It’s 2019 and 28-year-old Jules Gold suffers from anxiety and internet addiction. (Who can relate?) She’s been living alone in the apartment she used to share with her ex-fiancé when her sister Poppy comes to crash. Recovering from a recent suicide attempt, Poppy is in search of purpose in Brooklyn, while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for something to happen to her.
And stuff does happen, but not the kind of positive turns Jules expected. Poppy and Jules are both hit with medical crises. Their mother gets swept up in the same kind of conspiracy theories that Jules obsessively follows online. Poppy adopts a three-legged rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. Jules begins to resent Poppy, seeing her as a reflection of her own failings as a writer and sister. A disastrous trip home to Florida pushes the sisters to consider their futures and to what extent they involve each other.
A shrewd debut, Alexandra Tanner’s Worry is a blackly humorous depiction of two sisters navigating an uber-tense period in contemporary America.
Over text, Alexandra and I discussed Seinfeld, self-promotion, and sisters.
anna:
in my Goodreads review (5 stars), i wrote that i loved this book about “floridian sisters bickering.” this should be its own genre. can you tell me how the idea developed?
alexandra:
i was so grateful for your review not only because it was 5 stars but because it identifies being floridian as a huge part of both their identities which it absolutely is
i lived with my younger sibling for like six months at the end of 2016 in a tiny tiny studio apartment, they kind of came to crash for like a weekend and ended up staying for a really long time
and it was so miserable and so intense, i had a trundle bed bc i literally could not fit any other bed in there so i slept on the top part and they slept on the bottom and we were having these crazy fights that were so reminiscent of when we were little
and then a few years ago when i wanted to try to write a really insular domestic novel i was like: that’s the material
anna:
yess “insular domestic novel. i love that, that is actually the best genre. next to “floridian sisters bickering.” and maybe “seinfeldian novel” as your publisher calls this one
alexandra:
looooool
i’m so happy we went with seinfeldian because it just adds that shorthand of like—it’s about nothing, but it’s also about how for certain people little nothings become huge existential things that really eat away at the core of who they are
anna:
10000%! i was going to ask if you came up with seinfeldian, if that was how you pitched the book
alexandra:
yeah when my agent and i were putting together the pitch we were like—we need a word that will communicate how there’s silliness and cruelty and everyone’s annoying but there’s beauty in how they give each other the freedom to be annoying and also….. the knowledge that they’re making each other worse by giving each other that freedom
and it was like ding ding ding
i did watch so much curb and seinfeld while i was writing it but i’m always rewatching curb
anna:
ooo that’s an amazing way of putting it! I love curb. susie is my celebrity crush
alexandra:
susie rocks
anna:
curious if there were other seinfeldian novels you read for research or just thought about while writing worry
alexandra:
i think the other end of seinfeldian is like
tiny things really sharply observed
or like a behavior you start to notice in yourself or someone else that becomes unbearable
so i feel like i was looking throughout the writing to a lot of really contemporary work that burrows into the miseries of human thought or human behavior
ottessa, sheila heti, natasha stagg, garielle lutz…..
anna:
love those gals. and i like how you alluded to how jules starts to see herself in poppy in a way that becomes unbearable. can you speak more to that phenomenon?
alexandra:
oh my god, yeah
i guess i haven’t thought of it specifically in that way of like: the ramp-up of her becoming more and more unable to be around poppy because all she can see is herself but that’s a huge part of what’s going on by a certain point
no one drives you crazier than family because you just know them so well and you find yourselves in these loops with each other where it’s like
why can’t we get out of this dynamic we’ve had 25 years
there’s a part where jules leaves a paper towel on the floor for like a week to see if poppy will pick it up and throw it away, and she doesn’t, and i think what gets jules acting so psycho in that moment is like: she knows what this ultimately means is she’s the kind of person who wouldn’t pick it up either
anna:
i love. perfect example of the “tiny things sharply observed.” and I’m also the person who wouldn’t pick up the paper towel and would just act like it was part of the decor
alexandra:
lmaooo literally same
anna:
on the subject of looking at yourself, i’m obsessed with your review of your book on goodreads: “this is my own book… if i were a more honest woman, it’d give it a 4, rounded down from 4.2.” i LOLd. sometimes i wonder what I’d think of my own writing if i weren’t me. i feel like i’d find it really annoying. what is your relationship with your own writing? does it embarrass you? are you proud? (you should be!) do you try not to think about how it’s perceived? does it vacillate?
alexandra:
djfkalsdjfsfjdjk
anna:
LOL perfect answer
alexandra:
i feel this way too all the time
like i know the little tics i get so annoyed about in other people’s work and im like
10000% i have to be annoying to many of the people reading my work
but i think i’m in a place of being proud of my writing lately because i’ve pushed through giving that fear too much weight and i’m just writing what interests me, trying to do the kind of observation adn deep thought that i get excited about
but of course it’s always that thing of you get better with each project you finish and you are embarrassed to look back down the road
anna:
mood to all this
alexandra:
how are you feeling about your writing right now!!!! bc i know you’re also in the throes of pre-pub stuff and that for me has been like
the endless pain of constantly thinking about myself
anna:
i pretty much dissociate and put all my angst into a new writing project. it’s my coping mechanism and my career and my biggest source of embarrassment, but c’est la vie baby !
alexandra:
same same same
anna:
did you write your book in 2019? or start it then? another weird thing about book promotion is you inevitably wrote the book a while ago and it’s like… who was that person and what the HELL was she thinking?
alexandra:
hhahahahahhahah
ok i heard lydia conklin say something amazing about this at bkbf a couple years ago
that when you are promoting your book you are an employee of your former self
anna:
LMAO god bless
i hate my boss
alexandra:
hahahahahahahhahahha
and i think like—ok i did start writing the book in like mid-2019
so not only is it like
my former self but sort of
the last 5 years have felt like an exceptionally insane 5 years on every level, like a global level obviously, and i dont even recognize my 2019 self or the 2019 world
it’s so many layers of trying to peer back and be like “who was she”
anna:
seriously. ok speaking of TIME, where do you see jules and poppy 5 years after the book ends? i was going to say 1 year but then i realized that would be 2020 and no one needs to go back there… so 5 years!
alexandra:
i know wherever they are they are still in hell
i have many specific thoughts on this but i dont want to say too much……. i do not think they are still roommates lmao
anna:
ok fair I respect your right not to say too much…. are you writing a sequel?
alexandra:
i saw jen beagin say in an interview about big swiss something like “i’ll do a sequel if i sell x thousand number of copies hahahahhaha” and that’s sort of how i’m feeling—i could do it, the narrative and the way these characters lend themselves to being contorted in all these situations is kind of set up for it, but i’m not gonna waste anyone’s time unless they want me to😈😈😈
anna:
wait that was my interview with her lol unless she said that in multiple interviews
alexandra:
lmaooooooooo holy shit
i love that you are the person who can draw out the promise of a sequel
anna:
i’m a sequel head
they tend to be associated with genre but i want more literary fiction sequels/series
alexandra:
i love them!!!!! i loved either/or, i love that like not that much time passes and not that much changes but it feels like a totally different emotional landscape
big swiss is the most fun ive had reading a book in probably like 5 years
just nonstop funny, completely enveloping world, so high octane so fueled by secrets
anna:
it’s perfect. also do you like halle butler? i’m reading banal nightmare now which comes out this summer and she feels in conversation with your work (if you don’t like her, i take it back)
alexandra:
im dying to read it
hahahhahahhahaha
no jillian was like a formative text for me
i want a JILLIAN sequel
a whole boxed series like those princess books that used to come in a set with like a ring or a locket or whatever
anna:
lolol omgggg me too, she’s so good. any other books you’ve read recently that you recommend?
alexandra:
i’m reading greta & valdin by rebecca k reilly right now, it is so fucking funny
and i can’t say enough about blake butler’s molly, an unreal feat and the most intense reading experience i’ve had in such a long time
