children, Julian (ph) and Lucy (ph), had been, up until a point, historical and abstract. And I just have to say it felt like this, like, uniquely American moment in so many ways. Can you talk a little bit about that scene and those tensions?
LEE: Yeah. You know, they've moved back. The kids have never lived in America, and she hasn't talked to them about race other than very superficial things. And part of that came from a conversation I had with a girlfriend who lives outside of the country. She's African American, but her husband is not, and she's got these mixed-race kids. And they go back every year to visit her family in the South, and they associate America with, you know, their grandparents and certain foods and, like, happy memories, and everything's great.
And I remember her saying to me at one point, I almost don't want to tell them what it is to be Black in America. But then she thought, I'm just putting it off and putting it off. When do I tell them? Like, if they don't ever have to encounter it, when do I tell them? And I thought that was such an insightful thing to say. Because, I mean, my kids grew up in the states. And so our conversations, of course, started as - you know, I can't even remember when they started.
SUMMERS: You can't really...
LEE: Tell her - whatever.
SUMMERS: Yeah. You can't hold it back.
LEE: It was very early on. You can't - exactly. You can't hold back.
SUMMERS: One of the other things that sticks out to me is just there are so many really messy marriages in this book, and there is...
LEE: Yes (laughter).
SUMMERS: ...And there is something that Anouk said that stuck with me. She's at lunch with Cecilia. They're talking about infidelity in past relationships. And she says - I'm going to quote this here - "marriage is a compromise, yes, but if you're both playing by different sets of rules, someone is going to get hurt - someone always gets hurt." Was there something specific that you wanted to explore about marriages, the institution of marriage, maybe?
LEE: You know, I'm lucky. I'm in a wonderful marriage, and we're about to celebrate 25 years together.
SUMMERS: Congratulations.
LEE: Thank you. But I've had a lot of friends whose marriages have not been as wonderful and many of them have ended in divorce. Some of them have not ended in divorce, but they're surviving. They're making it work. They're trying to get to the other side, or they have gotten to the other side. So often we're sold this idea from the time that we're kids, in our fairy tales that, you know, like, the girl marries the prince and goes off into the sunset on the back of his horse - whatever - and it's happily ever after. Yeah, in real life, it's not happily ever after.
Relationships are work, and there are days that are incredible, and you feel like you're on cloud nine, and you're with the prince. And there are days that you're exhausted or you're tired or one of you is sick or the kid's sick and there's temptation. There are times when money is scarce, and so there's frustration. And people grow - they grow apart. They grow in different directions. They grow at different speeds. All of that has to be taken into account when you're looking to embark on something that you think is going to be your happily ever after.
If they're just expecting that, they're going to be very (laughter) disappointed when reality sets in. And I think the marriages, to me, that have worked are people who knew what they were getting into and were willing to work at it and grow together and communicate and take the steps they need to take to kind of be as close to the same page as possible.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with author Robinne Lee. Her new novel is "Crash Into Me." Robinne, thank you.
LEE: Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CRASH INTO ME")
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND: (Singing) You've got your ball. You've got your chain tied to me tight. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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