When I started my debut novel Lucky Girl, I named the Microsoft Word document “Fame.” Essentially, all I knew was that I wanted to write a novel inspired by the journey of several tween Dance Moms stars, and I knew I wanted to interrogate fame—namely, childhood fame. I began writing with a loose message that children should not be famous. And yet. I started writing a book against fame, secretly hoping this would be my stellar, famous debut—best-seller, known throughout the seven kingdoms, celebrated, external validation all around. While drafting Lucky Girl, I wrote into that tension: Can a good artist also be ambitious?
By the novel’s end, I had concluded that while art is great and important, the people around you matter more. I spent a good bit of the novel trying to get Lucy home to her family. Serendipitously, the same month Lucky Girl departs into the wider world is the same month I’m due to have my first child. As I approach this debut, I find myself continuing to navigate how to both care and fret about the “success” of my art, while also trying to focus on how I can be a good Mom. Can good Moms also worry about their art?
In that spirit, I offer a list of novels that deepen my exploration. These books interrogate how fame shapes our relationships to other people. And beyond that, how fame corrades how we approach our art. Some novels conjure characters that are burned out from chasing their dreams. Others examine how public expectation reforms identity on a cellular level. All these characters—obsessive, hardworking, vulnerable—helped me render Lucy.
Bunheads by Sophie Flack
Hannah Flack is living every dancers’ dream. She’s a working ballerina in New York City at the fictional Manhattan Ballet Company. But over the course of the novel, Hannah contends with how much she has sacrificed in order to reach her goals. When she encounters a chance at a real chance at love, Hannah must decide if she still has the same dreams she did as a child. A ballerina herself, Sophie Flack helped me dip my toes in the dance world.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
When McCurdy’s memoir exploded on the scene, I was a year into writing Lucky Girl. What particularly struck me was how everything McCurdy revealed about her experience working in Nickelodeon seemed to be an open secret. Everyone knew Dan Schnieder was maybe not the best guy, and since Britney we knew that child stars are doomed to fall into a cycle of identity loss, emotional manipulation, and body dysphoria. But when McCurdy shined a spotlight on how the entertainment industry claimed her childhood, people could not look away.
The Ensemble by Aja Gabel
This novel furthers the concept of ambition, both on an individual and collective level. Tracing the professional entanglements of four different musicians—Jana, Brit, Daniel, and Henry—the book asks how artistry is changed through fame, time, and the erosion of a found family. In reading this book, I was inspired to humanize and deepen the side characters as Lucy journeys through Hollywood—especially the characters she clings to when she is without family.
Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion
When it came time to render Hollywood for Lucky Girl, I returned to one of my favorite authors from grad school, Joan Didion and her tart novel Play It as It Lays. Readers see Maria Wyeth sink into existential nihilism as she drives recklessly through a hot, uncaring Los Angeles and the surrounding desert. As Maria cycles through a seemingly endless roulette of producers, directors, lovers (often one in the same) she searches to hold onto any tangible meaning—finding none in her relationships or her success.
Spinning by Tillie Walden
I try to fill my classroom bookcases with graphic novels, as they are super popular with students and a great gateway to get back in the habit of reading. Like a figure skater’s arching jump, Tillie Walden’s graphic memoir Spinning tracks the rise and fall of talent discovered young—from obsessive practices on the ice rink to the accompanying burnout. As Tillie loses her joy for the sport as the pressures of perfectionism close in, she seeks who she could be beyond simply an ice skater.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The titular “Tom Lake” of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake is an idyllic theater company in scenic Michigan. Recounting her summer romance to her daughters decades later, Lara casts the setting of Tom Lake as a steppingstone for young, hungry actors: some, like her former boyfriend Peter Duke are flung to stardom while she lands on a farm, and life becomes just “cherries, goats, dishes.” I was particularly drawn to how Patchett uses the play Our Town as a gravitational force throughout the novel—much like the Stage Manager, the play-within-the-play comments on and serves as a foil to Lara’s acting career.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
Dawnie Walton’s debut novel also unpacks themes of ambition, art, and relationships over time—with the added dimension of race and gender. In the 1970s, Opal Jewel, a Black singer, joins up British songwriter Neville “Nev” Charles to form an interracial rock duo. Opal protests a Confederate flag at one of their concerts, leading to a violent riot that ends the life of the narrator’s father, Jimmy Curtis. The novel further propelled me to explore how all art is informed by race—whether the artist intends it or not.
The Sarah Book by Scott Clanahan
This small, searing indie novel by Scott McClanahan might seem like an outlier on this list. It’s not about fame or artistry directly but follows an auto-fictional breakdown—quite literally—of family in the implosion of divorce. It’s the novel I relied on when constructing Lucy’s family and their fight to resemble, no matter how messy it got. Told in atemporal fragments, we see how Sarah and Scott seek to rebuild after their relationship unravels. (Also, this book is insanely funny! It inspired me to continue to seek humor, even in the darkest of scenes.)
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