About Claire
Claire Cook is the national bestselling author of four novels, Life's a Beach, Multiple Choice, Ready to Fall, and the must loved Must Love Dogs, adapted for a major movie starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. Her fifth novel, Summer Blowout, will be published by Voice, the new Hyperion imprint, in June.
Her latest novel, Life's a Beach, is already in its third printing. It was a Book Sense pick, as well as a Good Morning America and People magazine summer book pick. Redbook called it "gleefully quirky," Good Housekeeping said it was "laugh out loud," and The Boston Globe called it "a fun beach novel with moments of depth...a delightful and surprisingly compelling page turner."
Adriana Trigiani said, "LIFE'S A BEACH is filled with hilarity, sister love and sister hate, juicy arguments and hard won reconciliations but most of all, heart," Mary Kay Andrews called it, "Tender, touching and terribly, terribly, funny!" and Jacquelyn Mitchard proclaimed, "Claire Cook is wicked good."
Multiple Choice (Viking, 2004), Claire Cook's third novel, was the #2 BookSense 2005 summer paperback pick. It was also a BookSense pick in hardcover, a BarnesandNoble.com Book Club pick, a More Magazine Don't Miss selection, and a Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild selection. The Hartford Courant called it "very funny . . . with plenty of giggles" and The Orlando Sentinal said, "Her quirky voice and sense of humor are as strong as ever." Multiple Choice has been optioned for the screen by Working Title.
Must Love Dogs (Viking, 2002) was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, a BookSense pick in both hardcover and paperback, and a Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild selection. The Chicago Tribune called it "funny and pitch-perfect" and Library Journal called it "utterly charming."
Must Love Dogs has a second incarnation as a feature film written, directed and produced by Gary David Goldberg and starring Diane Lane, John Cusack, Christopher Plummer, Dermot Mulroney, Elizabeth Perkins and Stockard Channing, now available on Warner Bros. DVD.
Claire Cook was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and is one of eight siblings. She graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University, with a dual major in film and creative writing. She wrote her first novel, Ready to Fall (2000), in her Ford Windstar outside her daughter's swim practice at five in the morning. Happily, she has left her minivan and writes in a home office now. A former teacher of physical fitness, including open ocean rowing, as well as creative writing, she also worked as continuity director of a radio station. She lives in Scituate, Massachusetts with her husband and dog, where her two borderline adult children and their laundry visit often. She has been a judge for the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Family Circle magazine fiction contest. She is a member of the Cape Cod Writers Center faculty.
Q Life's a Beach is the story of two sisters finding themselves, and each other, in midlife. What made you decide to write a novel about sisters?
A I'm always the last to know what my novels are really about, so it wasn't until readers started telling me they couldn't wait to send a copy to their sisters, or reading it made them want to call their sisters, or even wish they had a sister, that I realized Life's a Beach is about two sisters. Nobody loves you like a sister, or drives you crazier.
Q Their interaction is hilarious, and it feels so true to life. Do you have a sister?
A Oh, yeah. Actually I have four of them, plus three brothers. We're scattered all over the country now, but we're still very much, in order of birth, DannyClaireCathyMarySusieJimmyTriciaandKevin.
Q Could you pick out a Ginger and a Geri in the group?
A I'm sure there are little bits of my sisters in both Ginger and Geri. (And probably in Allison Flagg, too, but don't tell them that.) Still, my fiction never feels particularly autobiographical to me. It's as if I take all the things that are real, and all the stories I've heard, plus everything I imagine, and put them into a paper bag, shake them up, and then take them out in a completely new configuration. I guess that's my Shake 'n' Bake theory of writing a novel.
I relate to all the characters, both two and four-legged, in my novels. I think you have to, at least to some degree, in order to write the characters. It's all about being a good eavesdropper, and it's all grist for the mill. I've always been that person at the restaurant listening to the conversation at the next table, at your table. It's nice to finally have found a career where that becomes non-deviant behavior.
Q How did having your second novel, Must Love Dogs, made into a major motion picture starring Diane Lane and John Cusack inspire the movie scenes in Life's a Beach?
A I loved everything about hanging around during the filming of the Must Love Dogs movie, and really wanted to share some of that experience with readers when I wrote Life's a Beach. So I took lots of notes on the movie set, and in the first draft of the novel, the fictional movie took place in Hollywood. But the Hollywood parts didn't seem as fresh as they might be, so in the next draft of the novel, I moved the movie to Cape Cod, where it really came alive!
When you read the book, you'll be able to see the exact place where the movie changes location. One of the fun things about writing fiction is that the things you don't plan often turn out to be the best parts of the novel.
Q Is the entire novel set on Cape Cod?
A No. About half of it takes place in the fictional town of Marshbury, an intentional combination of two towns, Marshfield and Duxbury, near where I live on the coast south of Boston. (I'm in Scituate, not an easy name to fictionalize!) Marshbury sounds to me like Mayberry RFD goes to the seashore, kind of an Anywhere, USA beach town.
Q When did you first know you were a writer?
A When I was three. My mother entered me in a contest to name the Fizzies whale, and I won in my age group. It's quite possible that mine was the only entry in my age group since "Cutie Fizz" was enough to win my family a six-month supply of Fizzies tablets (root beer was the best flavor) and a half dozen turquoise plastic mugs with removable handles. At six I had my first story on the Little People's Page in the Sunday paper (about Hot Dog, the family dachshund, even though we had a beagle at the time -- the first clue that I'd be a novelist and not a journalist) and at sixteen I had my first front page feature in the local weekly. I majored in film and creative writing in college, and fully expected that the day after graduation, I would go into labor and a brilliant novel would emerge, fully formed, like giving birth.
Q So what happened?
A In a word: nothing. I guess I knew how to write, but not what to write. Looking back, I can see that I had to live my life so I'd have something to write about, and if I could give my younger self some good advice, it would be not to beat myself up for the next couple of decades. Instead, I pretended I wasn't feeling terrible about not writing a novel, and did a lot of other creative things. Hmm, let's see. I wrote shoe ads for an in house advertising agency for five weeks, became continuity director of a local radio station for a couple of years, taught aerobics and did choreography, helped a friend with landscape design, wrote a few freelance magazine pieces, took some more detours. Eventually, I had two children and followed them to school as a teacher, where I taught everything from open ocean rowing to creative writing.
Years later, when I was in my forties and sitting in my minivan outside my daughter's swim practice at 5 AM, it hit me that I might live my whole life without ever once going after my dream of writing a novel. So, for the next six months I wrote a rough draft in the pool parking lot, and it sold to the first publisher who asked to read it.
So many women have written to say that my story has been an inspiration to them, and I hope that's true. It is pretty cool if I stop to think about it. My first novel was published at 45, and at 50 I walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the movie version of my second novel.
Q What other comments do you hear from readers?
A Two favorites are "I can't remember when I laughed out loud like that" and "I couldn't put it down." And my very favorite of all might be, "Ohmigod, you're writing my life!" Also, a woman came to one of my book events to tell me that, the week before, she'd missed her subway stop because she was reading one of my books. That might well be the litmus test for a good read, don't you think?
Q Do you think you'll ever write a sad book?
A In one of the many gifts of midlife, I've learned that I don't have to write everybody's books, just mine. I read voraciously and widely, but I think my gift as a novelist is to make people laugh. And also to recognize themselves and their quirky families and maybe feel a little bit better about them. And I think there's plenty of pain and suffering in the world without me personally adding to it.
Q Philosophically speaking, do you think life really is a beach?
A I guess I'd have to say yes, in both senses. Life really can be a bitch sometimes. Just when you start to think you have it all together -- bam! And yet, there are certainly so many days that are just a walk on the beach, and I think we have to be ready to enjoy each and every one of them.
