Hannah Selinger is the author of the memoir Cellar Rar: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly and a James Beard Award-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, and elsewhere. Now, her debut novel has arrived on bookshelves, bringing her sharp eye for power, class, and human behavior into the world of fiction.
Valley of the Moms is a sharp, twisty thriller set in an affluent Massachusetts suburb where school politics can be as vicious as any crime. When Anna Plummer challenges an exclusionary PTO policy, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that culminates a year later with her death and her husband’s determination to uncover what really happened. Told through alternating timelines and perspectives, the novel explores grief, privilege, social status, and the secrets that lurk beneath the polished surface of a seemingly idyllic community.
We asked Selinger to answer our recurring My Reading Life so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
As a really young child, I was obsessed with a collection of poetry called Honey, I Love: And Other Love Poems, by Eloise Greenfield, which came out in 1986, when I was six.
What book helped you through puberty?
Who among us (aging Gen Xers) did not find Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to speak to/of the moment? I hate to be a walking cliché, but if the shoe fits…
What book do you wish 16-year-old you had read?
I don’t have one single book that I wish I had read at 16, but I spent a lot of time idolizing midcentury male authors in my teen years, and I wish I had made more space for women’s voices.
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
Not to diminish the writing of some of the masters, but I’d likely focus any class of my own on more contemporary artists. I read a lot, and across-the-board, and the books that draw me to them differ in scope. I like to read sweeping family sagas, small town stories, tales that focus on great dialogue, and epic novels for the ages. I also read a lot of memoirists, who are capable of excavating the internal life in a nuanced way. That said, my ideal syllabus would look something like this:
- Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)
- Nobody’s Fool (Richard Russo)
- Pachinko (Min Jin Lee)
- The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)
- American Pastoral (Philip Roth)
- Rabbit Is Rich (John Updike)
- Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver)
- Kin (Tayari Jones)
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
I wrote Valley of the Moms just having come off of Cellar Rat, which was a memoir, so I wanted to immerse myself in a very different literary landscape. My book, as I see it, is both a literary thriller and extremely rooted in a sense of place. Looking back to what I was reading at the time, I can see how thrillers and books informed by their surroundings really helped me shape the narrative–books like The God of the Woods (Liz Moore); The Searcher (Tana French); The Hunter (Tana French); Walden (Henry David Thoreau); and Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout).
What books are on your nightstand now?
I’ll concede here that I read a lot of books, and that I read them pretty fast. This year, I’m at nearly 50 so far. So by the time this publishes, I’m likely to be through this nightstand list, but, for now, this is my TBR (with a few recently read picks in here, just for fun). I rarely stick to genre, and I also read a mix of both fiction and nonfiction.
The Things We Never Say (Elizabeth Strout)
John of John (Douglas Stuart)
The Complex (Karan Mahajan)
Recently read: A Violent Masterpiece (Jordan Harper); The Keeper (Tana French)