BOOK CLUB KIT

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Did you relate to Liddy? Why or why not?
2. In the beginning of the novel, Liddy claims that she doesnt do guilt. How does this belief change as
her life is turned upside down? Discuss in what ways this mentality helped her, and in what ways it
hindered her. Do you have your own mantra that helps you get through the day?
3. What do you think of Roses approach to Liddy and Peters marriage? Should she have behaved
differently at any point in the novel? Why or why not?
4. Discuss Liddys childhood. How has it shaped the woman she is?
5. On page 38, Sophia asks Rose, All of us with kids and a job are hovering on the edge of a nervous
breakdown, right? Do you think this is true? How do the various women in the novel choose to navigate parenting, working, and maintaining their own relationships? How do you navigate these things
in your life? Does Liddy make the right choice in the end?
6. How does Rose see Liddy in the beginning of the novel? How does Liddy feel about Rose? How does
the way each woman understands the other change over time?
7. What do you think about Liddy and Peters marriage? Why do you think Casey chooses to provide
so much of their history? Did it change the way you felt about Liddy in the present day? Why or
why not?
8. The Real Liddy James is, in part, a love story. Were you surprised by Sebastian and Liddys connection? How did you feel about where things end with them? What do you think will happen to them in
the future?
9. On page 163, Peter tells Rose that Liddy does appear to live in her own self-created reality. We all
do it, of course, we all justify our particular choices to a greater or lesser extent; its just for her it
seems to be a matter of survival. Why do you think Liddy creates her own reality? How does this
mentality help her to survive? Was there a time in your life when creating your own reality helped
you in some way?
10. The novel is set primarily in Manhattan. Could it have been set elsewhere in the United States?
Would the story be different if it did not take place in New York City?
11. How does visiting Ireland change Liddy? Have you ever felt a similar need to escape? If so, where did
you go, and how did it affect you?

Anne-Marie Casey
AB OUT

The Real Liddy James

Anne-Marie Slaughter s 2012 Atlantic article Why

Women Still Cant Have It All was one of your inspirations for The Real Liddy James . What was your first
reaction to it?
I remember vividly how I chanced upon this article.
I was on vacation with my family in a rental house
in Montauk that summer. I had just finished checking the proofs of my first novel, and in need of a
break, I got up and made myself a cup of tea, and
rooted around a sparse bookshelf for something to
read. Caught in the hinge at the back was a dogeared, coverless copy of The Atlantic . I flipped
through it and saw Slaughter s articleit stood
out because someone before me had underlined
sentences in blue ink and excitedly scribbled exclamation points in the margin beside certain paragraphs! When I read it I understood why. My first
reaction to the piece was an overwhelming sense of
relief. In personal, thoughtful, and analytical prose,
Slaughter articulated all my own feelings about
the challenges facing women who want a career
and a family. I often think of the wonderful quote
from C.S. Lewis: We read to know that we are not
alone. Never was this more applicable to me than
when I first readthe piece.
Slaughter raised difficult questions and explored the
half-truths we rely on to minimize the difficulties of
having it all. Did any of those hit home for you?

2015 Bridgid Harney/Applebee Studio

A C O NV ER SA T ION W ITH

I do not consider myself a slouch in the achievement

department. I do not come from a privileged background, I attended a local school, but I got a scholar
ship to O xford and another for postgraduate study in
the U.S. By the time I was thirty I had scrabbled my
way up in the very competitive world of TV and was
a partner in my own production company. I did not
have the ambition gap that Sheryl Sandberg talked
about in Lean In ; getting married or having children
was not a preoccupation of mine, so there was no
leaving before you leave. (In truth, I was never very
interested in children, never babysat them, I found
them very noisy and messy, and the first baby I ever
held was my own, which is why I was too nervous
to give him a bath for six months.) BUT then I met
my beloved husband and my life changed. I wanted
to have children and I was lucky enough to be able
to, and although I had plenty of role models of what
Slaughter calls superhuman women friends, who
had full-time demanding careers and kids at home, I
didnt want to live that way. And I didnt think I could.
I was lucky that, unlike Liddy in my novel, I made a
choice to switch jobs, before I had a nervous breakdown! To be clear, I never intended to give up workI
just recognized that the eight-to-late hours of TV
and film production would mean a life of permanent
jet-laglike exhaustion and hardly ever seeing my
family. So I used my experience of editing and producing screenplays to become a writer myself, which

allowed me to juggle my home and work life more efficiently (on a good day, that is!). When I read Slaughter describing how having control over your own
schedule is one of the few ways a woman can manage a career and a family, it really hit home.
Were you surprised by the controversy it sparked?
I suspect anyone who joins the debate about career
vs. family for women is stepping into dangerous territory, but yes, I was surprised by the intensity and
inaccuracy of some of the reactions. It is not, for
example, a polemic against women who choose not
to have children. Or a set of excuses for why some
women give up work. It is an attempt to articulate the
complexity of the issues surrounding work and motherhood, including the emotional ones, in a rigorous
but humane way.
To me, it is clear that Slaughter s article is rooted
in personal experience; is written for (her) demographic: highly educated, well-off women who are
privileged enough to have choices in the first place;
and is directed specifically toward women (and men)
who are interested in how to manage the demands
of a family and a careerwhich leads to a broader
discussion of the failure of workplace policies on this
issue. It shouldnt be judged on what it is NOT about.
Since Slaughter s article, other influential women
have shared their stories, like Sheryl Sandberg with
Lean In . What did you think of the book?
I read it soon after it came out in 2013. Of course,
it is an amazing piece of work and I recognize its
importance on so many issues for women, perhaps
particularly for younger women. But being in my
forties at that time, having a career and a family
myself, having seen several of my brilliant friends
have to adapt to (and their careers suffer because
of ) the demands of divorce, or children with disabilities, or not enough money, or simply not enough
sleep, I felt uncomfortable with, and a bit scared
by, the emphasis on self-confidence and ambition
rather than institutional change. I was Team AnneMarie Slaughter all the way, frankly. But on this
Mother s Day 2016, I was moved by Sandberg s post
on Facebook, particularly the line I did not really
get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are
overwhelmed at home. It takes a very brave person
to write so authentically, and I admire and applaud
her for it. This is also one of the main themes of
TheReal Liddy James .

The character of Liddy James is refreshingly h uman:

flawed, wounded yet resilient, and unpredictable. How
did she emerge? Is she based on a
nyone you know?
As Peter, Liddys ex-husband, describes her in the
book, Liddy is sui generis, i.e., unique in her own
characteristicsshe is most definitely not based on
one person I know! It really was the Slaughter article
that gave birth to her in my mind, but at that point
she was only an idea. When I first talked about the
book with Amy Einhorn, the publisher who commissioned it, I said that the strap line for the cover would
be She leaned in so far she fell over . And that was
where I left Liddy for a few months, because, while I
knew there would be fantastic material in dramatizing these issues, it took time for her to emerge as a
rounded and authentic character. In fact, it was by
writing certain scenes and seeing how she b
ehaved
that she became clear to me.
I studied English literature at university and have had
the privilege of adapting several great novels for TV
and the stage. What I have learned from the masters
is that it is characters flaws that make them interesting. That is where I always start. The more I thought
about Liddy, the more she seemed to share the iconic
characteristics, good and bad, of Scarlett OHara in
Gone with the Wind . Contemporary Manhattan is a
world away from Atlanta in the Civil War, but Scarletts life force is the engine of that novel and that
kind of energy in a female character was something I
wanted to create.

What I have learned from

the masters is that it is
characters flaws that make
them interesting.
In the end, though, ideas about characters do not
make them believable. I learned that I had to put my
own feelings about women and work aside and write
a compelling story. While I agree with Katie Roiphes
point, in her review of Siri Hustvedts wonderful
novel The Blazing World , that the most provocative
work on feminism might come in novels, my book is
written for pleasure, not p olitics or propaganda!

When you shifted from writing for television/film/stage to crafting novels, did your writing routine change? Does one come
more naturally to you?
I consider myself a working writer and I apply the same discipline to whatever Im doing. The main difference in my experience of writing a novel is that I allow myself more freedom to
experiment and create. I enjoy working within the very specific
form of a screenplay or a stage play, and I find the process
of development from story line to scene breakdown to script
comes naturally to me. However, the way I write novels is to
throw that rigidity out the window, sit down, start writing, and
see what happens. This is completely terrifying in some ways,
and means I need to self-edit rigorously, but two books down
so far, it seems the only way I can do it.
Your father was an Irish immigrant in England, where you grew
up. Although you describe yourself as culturally completely En
glish, you married an Irishman (the novelist Joseph OConnor)
and now live in Ireland with your family. Did that inspire the section in the book where Liddy goes back to her roots?
It is a funny irony of life that I have ended up living in the land
of my father s birth. I was a real city person for many years, but
after we had our first son, Joe and I decided to move to Ireland.
And it turns out I am extremely happy here near the sea just
outside Dublin. Joe and I are lucky that the nature of our jobs
means we travel a lot, and are able to spend significant chunks
of time in New York, but there is no doubt I have come to value
the peace and spirit of the Irish countryside in a way that has
surprised me.
I knew that Liddy would need to make a physical as well as
spiritual journey in the book, and to be honest at first I brought
her to Montauk (yes, back to the house I mentioned earlier),
but after I had written scenes like the one where she remembers Peter saying, She had spent so much time and effort
making herself she had lost herself too, it was my editor, Liz
Stein, who suggested she go back to Ireland. It made perfect
sense to me, and the more I thought about it, the more it resonated with my own life journey back to my roots. As Liddy and
Sebastian realize, my DNA, born from the primordial soup of
turf and water [is] why [I] felt at home there.
What are you working on nexta new novel, a play, a s creenplay?
I like to keep a few projects on the boil, so at the moment I am
writing an adaptation of Madame Bovary for the Gate Theatre
in Dublin and thinking about a new screenplay about Charlotte
Bront. I already know what my next novel will be about, but I
intend to get through the publication of this one first!

AN N E-M AR IE CAS E Y
is a novelist, screenwriter,
and playwright. Her film
and TV scripts have been
produced in the UK and
Ireland, and her theatrical
adaptations of Little Women
and Wuthering Heights
enjoyed sell- out runs at the
Gate T heatre in Dublin in
201112 and 2014 15. No

One Could Have Guessed the

Weather , her first book, was
an international b
estseller.
She is married to the novelist
J oseph OConnor. They live in
Dublin with their two sons.

THE REAL LIDDY JAMES PLAYLIST

Songs that inspired the novel by Anne-Marie Casey

DANCING BAR EFOOT (Patti Smith)

OCEAN DRIVE (Lighthouse Family)
EVERYTHING IS AWESOME (Tegan and Sara)
PEAC EFU L , EASY FE ELING (The Eagles)
WAYFARING STR AN GER (Charlie Haden Quartet West)
MY WILD IRISH ROSE (Keith Jarrett)
SAME CHANGES (The Weepies)
PA CHEBELS CAN O N IN D MAJ OR
I D ON T KNOW (Lisa Hannigan)
LET HER GO (Passenger)
FROZE N (Madonna)
TO RN (Natalie Imbruglia)
O MIO BABBINO CARO
(by Giacomo Puccini,
sung by Angela Gheorghiu)
PUT ON YOU R SU NDA Y CLOTHE S
(Barbra Streisand and
Michael Crawford)
LA VIE EN R OSE (Louis Armstrong)