Critic Causes Ayelet to Cry

A review in New York magazine that said Ayelet Waldman was “writing in the shadow of husband Michael Chabon” caused Waldman to cry, USA Today reported Thursday.

The article, by Boris Kachka, briefly outlined the lives of the authors of four different books about families, including Waldman’s newest novel, Love and Other Impossible Persuits.

Kachka describes Waldman as “[w]riting in the shadow of husband Michael Chabon, especially after contributing a Times ‘Styles’ column that bragged about preferring her Adonis of a mate to her own children A recent joint magazine interview demonstrated that for this couple, there’s no such thing as too much information.”

“Usually I try not to read that stuff. For someone who writes openly about her life, I have the thinnest skin,” Waldman told USA Today. “I don’t like feeling that people don’t like me. It makes me very upset.”

Waldman was also asked about her next novel, Winter’s End, which she says she got the idea for after being confronted by several women on Oprah.

“I looked at those women and thought, ‘That’s the kind of person I want to write about’: the person who prepared herself so completely for a professional career, was single-minded about it, then got married and had children and found herself with a totally different life.

“It’s a good life in this sort of Madame Bovary way,” Waldman said. “It’s beautiful and perfect and seems to be just what you want but ends up becoming a gilded cage.”

Check out the full interview here.



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