Thoroughly Modern Mommies

This is part one in a dialogue between Hanna Rosin and Amy Sohn about Amy's new novel, Prospect Park West [2].

Dear Amy,

I grew up in Queens and was always pretty jealous of Brooklynites, but that pretty much ended after I read your novel. Just to catch up our readers, Prospect Park West [2] is about a quartet of Park Slope moms who interact to different degrees but ultimately never quite connect. One is a paranoid, fragile celebrity, and the rest are variations of urban playground types: the overweight overprotective mom, the undersexed hot mom, and the ex-lesbian who’s a little lost. The setting is what makes the novel distinct. These stereotypes about the modern mom—hypervigilant, competitive parenting at the expense of being adults (unless they’re in MILF mode)—have been floating around for a while. But this novel clarifies the cultural phenomenon by attaching it to a location. Like the Berkeley hippie, or Seattle grunge, we now officially have the Park Slope Mom.

I would identify the novel as “mommy lit,” except that it does not follow the rules of the convention. Usually the genre requires the full-time mom to be hapless and overlooked but ultimately valorized. (She may wear her pajamas to drop her kids off at school, but she does it because she knows what’s really important in life! See Slummy Mummy [3].) But Prospect Park West contains very little sentimentality. Amy, in various interviews you’ve given, I can’t tell whether you accept this assessment of your characters or not. But for my part, there’s not a one I would want to be friends with, or even spend 15 minutes at the swing sets with. (And please, feel free to rise to their defense!) Melora Leigh, the pill-popping social-phobic celebrity, is out of the question as a buddy. Same for Karen, Melora’s stalker who makes her son wear kneepads at the park. Lizzie and Rebecca (ex-lesbian and hot mom, respectively) fall in the normal range but both seem too sunk in their own domestic misery to truly connect. The husbands are either absent or all too present for their children. Melora’s husband, Stuart, seems like the only person in the novel who’s any fun.

The women are no comfort to each other. They each exist in their miserable isolated spheres. This is highlighted by the way you chose to open the novel, with Rebecca masturbating to old movies, one of the few times she seems at peace. Karen and Melora have a creepy perversion of a female friendship. And Lizzie and Rebecca try to engage, but they miss the mark. You said in a recent New York Times interview [4] that you have yet to make a close mother friend. Why do you think that is? Presumably you spent 30-some years obsessing over and perfecting female friendships, and then the baby comes along and you lose the skill? You’d think that hanging around the playground all day would be the perfect set-up for new close friends, but apparently not. Do the parents seem too competitive? Too sucked into the infantile rhythm to make adult connections? You’ve also said that when you were young, the moms stayed out of their children’s business, which took off some of the edge. But in my memory, mom-world was pretty evil when I was a kid. All those moms sitting on benches, staring, had nothing else to do but scheme and hate and compete.

My fantasy about modern stay-at-home moms is quite different from yours. I’ve never been one, but I had two six-month maternity leaves for my first two children. When I roamed the playgrounds, I was quite jealous of the stay-at-homes. They seemed so relaxed and aimless and running on no clock at all. They were living life as an endless college drum circle, chatting about nothing and taking walks, while I was stressed out about not working. I, too, could never relax into those conversations about types of strollers and breastfeeding tips and the organic content of various slings. Like you, I just could never bring myself to care. But I sort of wished I could, because it all seemed so communal and sisterly, like Wellesley freshman year.

Or Vassar, more to the point. This novel strikes a nerve in the same way Mary McCarthy’s The Group [5] did, I think, because it flirts with autobiography. You use some real names and locations— Philip Gourevitch, the Tea Lounge, the Coop— and then some real-ish enough details to tempt people to guess— Jennifer Connelly for Melora, Jonathan Ames for David Keller. Can you talk about why you decided to half-fictionalize like that? Of course, be sure to mention whether you’ve run into these various characters in the last few weeks …

Hanna

Read Amy Sohn's response here. [6]