The Best We Could Hope For
An Interview with Nicola Kraus
This week I’m sharing a Q&A with internationally bestselling author Nicola Kraus about The Best We Could Hope For, a powerful and heartbreaking story about righting the wrongs of a family’s past.
We dive into her rise to publishing fame with The Nanny Diaries, which she co-authored with Emma McLaughlin and what it’s been like to bring this new solo novel out into the world.
I read that The Best We Could Hope For took eight years to write. What was it about this project that kept pulling at you creatively?
I had long been holding the idea of writing about a young woman of my generation, Gen-X, who has a complicated relationship with her mother. I thought this woman, Linden, would be my protagonist. But when I sat down to write, it was her mother, Jayne, who started talking to me. I quickly realized that the story needed to show the handoff between the past and the present.
I allowed myself to write an unwieldy first draft, almost taking dictation from these characters. But the next step was to apply everything I know about story structure to wrestle the narrative into a format that would be really satisfying for readers. That took another year, or so — and then we had a pandemic ☺
Many readers are familiar with your bestselling novel The Nanny Diaries, which you wrote with your co-author Emma McLaughlin. You've written many books since together. What led to the decision to write The Best We Could Hope For as a solo novel?
The Nanny Diaries was a social satire and speaking truth to power is something that excites Emma and me to this day. But the book came out at a strange moment with the advent of chick-lit. There was suddenly a mandate from publishing to put pink covers on books about boys or shopping, neither of which interested us. We were always a little bit fish-out-of-water in terms of the marketplace. What we loved primarily was working with each other, but increasingly, we were telling stories that we weren’t on fire to tell.
By the time we turned 40 and became moms, Emma wanted to go back to her first career as a C-suite coach, (understandably) and I had been dying to tell this story for decades. It was a perfect moment of moving apart professionally (but not personally!)
What was it like to have The Nanny Diaries become such a huge success as a young author and how has that experience shaped you as a writer?
It was utterly bananas. It truly was like winning the lottery in terms of how completely unprepared we were for the response that the book received. And of course, we were thrilled that people resonated with what we were saying, and that it meant so much, especially to the nannying community. But perhaps the greatest gift was that we were able to invest that money into therapy ☺
Writing is how I have always made sense of the world. In the bottom of my dresser, I have short stories dating back to first grade. But because my father is a bookseller, and my mother had been a librarian, books held such an important role in our household, I never dreamed I could be a professional author. So, every single day that I get to do this feels miraculous to me.
Many of the characters in The Best We Could Hope For experience trauma and you explore some very difficult, painful topics. How did this impact your day-to-day writing routine and creative process?
I’m not going to lie, I went through a lot of chocolate. At the same time, it was cathartic to access all the feelings that I share with these characters. Even though the circumstances of my life have been very different, I know what it is to feel clobbered, or hopeless, or broken.
At this age, though, I know how to access those feelings in a controlled way, similar to an actor on set, and then step back and shift gears into parenting or taking care of my clients.
What is one book that you think should be on everyone's summer reading list?
I just finished Animal Instinct by Amy Shearn and it filled me with deep joy. It’s about a woman whose divorce is finalized right before the Covid lockdown, and she decides to go ahead and explore her newly awakened desire in the summer of 2020 anyway. Yes, Shearn is a really funny writer, and yes, those steamy scenes were delightful (which is not a small achievement) but I think this book is also important because there aren’t enough positive stories about life after divorce for women. About the power of choosing you.
About the Author: 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 co-founded 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. For more information, visit www.nicolakrausauthor.com.