From Divorce Parties to First Husbands: Her new book

In my last post about Penn author Laura Dave (C’99, Writers House) her books The Divorce Party and London is the Best City in America were going Hollywood and being developed by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon’s production companies.

Today, Laura’s new novel, The First Husband comes out and it’s another novel that I’m sure will catch the attention of Hollywood again!

After the jump,

• learn more about her new novel
• read a passage from her book
• discover where the story of this book came from, and
• find out what exciting things are going on with her previously mentioned titles!

According to a review from USA Today, here’s the skinny on The First Husband,

“Annie Adams thinks she has it all. Her longtime boyfriend, Nick, is on the verge of becoming a successful film director, her travel column is nationally syndicated, and they’ve got a great dog. Her life finally feels like it is falling into place. Until, out of nowhere, Nick announces that he’s reconnected with a woman from his past and he’s moving out. Reeling from Nick’s exit, Annie stumbles into her neighborhood bar and finds Griffin, a down to earth chef who seems to be everything she didn’t know she wanted. Three months later, they’re married. And Annie finds herself in a small Massachusetts town — completely unmoored and wondering if she’s picked a life on the rebound. A wry observer of modern love, Laura Dave “steers clear of easy answers to explore the romantic choices we make”. The First Husband is her most delightful work to date, bursting with humor, and rife with surprising insight about love, marriage, family, and fresh starts — in the places we least expect to find them.”  (another great review from Marie Claire HERE)

Read part of Chapter 1 below:

Laura shared with me where the story of this book came from:

“I often loosely draw from the experiences in my life and my friends lives – and take a look at the questions I find our contemporaries contemplating. For me, The First Husband started with one of these questions: How do we avoid living our lives in reaction? How do we
operate from a place of agency? As I was thinking about this, I imagined a conversation between two women who were discussing how one of them married quickly after a traumatic break-up, perhaps, in part, to convince the world she was okay.

I imagined one friend trying to convince the other to leave her quickie and reactive union by arguing the point: He’s just your first husband. I wanted to take a look at the irony of that ideology—and, in the process, have an opportunity to begin to answer my question about how we become proactive in our own happiness.”

As for her other books, The Divorce Party is in active development, and apparently there is some news to coming out soon.  Laura is also writing the screenplay for The First Husband herself.

In the coming weeks, meet Laura in person.  She will be making appearances/reading from her new novel in these cities:

• Barnes and Noble at Buckhead in Atlanta on May 19th
• The Corner Bookstore in New York City on May 23rd
• Book Passage in San Francisco on May 24th
• Barnes and Noble at The Grove in Los Angeles on May 26th

Also, check out this video below from when she spoke at Google a few years ago for their “authors talk” series:

More Penn Authors here with movie deals HERE!

Reunion Time this weekend!:
DT Stories about your classmates: 2006,  2001,  1996,  1991,  1986,  1981,  1976,  1971

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• Laura Dave