Interview

INTERVIEW WITH SHARON BOORSTIN
Author of COOKIN’ FOR LOVE

1) ON THE BACK COVER, IT SAYS YOUR NOVEL WAS “INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY.” HOW MUCH OF THE STORY IS TRUE? HOW MUCH DID YOU INVENT?

The premise is absolutely true: On a lark, a girlfriend of mine Googled the first man she ever slept with—he was the assistant tour guide on the all-girls’ tour of Europe she took the summer after college, and she’d never quite gotten over him. She discovered that he was now the ambassador to Malaysia from his country. To protect his anonymity, in the novel the country is Switzerland. To my friend’s surprise, the “Erik” character emailed her back, and soon he was writing her letters that described in hot detail his recollections of their affair. Then he invited her to come to Malaysia to visit him. When his wife—yes, he’d been married for almost 30 years—would be in Europe. My girlfriend asked my advice on whether or not to go.

If she had been in her thirties, married, with kids at home, I would have said “Don’t do it!” But she was in her mid (okay, latish) fifties, divorced, and her kids were grown up and long gone from home. Plus she’d had breast cancer and a boyfriend who’d died. I suggested that if she could see it as an adventure and not get hurt or hurt anyone else, why not? How many more chances like this would she get in her life? My friend was tempted but she afraid to go alone—Malaysia is half-way around the world and it’s not particularly safe for a single woman. Plus what if she did get emotionally hurt? She begged me to go with her.

I write travel articles for magazines, and I knew I could get an assignment to write a piece about Malaysia. Malaysia had never been at the top of my list, but now that my best friend needed me to go with her… Besides, I envisioned the novel I could write about our adventure, regardless of what really happened there. My kids were alarmed when I told them I was going, said I was nuts, but my husband understood. My husband is a lot more understanding—and cuter—than Miriam’s husband in the book. So I went to Malaysia with my girlfriend.

On the trip, we really stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the Pangkor Laut Resort—both were fantastic—and we visited the ambassador’s residence, the Batu Caves, and Malacca. And my friend really did have a torrid affair with her old lover, while I acted as their cover. The rest? Let’s just say I had a great time living in my imagination and pouring it all out onto the page. P.S. I was so astonished by my friend’s passionate affair, that I went home a day early to be with my hubby.

2) I’M GUESSING THAT THE “MIRIAM” CHARACTER IS REALLY YOU.

In many ways, yes, Miriam is me. I’ve always thought a lot about food and I write about food, and I used to faint whenever I got a shot or I was really scared. I’d say that Miriam is more neurotic than I really am, though, and my mother is certainly a lot nicer than hers. Miriam has three kids, I have two. In the book, Lisa and Jake have traits like my daughter and son, but my daughter has never gotten pregnant. She does appear on TV sometimes though. On CNN Headline News, reporting for Fortune Magazine, where she’s writer.

In Malaysia, Miriam grows much stronger and finds she can overcome her fears and do things she might not have been able to do. I got over my fears when my father died fifteen years ago. Somehow, watching him die with dignity made me realize how trivial it was to fear things like shots and crowds.

3) IS KATE’S CHARACTER BASED ON THE WOMAN YOU WENT TO MALAYSIA WITH?

Kate is an amalgamation of several of my girlfriends: Certainly the woman I went to Malaysia with, who is one of my dearest friends—we met when we taught high school together years ago, then I was out of touch with her years. I found her again on Google. (That’s what inspired her to look up her old lover on Google.) Kate also has parts of Laurie, my best friend in high school and college (we both went to Mills for a year and then transferred to U.C. Berkeley), another one of my best friends in high school, and a former colleague of mine.

4) YOU’VE WRITTEN A LOT ABOUT FOOD, INCLUDING A MEMOIR/COOKBOOK, AND THIS NOVEL THAT INCLUDES RECIPES. WHAT LED YOU DOWN THE FOOD-WRITING PATH?

You know how families sometimes have a chest freezer in their basement or their garage? Well, in our house—in Seattle, Washington—the chest freezer was right next to the kitchen table. Maybe it was because my parents had grown up during the depression, or because my dad was in the canned-salmon business, but food was very important in our house. When I was a kid, I was what was politely called “chunky,” and I had food issues for years. Sometimes I think part of my reason for becoming a food writer was to compensate. But seriously, I have always loved food and I cook as a hobby, the way other women knit or play golf.

My first job out of college was as a high-school teacher—in those days, if you graduated from college and weren’t married, a girl could be a teacher, nurse, or social worker. When, after eleven years, I worked up the nerve to change careers, I figured I’d like to write, and what I knew and cared about most was food. My husband came from a family of writers, so he had become a screenwriter. I have a hunch my love of writing happened because my father was a great story teller. When I write, I’m always looking for the story, whether it’s an article about truffle oil (a piece I did for “Bon Appetit"), about a restaurant (I was the restaurant critic of the late “Los Angeles Herald-Examiner” during the ‘80s—it’s a tough, dirty job but someone’s got to do it), or the screenplays and TV shows (remember “Hotel” and “Fame?") that my husband and I co-wrote before we realized that in order to stay married and not kill each other, it would be better if we pursued separate writing careers.

5) YOU PUBLISHED “COOKIN’ FOR LOVE” YOURSELF AS A PRINT-ON-DEMAND BOOK, WHICH WAS ONLY AVAILABLE ONLINE. HOW DID IT END UP IN BOOKSTORES?

My memoir/cookbook “Let Us Eat Cake: Adventures in Food and Friendship” was published by ReganBooks/HarperCollins in 2002. When I wrote “Cookin’ for Love"—the original title was “Cooking for Love,” with a “g"—I assumed I could get it published by a regular publishing house. But they all said the same thing: They loved the story, the characters, and the writing, but they thought the two heroines were too old. Old? I had made the two heroines 49, though when my friend and I went to Malaysia we were closer to 60. The publishers said there was no market for a novel about middle-aged women going on an adventure. I didn’t believe it. So I did some research on line and found iUniverse, a print-on-demand company that will publish your book—it only cost me $695—and then people can order it from iUniverse, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon.com.

The first weekend the book was available—it was on BN.com before Amazon—I sent out emails to all the women I knew and had met while on tour for “Let Us Eat Cake,” saying, “Who Says Women Over 40 Are Too Old for Adventure, Romance, and Sex?” They spread the word. So many women bought the book on BN.com, the first weekend it shot up to a sales ranking of 23. The CEO of iUniverse, Susan Driscoll read the book, loved it, and totally got behind it. “Cooking” sold so well that iUniverse decided to publish it as “Cookin’ for Love” under their iUniverse Star imprint, which is like a traditional publisher—they publish several thousand books at once and sell them in regular book stores. I’m thrilled, of course, that iUniverse saw the potential in “Cookin’” and was so amazingly supportive.

6) THE IMPORTANCE OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP COMES THROUGH LOUD AND CLEAR IN THE STORY. WHY THE EMPHASIS?

I didn’t really understand or appreciate the importance of women’s friendships until a few years ago, when I was writing “Let Us Eat Cake.” The memoir/cookbook was inspired by my finding a lost notebook that was full of recipes I’d gotten from girlfriends and relatives when I was a newlywed. I reconnected with many of those women—including the friend I subsequently went to Malaysia with. When I went around the country talking to women’s groups about “Cake,” I met many fabulous women and made new friends. It dawned on me that in middle age, women begin to value female friendships differently than we did before. When we were teenagers, we had girlfriends, sure, but in my time, if we had plans to get together and one of us was asked on a date, we went on the date. Men came first. I think that held true when I was first married as well. My husband was my best friend. I rarely went out with female friends on my own. And then I had kids and my kids came first. I had girlfriends—often the moms of my kids’ friends—but who has time for girlfriends when you’re taking care of kids? Not to mention if you’re working too. And how about single working moms?

It’s not really until your kids have left home—or you’ve gotten your job and your marriage so down pat that you can do it in your sleep—that you can make time for girlfriends. And think how much we have in common when we’re in middle age? Before, maybe there was competition about looks, men, who’s got nicer clothes. Now we’re all worrying about hot flashes, wrinkles, sagging—all the issues of getting, well, old. We not only have more time for friends, but we need them more than we did before. And that will become even more true as we age. Remember, women generally outlive men.

7) WHAT’S WITH THE “LITTLE HELPERS” THAT KATE SUGGESTS MIRIAM USE IF SHE’S GOING TO HAVE SEX?

A couple of years ago, I complained to my gynecologist that after I went off hormone-replacement therapy, my libido crashed. (Boy do I miss my estrogen lift!) She revealed that few of her menopausal and post-menopausal patients have sex anymore—that they don’t want to. “They don’t think about it, or if they do, they think it’s too much trouble,” she explained. Well, I wasn’t about to give up that part of my life. The gynecologist filled me in on what in my novel Kate calls little “helpers.”

My gynecologist prescribed testosterone cream but she warned me that most of her patients won’t touch it—they’re afraid of getting hair on their face. Pulleeeese. There’s such a thing as a tweezers. Trust me: Using testosterone cream—just a tiny bit and only once or twice a week, as directed—made me realize why men are stronger and also hornier than women.

She also prescribed Vagifem, another one of Kate’s little “helpers.” It’s a vaginal suppository with a tiny bit of estrogen that isn’t absorbed by your body, like HRT; you use it for lubrication. It really works. So does Zestra, the “feminine-arousal fluid” that I discovered on the internet and is what I call “the secret ingredient” in “Cookin’ for Love.” I personally tested a few such products before mentioning Zestra in my book and on my website. My husband asked me why I wasn’t embarrassed to recommend Zestra. Answer? At my age, not much embarrasses me—certainly not talking about a perfectly natural product that just might tickle a woman where she needs it. As Kate says to Miriam in the novel, “At our age, honey, we need all the help we can get.

8) YOUR NOVEL IS BASED ON AN ADVENTURE THAT YOUR FRIEND HAD. HAVE YOU GONE ON AN ADVENTURE OF YOUR OWN?

Writing “Cookin’ for Love’” did inspire me to go on an adventure of my own. Not one where sex was involved, however. (I wish!) Last summer, I faced a big birthday, one that made me want to run away and hide under a rock. Instead, I decided to mark it by setting myself a physical challenge: swimming in an open-ocean race. I swim for exercise at the UCLA pool, but I’m afraid of big waves and I only swim in the ocean where the water is warm and calm and I can see pretty fish. And I’ve never been in a race of any kind. Well, as I mentioned, I write travel articles, so I was able to get an assignment to write about swimming in an open-ocean race in Fiji.

I trained for months for the race and when I got to Fiji, I found the water warm and calm and I could see beautiful fish (and no sharks). I said to myself, “I can do this!” I’ll admit, I was wearing fins and a mask, while the other swimmers, most of them hearty twenty-something Australians, were going without. They said the fins disqualified me from winning a trophy. “Fine with me,” I replied. “I’ll be happy if I can just finish.”

The day of the race, I awoke to a rainstorm. The waves were white-capped and the water was so rough, that when I slogged into the surf after the other swimmers, I couldn’t see anything but green murk. I couldn’t see where I was going because every time I’d lift my head up out of the water, rain hit me in the face. I felt seasick and scared and I kept going off course. But by golly, I managed to finish the race. (We won’t discuss how long it took.)

Why was I able to finish? Because Laurie, my best friend from high school and college, the woman I’d had a Sweet Sixteen party with, went to Fiji with me. While I was swimming, Laurie was in a boat making sure that every time I veered out to sea, a Fijian in a kayak would herd me back on course.

When I had called Laurie a few months earlier and told her that I was going to Fiji to mark my big birthday with an ocean swim, she announced that she was going with me. “Since when do you like to swim?” I asked her. Laurie said she hates to swim—that she had no intention of even putting her face in the water. “I’m going for one reason,” she explained. “To make sure you don’t drown.” (By the way, in Fiji, Laurie never did put her face in the water.)

“To make sure that you don’t drown.” What a great metaphor for women’s friendships in middle age. We are swimming in rough waters. We can get seasick, we can veer off course—we might even encounter sharks. But we know we’re safe because our girlfriends are there to make sure “we don’t drown.”

9) WHAT HAPPENED TO THE “REAL” KATE. DID SHE END UP WITH “ERIK?”

Let’s just say that she’s really glad that she went on the trip, that it was the experience of a lifetime she’ll never forget. Neither will I.

10) ARE YOU WORKING ON ANOTHER NOVEL?

Yes, and my imagination is in overdrive. It’s about mothers and daughters, and like “Cookin’ for Love,” it was inspired by a true experience, this time one that I shared with my twenty-something daughter Julia. I don’t have a title for it, but the “me” character in the book is a personal chef, so you can bet that it will contain lots of great recipes.