Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Laura & Emma
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://kategreathead.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Married to writer Teddy Wayne.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | n 2017039257 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017039257 |
| HEADING: | Greathead, Kate |
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| 005 | 20170703104749.0 |
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| 040 | __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |
| 053 | _0 |a PS3607.R42865 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Greathead, Kate |
| 670 | __ |a Laura & Emma, 2018: |b ECIP t.p. (Kate Greathead) |
| 670 | __ |a Amazon website, viewed July 3, 2017 |b (Laura & Emma: about the author: Kate Greathead is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College; she was a subject in the American version of the British Up documentary series; lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Teddy Wayne; Laura & Emma is her first novel) |
PERSONAL
Married Teddy Wayne.
EDUCATION:Wesleyan University, graduated; Warren Wilson College, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Appeared in the documentary series, British Up.
WRITINGS
Contributor to publications, including the New York Times, New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, as well as to the Moth Radio Hour radio program.
SIDELIGHTS
Kate Greathead is a writer based in Brooklyn New York. She holds degrees from Wesleyan University and Warren Wilson College. Greathead appeared in the documentary series, British Up. Her writing has been featured in publications, including the New York Times, New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, as well as on the Moth Radio Hour radio program.
In 2018, Greathead released her first book, Laura & Emma. In this novel, she tells the story of the titular mother and daughter. Laura was raised on the posh Upper East Side of Manhattan, and her trust fund supports her as she moves into her thirties. Despite her privilege, she espouses progressive beliefs. She is shocked when she becomes pregnant after a one-time encounter with a friend of her brother. Laura raises her daughter, Emma, in New York City, accepting help from her family. Emma’s distinct personality causes Laura to see life differently.
In an interview with Cynthia Rockwell, contributor to the Wesleyan University blog, discussed the complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships and how they make for interesting subjects. She stated: “I can’t speak for all mother/daughter relationships but I suspect in most there’s a volatility that’s just as intense as a romantic one, an undercurrent of jealousy, resentment, hurt, contempt, and neediness complicating the love. It might rarely erupt, but it’s there, simmering beneath the surface.”
Chelsea Leu, reviewer on the Rumpus website, suggested: “There are genuinely affecting moments of pathos, when Laura remembers a rare tender moment between her parents or a game she and Emma used to play. The novel is portrait, not polemic; its arc follows the artless path of life itself. And it’s also curiously hard to pin down.” However, Leu concluded: “It felt, ultimately, like Laura & Emma was undermining its own existence by pressing the point: that the story of this privileged white woman was worth paying attention to. But the world doesn’t need to be convinced that the stories of privileged white women are worth.” Writing on the Vox website, Constance Grady remarked: “Despite this novel’s enormous restraint and despite the surface pleasures of its comedy, Laura & Emma is a profoundly sad book. It’s loneliness in the form of a novel, and beneath its fierce quietness, there’s an ache that never stops.”
Karen Core, contributor to the online version of Library Journal, asserted: “This novel makes a seemingly unlikable character sympathetic and interesting to the point that her story becomes unputdownable.” Domenica Ruta, critic on the Esme website, stated: “Laura and Emma are distinct characters whose idiosyncrasies are endearing, their interiors so well explored it is impossible … not to have some affection for them.” Ruta also noted: “Laura must grapple with the existential loneliness that surrounded her at the beginning of the book, before motherhood was even a possibility. It is in these moments where Greathead’s power as a prose stylist and storyteller converge to create scenes that will linger with you for days after reading them.” “Greathead’s debut … is pleasantly readable and enlivened by flashes of sardonic humor,” asserted Sigrid Nunez on the New York Times Online. Nunez continued: “This carefully observed family story rings true to life, but a larger purpose in Laura’s fifteen-year chronicle remains elusive.” A Kirkus Reviews writer opined: “This ultimately rather mysterious book, with its attenuated plot and restrained humor, is like a person who speaks so softly that you end up paying very close attention.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly described Laura & Emma as a “warm-hearted debut novel.” The same reviewer commented: “This is a thoughtful novel of trying to find oneself despite an assigned place in the world.” Annie Bostrom, contributor to Booklist, called the book “polished” and suggested: “Greathead’s smart and original take on the mother-daughter novel impresses and charms.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 15, 2018, Annie Bostrom, review of Laura & Emma, p. 24.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2018, review of Laura & Emma.
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2018, review of Laura & Emma, p. 58.
ONLINE
Esme, https://esme.com/ (May 31, 2018), Domenica Ruta, review of Laura & Emma.
Kate Greathead website, https://kategreathead.com/ (June 20, 2018).
Library Journal Online, https://reviews.libraryjournal.com/ (February 13, 2018), Karen Core, review of Laura & Emma.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (May 4, 2018), Sigrid Nunez, review of Laura & Emma.
Rumpus, http://therumpus.net/ (March 28, 2018), Chelsea Leu, review of Laura & Emma.
Vox, https://www.vox.com/ (April 24, 2018), Constance Grady, review of Laura & Emma.
Wesleyan University blog, http://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/ (April 26, 2018), Cynthia Rockwell, author interview.
Kate Greathead is the author of the novel Laura & Emma. A graduate of Wesleyan University and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair, and on NPR’s Moth Radio Hour. She was a subject in the American version of the British Up documentary series, and she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Teddy Wayne.
QUOTED: "polished."
"Greathead's smart and original take on the mother-daughter novel impresses and charms."
Laura & Emma
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
114.12 (Feb. 15, 2018): p24. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Laura & Emma.
By Kate Greathead.
Mar. 2018.352p. Simon & Schuster, $25 (9781501156601).
The darkly funny way that single, thirty-something Laura gets pregnant in 1981 sets the tone for Greathead's polished debut. Laura worries about overpopulation but, with no interest in partnering off, chooses to accept this surprise pathway to motherhood. And so the curious new human called Emma joins Laura's family of eminent Upper East Side WASPs. Laura, something of an outsider because she cares about the planet and dresses unfashionably, is unable to understand conflict, let alone mitigate it. Outspoken Emma wears her hardy heart on her sleeve from the start, though, and as she grows, she directs Laura's attention to oddities of their world she might never have otherwise noticed. Their story unfolds in richly interiorized episodes organized by year through 1995. Some years pass in a single page, giving due credit to the utter obliquity of time. Most impressive are the ways Greathead restrainedly shows her characters stretching at the seams of their own by-now-inherited restraint, and she paints their immense privilege with knowing nuance. Greathead's smart and original take on the mother-daughter novel impresses and charms.--Annie Bostrom
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "Laura & Emma." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2018, p. 24. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531171524/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=4013c4a8. Accessed 31 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531171524
QUOTED: "warm-hearted debut novel."
"This is a thoughtful novel of trying to find oneself despite an assigned place in the world."
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2 of 4 5/31/18, 12:12 AM
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Laura & Emma
Publishers Weekly.
265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p58. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Laura & Emma
Kate Greathead. Simon & Schuster, $25 (352p) ISBN 978-1-5011-5660-1
In Great-head's warm-hearted debut novel, spanning 1980 to 1995, Laura, a quiet woman in her early 30s from Manhattan's Upper East Side, attempts to balance her progressive ideals with the lavish lifestyle she lives thanks to a trust fund. After a one-night stand with her brother's friend leads to pregnancy, Laura tries to forge a life for herself and her daughter, Emma, on her own terms--while also staying near home and accepting the help of her old-money family. The supporting characters who come in and out of Laura's life over the years sparkle with idiosyncrasies, especially Laura's mother, Bibs, and Emma's devoted pediatrician. The novel is told in short scenes; major events can happen off the page, as with the death of a loved one, which is revealed by a scene set at the reception held after the funeral. Great-head is a talented writer of detail, particularly in her evocations of New York life--subway sobbing, could-be celebrity sightings, the joy of a favorite grocery store--and specifically of New York's elite--board meetings, private preschool admissions, "the impermeable serenity of a Manhattan courtyard," and the specific difference between an address on 96th and Park and 96th and Lexington. This is a thoughtful novel of trying to find oneself despite an assigned place in the world. Agent: Amy Williams, the Williams Company. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Laura & Emma." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 58. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839755/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=936acb7c. Accessed 31 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839755
QUOTED: "This ultimately rather mysterious book, with its attenuated plot and restrained humor, is like a person who speaks so softly that you end up paying very close attention."
3 of 4 5/31/18, 12:12 AM
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Greathead, Kate: LAURA & EMMA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Greathead, Kate LAURA & EMMA Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $25.00 3, 13 ISBN: 978-1-5011-5660-1
Fifteen years in the life of a woman who is constitutionally out of step with her privileged New York family.
We meet Laura in 1980, waking up from a nightmare, thinking it would be nice if she had a husband to discuss it with. The only other time she misses having a partner is if something breaks around the apartment after 9 p.m., too late to call the super. Laura is an odd duck in many ways. She has little interest in clothes, "but what people assumed was her absentminded ignorance of fashion" is actually ecological conscientiousness. Since everything she owns will one day end up in a landfill, she avoids acquisition as much as possible. In 1979, the fashion-on-the-street photographer Bill Cunningham took a picture of her in a Laura Ashley skirt, white turtleneck, and Frye boots; she is still talking about it, and wearing the same outfit, in 1995. Though she rejects her family's lifestyle in some respects, she does take their money and holds a job at the museum now located in her great-grandfather's mansion. Wedding coordination is a position for which she is quite unsuited, but because of the special allowances the library makes due to her connections, she will never leave. In this very quiet life of hers, one thunderbolt strikes. In her single experience of sexual intercourse, which occurs under conditions which are both very sad and very funny, she gets pregnant. Reproduction is certainly not part of her plan to save the planet, but on the day of her scheduled abortion, a sparrow gets into her room and changes her mind. So all-by-herself Laura becomes Laura and Emma, per the title of Greathead's debut. Although having a child should by all rights open the windows of Laura's life, it doesn't. Her daughter, on the other hand, turns out to be a totally different sort of person.
This ultimately rather mysterious book, with its attenuated plot and restrained humor, is like a person who speaks so softly that you end up paying very close attention.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Greathead, Kate: LAURA & EMMA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735802/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=61d05cbe. Accessed 31 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A520735802
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QUOTED: "Greathead's debut ... is pleasantly readable and enlivened by flashes of sardonic humor."
"This carefully observed family story rings true to life, but a larger purpose in Laura’s fifteen-year chronicle remains elusive."
LAURA & EMMA
By Kate Greathead
334 pp. Simon & Schuster. $25.
Image
“She was not a romantically or sexually inclined person,” we are told at the start of this novel spanning 15 years in the life of a seventh-generation Manhattanite named Laura. In her 30s, Laura works as a wedding coordinator — of all things, considering that marriage has never appealed to her — at the Library, a museum that was once the home of her robber baron great-grandfather. When she finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand, Laura decides to keep the baby. Though she disdains much about her own social class and hopes to instill in her daughter, Emma, more ethical values than the ones with which she herself was raised, Laura remains tethered to her family both financially and emotionally.
The years unfold in a series of vignettes, with Emma moving through the stages of a typical, if fatherless, privileged urban childhood, and Laura remaining single and celibate and seemingly O.K. with that. About sex: “I’ve lived my whole life without it,” she assures an incredulous date after he has trouble performing, “and I’ve been perfectly happy.” Laura is an enigmatic character, curiously lacking not only in ordinary amorousness but in any significant dreams or ambitions. Not even her love for her child feels particularly intense.
Greathead’s debut, which often has the feel of an updated version of “Mrs. Bridge,” Evan S. Connell’s 1959 classic study of repressed WASP womanhood, is pleasantly readable and enlivened by flashes of sardonic humor. The book might have benefited from being shorter; it is difficult to sustain narrative momentum through what is mainly a record of mundane and foreseeable experience, especially given that neither Laura nor Emma is possessed of a singular personality or a particularly original or insightful mind. The surprising, poignant and beautifully composed final scene — a rare moment of true feeling — reveals what has been mostly missing until then. This carefully observed family story rings true to life, but a larger purpose in Laura’s 15-year chronicle remains elusive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/books/review/laura-emma-kate-greathead.html
QUOTED: "Laura and Emma are distinct characters whose idiosyncrasies are endearing, their interiors so well explored it is impossible ... not to have some affection for them."
"Laura must grapple with the existential loneliness that surrounded her at the beginning of the book, before motherhood was even a possibility. It is in these moments where Greathead’s power as a prose stylist and storyteller converge to create scenes that will linger with you for days after reading them."
A Solo Mom and Daughter Story: “Laura & Emma” by Kate Greathead
ESME’s Domenica Ruta
A Solo Mom and Daughter Story: “Laura & Emma” by Kate Greathead
Image credit: Simon & Schuster
A captivating ode to mother-daughter love that began with a one-night stand
There is a very clear path for the likes of Laura, the co-protagonist of Kate Greathead’s debut novel, Laura & Emma (Simon & Schuster, 2018). Women in her Upper East Side New York set are raised by devoted if flawed nannies; attend country club events on weekends with their parents; go to one of the few private schools that “matter” in the city, followed by college—preferably Barnard—then marriage to another suitably blue-blooded man, motherhood, and a life of charity work while directing a new generation of nannies to raise their children. And although Laura has no real interest in challenging the WASP status quo—she is reluctant to talk about sex or money, even with a highly respected psychoanalyst—she finds herself unmarried at age 30, a rarity among her peers in 1980. Stranger still is when, after an almost surreal one-night stand (another subject Laura keeps close to the vest), she decides to continue with the resulting pregnancy and raise her child as a Solo Mom by choice. This is something simply not done by women like her.
And so begins for Laura and her daughter, Emma, a life of adventure—sort of. What is wonderful about Greathead’s tender mother-daughter tale is how much emotional mileage she gets out of the smaller, quietly observed moments in life. Set against the backdrop of upper-crust New York City in the 1980s, their lives brush gently against the changing culture (a beloved pediatrician, it is revealed, contracts AIDS from his gay partner), but nothing truly radical or dramatic happens to these protagonists. (If you are looking for a literary analogy to Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, look elsewhere.) After her incredibly strange one-night stand (a deftly handled sequence, perhaps one of the best Solo Mom–origin stories in American literature), Laura makes up a lie about a sperm bank. This lie begets another—the donor was Swedish—a detail that thrills Laura’s WASPy mother, Bibs, my favorite character in the book. The family dynamics in this high-achieving, emotionally restrained clan are explored with deep sensitivity and honesty. Greathead has wrought a tale of subtle beauty more closely akin to the proud and obedient midwesterners of Evan S. Connell’s fiction.
In good conscience, I have to supply this trigger warning: there are moments in Laura & Emma that will have any Solo Mom in the 99% cringing with rage and envy. Laura and Emma’s life reads as a kind of magical realism for those of us who, you know, have had to work for a living. They live in the aristocracy of New York brownstones, where parents and grandparents have an abundance of wealth that allows them to continue to financially support their children well into adulthood; even Laura’s successful adult stockbroker brother gets a generous, utterly unnecessary allowance from their parents. Theirs is a magical kingdom where the right last name can ensure rock-solid job security, not to mention a maternity-leave package that rivals the most progressive European nations.
But don’t let envy stop you from reading this lovely ode to mother-daughter love. Laura and Emma are distinct characters whose idiosyncrasies are endearing, their interiors so well explored it is impossible for even for the most cynical Marxist Solo Moms among us not to have some affection for them. As Tolstoy said in his epic family drama, Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike.” Laura and Emma’s family is not unhappy, but they are searching, like the rest of us, for something enduring in this world of shifting values. When Emma grows up, forms her own identity, and begins to take flight into adulthood, Laura must grapple with the existential loneliness that surrounded her at the beginning of the book, before motherhood was even a possibility. It is in these moments where Greathead’s power as a prose stylist and storyteller converge to create scenes that will linger with you for days after reading them. As a Solo Mom to a son, I have always considered myself lucky; reading Laura & Emma, I found myself for the first time longing for a daughter. The characters in this book live in a world few of us will relate to, but in Greathead’s hands, their humanity is deeply felt.
Have you read a wonderful book featuring a Solo Mom? We’d love to hear about it!
Domenica Ruta, ESME’s Showcase Writing Curator, is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir With or Without You. She’s a Solo Mom who lives in New York City with her son and her dog. You can follow her on Twitter at@DomenicaMary.
Please feel free to contact us with any comments or questions.
QUOTED: "I can’t speak for all mother/daughter relationships but I suspect in most there’s a volatility that’s just as intense as a romantic one, an undercurrent of jealousy, resentment, hurt, contempt, and neediness complicating the love. It might rarely erupt, but it’s there, simmering beneath the surface."
Q&A With Novelist Kate Greathead ’05 on Writing Laura & Emma
by Cynthia Rockwell • April 26, 2018
Kate Greathead ’05, who majored in English at Wesleyan, is the author of Laura & Emma: A Novel (Simon & Schuster, 2018).
Laura & Emma, the debut novel by Kate Greathead ’05, was reviewed by Wesleyan magazine books editor Laurie Kenney, who wrote: “Nine-time Moth StorySLAM champion Greathead’s debut novel offers an insightful and witty exploration of class, family, and privilege in New York blue-blood society in the 1980s and early ’90s, as told through the eyes of Laura, an Upper East Side single mother born into wealth, and her daughter, Emma, conceived during a one-night stand. Filled with an eclectic cast of supporting characters and told in vignettes that span more than a decade, Laura & Emma offers a fresh take on the mother-daughter bond and the struggles of trying to find oneself. Booklist says, ‘Greathead’s smart and original take on the mother-daughter novel impresses and charms.'”
In a follow-up conversation with the Connection, Greathead reflected on the writing process, including her work with Wesleyan mentors, and offered advice for those still working toward publication.
Q: How did your work at Wesleyan influence this book? Any great writing advice you received?
A: I wasn’t a confident person when I arrived at Wesleyan. I had some very kind and generous professors—Anne Greene, Phyllis Rose, Roxana Robinson—who helped me develop confidence in my writing, which made me take myself more seriously as a student and a person. One of my most valuable writing experiences was writing my senior thesis, a collection of personal essays, under the guidance of Elizabeth Bobrick [then a visiting professor in English]. Every two weeks we’d meet and discuss my work. The craft of writing can be taught, but of equal importance, the substance of what you write, can’t unless the teacher tries to get to know you. The best teachers find gentle ways to push you towards your most fertile material. Elizabeth took the time to do that and I benefited greatly.
Q: Any significant discoveries you made as you wrote about mother/daughter relationships?
A: I can’t speak for all mother/daughter relationships but I suspect in most there’s a volatility that’s just as intense as a romantic one, an undercurrent of jealousy, resentment, hurt, contempt, and neediness complicating the love. It might rarely erupt, but it’s there, simmering beneath the surface.
In writing Laura & Emma, I became aware of how much my own mother’s approval means to me. She would have had reasons to be less than thrilled with the book and I was lucky that she only had complimentary things to say about it. I should have been satisfied with her reaction, but it wasn’t enough—I wanted her to say it was the best book she’d ever read, declare me her favorite author of all time, etc. It’s never enough. . . .
Q: What was most difficult in the writing of this . . . (and/or the most joyful part)?
A: I wrote about the world of my childhood, Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The UES is an embarrassing place to have grown up. At Wesleyan and throughout my 20s, I used to take great pains to avoid telling people where I was from, sometimes lying and claiming I’d grown up in Harlem (our apartment was technically on the border). In some ways, this book was an exercise in confronting the shame of being associated with this world of inherited wealth and privilege and everything that is wrong and unfair about America.
Q: What have you found out about your book as you talk with readers?
A: People either love or hate the ending. Unfortunately, maybe more the latter.
Q: Any advice you give to writers—or any advice particular to Wesleyan writers that you could offer?
A: When I was a student at Wesleyan I remember—not without cringing—standing in a circle of aspiring writers toasting each other, “Here’s to publishing our first novels by 25!” When I was 25, I hadn’t even managed to publish a short story. And thank God, because it would’ve been terrible. I think when you’re younger you’re inclined to write about yourself in a way that privileges the “sexy“ over the “complicated-and-more-interesting.” Apart from just accumulating experiences, the more life under your belt, the more nuanced and humbled your perspective will be.
My advice: Be suspicious of anything you write that features a romanticized version of your life. Get comfortable mining the bowels of your psyche. Write as much as your life allows, nurture your writerly ambition, but don’t rush—not everyone gets to be a prodigy, and that may not ultimately be a good fate either. Allow yourself the time to experience life and you will develop a more mature perspective that will serve your work. That said, eventually, you do need to muster the courage to send your work out into the world, which is daunting, because rejection is inevitable. Be patient when it comes to publishing.
QUOTED: "This novel makes a seemingly unlikable character sympathetic and interesting to the point that her story becomes unputdownable."
Greathead, Kate. Laura & Emma. S. & S. Mar. 2018. 352p. ISBN 9781501156601. $25; ebk. ISBN 9781501156632. F
DEBUT Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Laura naïvely considers herself to be living a modest life. She does have a job after all—never mind it’s one created for her and sustained by her family connections. And she lives in a comparatively modest penthouse that is Harlem-adjacent. Despite her supposed frugality, she has never really had to work for anything and drifts along with a sense of financial security and being taken care of. Her passive take on life leads to an unexpected pregnancy that she doesn’t terminate, more by distracted accident than by intention. And so she has a daughter named Emma. Motherhood doesn’t much change the haphazard way Laura is used to dealing with life. When Emma develops into an independent young woman, it seems more in spite of her mother rather than because of her. VERDICT This novel makes a seemingly unlikable character sympathetic and interesting to the point that her story becomes unputdownable. Set against the backdrop of the 1980s to mid-1990s, this debut by a Moth StorySLAM champion will appeal to readers of character-driven women’s fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 9/25/17.]—Karen Core, Detroit P.L.
QUOTED: "Despite this novel’s enormous restraint and despite the surface pleasures of its comedy, Laura and Emma is a profoundly sad book. It’s loneliness in the form of a novel, and beneath its fierce quietness, there’s an ache that never stops."
aura and Emma is a ferociously restrained novel that turns its quietness into a weapon
In her debut, Kate Greathead tracks motherhood and loneliness across a lifetime.
By Constance Grady@constancegrady Apr 24, 2018, 11:20am EDT
Cover courtesy Simon & Schuster, author photo courtesy Pete Pin.
Laura and Emma, a debut novel from Kate Greathead, is a book that insists on its own quietness, its own hushed ideas. There’s a kind of fierceness to the rigor with which this book keeps itself whispering, to the way each restrained and understated sentence has been polished to glittering brightness.
Rating
The titular Laura is a young woman when Laura and Emma begins in 1980. She’s a daughter of wealth — her family is a rough analog to the Morgan family — but she feels vaguely that she ought to make her own way through life. So she has her own apartment (her parents pay the mortgage), and she has a job at the museum endowed by her family.
Laura is progressive; she is worried about the environment and about global warming. She congratulates herself on moving to Harlem and taking the subway in the ’80s, and she is proud of seeing a gay doctor during the height of the AIDS crisis.
To prevent waste, and because she takes a quiet pleasure in routine and uniformity, she always wears “a white turtleneck, one of five rotating Laura Ashley skirts, and a pair of Frye cowboy boots.” Bill Cunningham put the outfit in the New York Times’s Sunday Styles in 1979, and Laura continues to wear it across the entire span of the novel, through the ’80s and into the ’90s, secure in the knowledge that her clothes were once considered fashionable.
Into this placid and ordered routine comes a disruption. After an uncharacteristic one-night stand, Laura finds herself pregnant. She decides to keep the baby, and she names it Emma. And Emma, unlike Laura, is a hellion with little interest in order or routine.
Other books would mine the friction between Laura and Emma into wacky Odd Couple comedy or heartwarming Gilmore Girls screwball hijinks. But Laura and Emma is made of sterner stuff than that. As Laura and Emma progress through the years in a series of elegant, understated vignettes, the distance between them quietly expands and then contracts and then expands again, a torrent of raw emotion under the glacial surfaces of these sentences.
The comedy comes from Laura herself and her Emma Woodhouse-like self-delusions. Laura is implacably convinced of her own righteousness and correctness at all times, and Greathead leaves just enough distance between Laura and the narrative for us to see how foolish Laura can be.
We watch her studying tabloid headlines as though she’s cramming for a test when she plans to make small talk with her sister-in-law; when the sister-in-law explains to Laura that, having just given birth, she has no time for Laura’s visits, we see Laura magnanimously forgive the other woman for her “emotional immaturity.”
But the comedy hurts a little, too, because it covers up the essential emptiness of Laura’s life. Laura is a woman of enormous privilege who nevertheless has no emotional connection to anyone besides the daughter she barely understands, and the insistent quietness of the book, its glass-like sentences, point to the hush in Laura’s psyche, the hollowness of her interior life.
That’s why, despite this novel’s enormous restraint and despite the surface pleasures of its comedy, Laura and Emma is a profoundly sad book. It’s loneliness in the form of a novel, and beneath its fierce quietness, there’s an ache that never stops.
QUOTED: "There are genuinely affecting moments of pathos, when Laura remembers a rare tender moment between her parents or a game she and Emma used to play. The novel is portrait, not polemic; its arc follows the artless path of life itself. And it’s also curiously hard to pin down."
"it felt, ultimately, like Laura & Emma was undermining its own existence by pressing the point: that the story of this privileged white woman was worth paying attention to. But the world doesn’t need to be convinced that the stories of privileged white women are worth."
Portrait, Not Polemic: Laura & Emma by Kate Greathead
Reviewed By Chelsea Leu
March 28th, 2018
Within the first ten pages of Kate Greathead’s Laura & Emma (Simon & Schuster, March 2018) is a line that tells you almost everything you need to know about the book’s protagonist: “The word wealthy embarrassed Laura. It was not a word she or anyone she was close to used, and she wished her analyst hadn’t spoken it.” From this we learn: that she’s ensconced in a milieu of rich people. That she hasn’t quite excavated the discomfort she feels about her own privilege, preferring to ignore it in keeping with the unspoken rules of her social circle. And that, from all of the above, she’s probably a New Yorker—the wealthy ones, in stories, are always seeing shrinks out of a vague sense of obligation.
Emma enters Laura’s life unexpectedly. In 1981, Laura spends the summer at her parents’ house on East 65th Street, where she meets a man who tells her he’s a friend of her brother. They talk, they end up having sex, and the next day, Laura returns to find him gone—and discovers that her brother doesn’t know anyone named Jefferson. Happily unmarried in her thirties, Laura imagines that “what… people assumed would be her greatest regret—not having any children—she considered her greatest gift to the planet.” Then she finds out she’s pregnant, tells her parents she decided to have a child on her own, and names the baby Emma.
This is all undertaken with almost startling equanimity. Laura is coolly different from the rest of her family, an odd duck. She doesn’t care about sex or finding a man; single motherhood doesn’t much trouble her either. She’s worn the same white turtleneck, skirts, and cowboy boots for years, because she can’t abide the thought of her possessions ending up in a landfill, polluting the planet. (The rest of her family is not environmentally conscious.)
And yet, her convictions lack teeth. Laura can choose to not go through with her abortion with little angst because of a privilege that never forces her to make big decisions for herself. Her family is descended from a robber baron whose residence, which they own, is now a museum that also hosts weddings. After she graduates college, Laura becomes employed at the museum as a wedding planner, a job she keeps for the decade and a half that the book spans. This appears to be a pattern:
Laura had never even read the classifieds. There’d been no reason. Everything came to her through direct channels, and if her immediate network didn’t provide it, someone knew someone who could help. When deadlines were missed or obstacles encountered, a person of power or influence intervened on her behalf. Often this person didn’t know Laura: it was a friend of the family, a former classmate’s neighbor, the stepfather of a cousin-in-law—it didn’t matter. Phone calls were made; exceptions were granted; she was put on the top of the list.
When she gives birth to Emma, Laura interviews a slew of babysitters, one of whom Emma takes a liking to. The next thing we know, Laura has somehow changed her job contract so that she works part-time but still earns a full-time salary, with her benefits unchanged—obviating the need for a nanny.
But Laura isn’t completely oblivious, and she’s certainly not as odious as some of the other people in the book. Instead, she moves out of her parents’ home to an apartment “across the street” from Harlem, where she and Emma live alone—but even this comes off as a little performative. Laura congratulates herself for riding the subway: “The people who didn’t use it were missing out on a quintessential New York experience, never venturing out of their safe little bubble.” But the way her surroundings are described makes it clear that, wherever she happens to live, Laura is still an outsider. A evening in the area brings “an off-kilter chorus of unwholesome sounds as packs of hoodlums began swaggering about, marking their territory with gobs of spit and booming voices, while cars of bombastic proportions bounced through the streets…” When she invites Emma’s pediatrician over for dinner, she imagines that “their humble circumstances would impress and move him; they weren’t at all like his other patients”—a sure sign that, despite her address, Laura is more like them than she thinks.
The book is pointed but deadpan about the blithe, self-congratulatory delusions of the uber-privileged (“Life hadn’t required Laura to navigate unknown territory on her own, and the few occasions over the years where she had taken the initiative to do so had all been very empowering”). The author is in on the joke, the prose makes clear. But it feels like we’re left waiting for a punchline—all the book does is observe, and as subtle, artful, and polished Greathead’s writing is, the points she raises are never deeply addressed. Laura’s privilege is merely one aspect of her meandering, quiet life. It blazes out clearly at the beginning, then retreats into the background of the book as Emma grows up, becoming invisible to its beneficiaries and occasionally to the readers, just like privilege does in real life.
It would be too simple to say that Laura is bad because she doesn’t fully grapple with her privilege. (At the end, Emma shows signs of diverging from her mother in that regard.) Most of the time, what occupies Laura is concern for Emma’s well-being—when Emma rejects her shallow, cliquish classmates in prep school, Laura silently cheers her on; when she becomes inexplicably skinny, Laura frets even as her friends and mother compliment Emma on her new look. We’re privy to Laura’s dates with unappealing widowers, her close relationships with her sister-in-law and her best friend over the years. There are genuinely affecting moments of pathos, when Laura remembers a rare tender moment between her parents or a game she and Emma used to play. The novel is portrait, not polemic; its arc follows the artless path of life itself. And it’s also curiously hard to pin down—squint at the story one way and you see a woman’s life hollowed out by the very privilege that allows her to coast; look at it from another angle and you see a regular person living a multi-faceted, flawed life. (Really, who isn’t self-deluded at times?) And if we pay very, very close attention to the novel, it seems to promise, we might figure out what all of these well-formed vignettes are driving at. But I have to say that I eventually grew impatient with all of this. Because it felt, ultimately, like Laura & Emma was undermining its own existence by pressing the point: that the story of this privileged white woman was worth paying attention to. But the world doesn’t need to be convinced that the stories of privileged white women are worth paying attention to—no matter how quiet, offbeat or imperfectly human they are.
Chelsea Leu works at WIRED, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Borborygmi, a humor magazine she co-founded with her sister. More from this author →