Nicola Kraus

Nicola Kraus has coauthored, with Emma McLaughlin, ten novels, including the international #1 bestseller The Nanny Diaries, Citizen Girl, Dedication, and The Real Real. Nicola has contributed to the Times (of London), the New York Times, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Town & Country, and Maxim, as well as two short story collections to benefit the War Child fund: Big Night Out and Girls’ Night Out. In 2015 she cofounded the creative consulting firm The Finished Thought, which helps the next generation of aspiring authors find their voice and audience. Through her work there, she has collaborated on several New York Times nonfiction bestsellers.

Kraus's new novel is The Best We Could Hope For.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

While the novel had many titles over the eight years that I was writing it, once I hit on The Best We Could Hope For it was so clearly non-negotiable. I love language with multiple meanings. This title immediately asks readers to consider, is the story they’re about to learn the best case scenario? Or the worst case scenario? For many characters it’s both. Additionally, since the narrative starts in the postwar era, the idea of the best looms large for this sprawling family, wanting the best, deserving the best, having the best. And falling so far short. Hope is also a powerful recurring theme. Hope as an active agent for change, and hope as delusion.

What's in a name?

The daughter in my novel is named Linden because there used to be a preschool across the street from my office called the Linden School. I grew up on the Upper East Side where many young women were christened with their mother’s maiden names. I knew girls named Galt and Nelson. I liked the idea of Linden getting shortened down to Lin eventually as she claims her own identity away from her dysfunctional family.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self would be thrilled to find that eventually I would take so much of what I’d witnessed and experienced on the Upper East Side and transform it into this story about the abject child neglect of the 80s and Gen X’s imperfect quest to live and parent consciously.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I wrote the prologue of this novel fairly early but the ending didn’t reveal itself until years in. I trusted I would find it but I didn’t know what it would be. Once it arrived however, it seems like the two pieces must have been written together because they are so much a pair. It’s like buying a single candlestick at a flea market and then finding its mate years later in a junk shop. I just trusted everything would be revealed to me.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

People keep asking me if this novel is based on my life and thankfully it isn’t. My parents were married for forty years. I have no half-siblings, or first cousins. But Linden and I certainly share some DNA. We both arrived in adulthood feeling broken and eager to find the tools that could help us. We are both relentless in our optimism, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and we both use art to transmogrify grief into joy.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I learn so much from watching great films. Because the story structure has to be so tight, and the math so solid, it is a master class in cause and effect, arriving late, leaving early, and saying everything as economically as possible.

Visit Nicola Kraus's website.

--Marshal Zeringue