A Reason to See You Again Cover Reveal

On Inspiration and Interpretation

Hi friends.

I don’t know how much time you spent on Etsy during the pandemic, but for me, it was a lot. As I scrolled, I kept seeing these vintage puffy-sleeved shirts with high lace collars. At first I thought I wanted to buy them all for myself. But instead I just saved the images to my desktop, thinking of who might have worn them originally—circa 1985!—and landing on the idea of it being someone’s “fun aunt.”

Maybe you had one? A glass of wine in her hand, cool earrings, a quick retort at the ready. Maybe she had no plans to have children, so she spoiled you rotten. Sometimes she left long messages on your family’s answering machine, other times she showed up whenever she felt like it. Maybe she was in love with her career. Maybe she was great at her job—she’s a real math whiz. Meanwhile your mom still couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Your aunt drove her nuts.

That was my starting point for this novel. This aunt. This woman. And then things started to click for me. Because she wasn’t always an aunt. Her sister wasn’t always a mother. They weren’t always adults trying to survive in the world. And they had parents, with their own secrets. So I started at the beginning. Before cellphones, before the internet, at a time when people had to actually talk to each other if they had something they wanted to say. And to my surprise, the book ended up spanning forty years.

But when the talented and smart cover designer for this book, Allison Saltzman, asked what decade inspired me the most when I was writing it, I answered without thinking. The 1980s. Because A Reason to See You Again doesn’t start there or end there, but that’s where it all began for me. A shirt, a feeling, a look, an aesthetic, a vibe, a setting, a character wearing her clothes like she’s a superstar, shining a light so bright you almost can’t see her dirty secrets. Almost.

Anyway, here’s the gorgeous cover of my tenth (Ten books! Wild!) book. I couldn’t love it more.

To top it all off, last week I got this lovely, lovely blurb from an incredible writer I admire so much:

“I loved leaping through time with the four Cohen women—Frieda, Nancy, Shelly, and Jess. Each woman is intelligent and self-sabotaging—the way we all can be—and they love each other fiercely, often from a careful distance. Attenberg’s writing is sharp and incisive—it’s a pleasure to watch the patterns she created unfold over forty years of these women’s lives.”—Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward

I can’t wait for you all to read A Reason to See You Again. It comes out September 24, 2024. You can pre-order this book from all the usual suspects. However, if you order through our friends at Books are Magic, you get a signed, personalized copy plus cool stickers. I hope you’ll consider it.

Thanks for going along for the ride these past few years as I figured out to write this book.

Hope you’re having a steady week.

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on twitter and instagram.