Author Interviewing Characters: Gill Paul
Author Interviewing Characters
International bestselling author Gill Paul returns with The Manhattan Girls, a novel about famous wit Dorothy Parker and three of her friends – Jane Grant, Winifred Lenihan, and Peggy Leech – who started a bridge group in 1920s New York City. Against the backdrop of louche speakeasies and scary bootleggers, rising hemlines and infectious jazz, they gossiped, quarrelled, supported each other through setbacks – and tried their best to keep dear Dottie safe. Here, they are interviewed by the novel’s author.
GP: You belonged to the first generation of women to have fulfilling careers, to rent your own apartments, and to support yourselves financially. I wonder how much you were aware of being pioneers at the time?
Jane: We weren’t exactly trudging west on a wagon trail, but I guess it was tough being the first woman reporter at the New York Times. Some of the boys were less than welcoming…
Peggy: They called you Fluff, didn’t they? And sent you out on fake stories.
Jane: Imbeciles, the lot of them.
Winifred: You were a pioneer, Peggy – the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for History! And not once, but twice.
Peggy (blushing): That was later… I was never as famous as you became after starring in the premiere of Saint Joan. For months, I couldn’t buy a magazine that didn’t have articles on your skin care and fashion advice. The words women’s editors put in your mouth were hilarious!
Winifred: If you ever hear me talk about skin care, please don’t hesitate to shoot me.
Dottie: You three were all pioneers. I just wrote little ditties that magazines occasionally paid a few shekels for. Frankly, I don’t think I earned enough to keep myself in spring hats and whiskey.
Jane: No one earned enough to keep you in whiskey…
Winifred: Dottie, don’t be modest. Your first poetry collection was an instant bestseller. They had to keep reprinting.
Dottie: I was hoping someone would mention that.
Peggy: You girls were all such massive successes, I was flattered you included me in your bridge group.
Dottie: You baked the best cookies, that’s why. Men don’t make passes at girls with skinny asses.
GP: As well as career and financial freedom, you had a level of sexual freedom that previous generations of women hadn’t experienced. How did that feel?
(All heads turn to look at Dottie)
Dottie: I’m not the one to ask. My strategy is to pick unavailable men, fall desperately in love, humiliate myself thoroughly, then crack up when they leave me. After a week or so to recover, I begin the whole cycle again.
Winifred (sternly): But you’ve changed, haven’t you? We agreed there would be no more melodramas and mad dashes to hospital.
Dottie: For me to behave sensibly around men, I’d need brain surgery. And frankly I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy…
Jane: Don’t joke about it, Dottie!
Dottie: Isn’t that what I get paid for?
Jane: I suppose the biggest difference for me was that we could get diaphragms from the Margaret Sanger clinic, so there wasn’t that nail-biting anguish every month…
Peggy: Contraception changed everything. I was mortified to be a virgin, but the alternative was too daunting until I got my trusty wishbone.
Dottie: Of course, you didn’t need prophylactics, Winifred.
Winifred: What a hideous word! It sounds like a cure for constipation rather than an inducement to love-making.
GP: What’s your idea of a fun night out in Jazz Age Manhattan?
Jane: Dancing till you drop.
Dottie: Good-quality hooch.
Peggy: Seeing one of Winifred’s plays.
Winifred: The company of you three girls.
Dottie (with wistful look): And Charlie MacArthur.
The others (in unison): Nooooooo!!!
Jane: Someone find the handcuffs. Don’t let her leave the room.
Winifred: Say fifty Hail Marys, Dottie.
Peggy: Repeat after me: “I am done with Charlie forever and ever, amen.”
Dottie: I’ll say one thing for him – that man knew how to have fun. Even if he was having it with other women the length and breadth of Manhattan. (She shudders) Oh God, whenever I shudder at the thought of men, I’m about to fall in love again.
—
Gill Paul is the bestselling author of twelve historical novels, many of them about real historical women she thinks have been marginalized or misjudged by historians. Her novels have reached the top of the USA Today, Wall Street Journal and kindle charts, and been translated into twenty-two languages. Gill lives in London where she swims daily in a wild pond, and speaks at libraries and literary festivals on topics ranging from Tutankhamun to the Romanovs.
THE MANHATTAN GIRLS
It’s a 1920s version of Sex and the City, as Dorothy Parker—one of the wittiest women who ever wielded a pen—and her three friends navigate life, love, and careers in New York City. Perfect for fans of Fiona Davis, Beatriz Williams, and Renée Rosen.
NEW YORK CITY 1921: The war is over, fashions are daring, and bootleg liquor is abundant. Here four extraordinary women form a bridge group that grows into a firm friendship.
Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and more fragile than she seems. Jane Grant: first female reporter for the New York Times, and determined to launch a new magazine she calls The New Yorker. Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress, a casting-couch target. And Peggy Leech: magazine assistant by day, brilliant novelist by night.
Their romances flourish and falter while their goals sometimes seem impossible to reach and their friendship deepens against the backdrop of turbulent New York City, where new speakeasies open and close, jazz music flows through the air, and bathtub gin fills their glasses.
They gossip, they comfort each other, and they offer support through the setbacks. But their biggest challenge is keeping their dear friend Dottie safe from herself.
In this brilliant new novel from the bestselling and acclaimed author of Jackie and Maria and The Secret Wife, readers will fall right into Jazz Age New York and into the inner lives of these groundbreaking, influential women.
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Category: Interviews, On Writing
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