Star of Lisa Zeidner's fourth novel is "fierce, funny and falling apart"
Archived article from Sep 24, 1999
By Caroline Yount
Lisa Zeidner was frustrated with the women she encountered. Bouncy young women caught up in the dating scene. Older women, maternal and desexualized. They didn't seem real.
In one sense, these women could never be "real," since they were all characters in novels she had read. But Zeidner, novelist, poet and professor of English at Rutgers-Camden, still found them unbelievable. "These characters and their appointed roles have nothing to do with the lives of most women I know."
So she set out to write a novel that challenged the narrow range of "acceptable" behaviors for women. And she invented a main character, Claire Newbold, who is fierce, funny and falling apart.
Claire is the star of Zeidner's fourth novel, "Layover," released in June by Random House and currently in its third printing. Though the author told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter that she prefers "the writing part to the publishing part," Zeidner has been pleased with the book's reception. The New York Times and Newsweek are just two of the publications that have given it rave reviews. And Hollywood has come knocking.
A "subtle, astute novel ... Zeidner's fine writing is on glorious display," Karen Karbo wrote in The New York Times, adding, "With 'Layover,' Zeidner joins the ranks of Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and Fay Weldon, all of whom have written in the women-spiraling-into-madness genre." Newsweek called the novel "reminiscent of John Updike in its pitiless assessment of everyone's defenses and delusions."
"Layover" tells the story of a successful saleswoman, "wry, ferocious" Claire Newbold, who has been trying "to soldier on," to quote the book jacket, "despite hardship -- a young child's death, infertility, an unfaithful husband. But then she simply checks out of job and home to confront love and loss on the road. During the leave of absence she takes from her usual life, her behavior ranges from the illicit to -- she fears -- the deranged. She develops a scam for staying in hotel rooms without paying. She seduces a teen-age boy at a hotel swimming pool. Armed with a dangerous amount of medical lore (her husband is a surgeon), she pursues a diagnosis that might explain everything."
Zeidner says it was a difficult story to tell, taking her five years, but that she's very proud of the finished product. "It's exactly the book I wanted to write."
Part of the difficulty had to do with the subject matter -- though the novel deals with tragic topics, Zeidner wanted it to be entertaining. According to many of the readers' reviews posted on Amazon.com, she succeeds.
"If you don't laugh, you'll cry, but bet on fits of both," was a comment from Philadelphia. "'Layover' is the kind of book you read straight through, hardly stopping to feed yourself or make a trip to the bathroom -- it's that good, that engrossing. Zeidner's sparse, beautifully crafted prose is right on the money -- the work of an accomplished storyteller and, if this novel is any indication, a closet comedienne."
In researching the book, Zeidner claims to have turned herself into a social outcast, at least with her hometown's medical community. As Claire explores medical conditions that might account for her outrageous behavior, Zeidner found herself barraging doctors with endocrinological questions at cocktail parties in an effort to get the details just right.
Similarly, she spent time with the members of the security staffs at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia and the Westin William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh (who have asked to remain anonymous) and started reading Security magazine to get tips on Claire's hotel escapades, which often include staying in hotel rooms and swimming in hotel pools without first registering with the front desk or paying a bill.
She also, as she puts it, "took advantage of the good nature of a therapist friend and made her rehearse what she would do if a patient called her from an out-of-town hotel to say she was falling apart." Since Claire has yet to come to terms with the death of her young son three years before, Zeidner says she "forced her into therapy -- literally."
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