The Author Weekend

One of the main themes of The Author Weekend is fandom: Shy, reclusive, and somewhat anti-social Faye Wader decides to leave her comfort zone and host a fan weekend. But fandom is partly fantasy, and proximity to an object of obsession comes with risk of that fantasy being destroyed by reality. Do you think Faye Wader understood or considered those potential downsides when planning her author weekend, or was she simply focused on competing with her nemesis Abby Schuss?

Loyalty and friendship—what we owe the people who help us along the way—is another theme in the novel. When the novel starts, Faye is still with her first agent Hal Tinder and her first editor Merry Golden. These three have always been a tight group bound together by their shared success. But as the story progresses, hard choices need to be made by her publishing team. Did you understand why Hal and Merry were ready to make certain decisions that would risk destroying their triple-flame relationship, or do you think loyalty in business and in life should be absolute?

The relationship between Faye and her young assistant Jade Smythe is one of the engines that drives the plot of the book. Their age gap (Jade is 30; Faye is 60) and the power and status gap of their positions (Jade has an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop but hasn’t published anything, while Faye has nearly 15 bestsellers) reveals their differences and also brings them closer. Did the ways that Faye tried to mentor and advocate for Jade feel manipulative, genuine, or both? Did Jade’s deal-with-the-devil apprenticeship with Faye reveal a cut-throat ambition of her own?

Jade’s MFA cohort encouraged her to take the assistant job with Faye because they wanted her to “do it for the plot” – an expression that describes when people decide to do things that will enhance their life story and add interesting and unexpected plot points to their own personal narrative. Have you ever “done it for the plot?”

Envy and competition is a constant drumbeat throughout the weekend. There’s the competition between Faye and Abby for fans and sales figures; the envy that Faye feels when she thinks about Jade’s youth and clean slate in life; and there’s the jealousy Abby feels when it comes to wanting Faye’s agent and editor. Discuss the ways that envy and competitiveness can be productive, but how those emotions led to so much destruction in this story.

One of the novel’s central questions focuses on how people define success, and at what cost that success comes. What line is too far to cross when you’re desperate to maintain your position and status in the world? What lies will you tell to get there and stay there?

Betrayal runs deep through the plot of The Author Weekend. Discuss how in almost every relationship, at almost every point of the novel, someone is either betraying someone or being betrayed by someone.

A core wound for Faye is the loss of her husband and the sense that she’s alone in the world—something she feels deeply when she realizes that while she has always considered Hal and Merry to be family, they don’t necessarily feel the same way about her. Did you empathize with how crushed she was by that realization, and by their willingness to betray her with Abby? Could you understand why, from that point forward, there seemed to be nothing left for her to lose?

Jade is obsessed with wanting to write “literary fiction” as opposed to the sort of commercially successful books that Faye writes. Do you agree with Faye that such a distinction is coded snobbery, or that certain genres and styles of writing are ‘better” than others? Do you think Jade finally learns through Faye’s example that, in the end, a writer is someone who writes?

Jade’s MFA taught her many things, including the literary notion of “point of telling": Alexander Chee’s term that refers to how a writer determines when and from what moment in time a narrator tells their story, answering the question of “Why is this story being told now?” Think about ‘the point of telling for Jade, Faye, Abby, Hal, and Merry.

What does The Author Weekend reveal about the publishing industry and the pressure for authors to constantly produce and remain relevant? Did it help you understand how much the business influences the characters’ sense of self-worth and what they choose to write about?