Shelf Life: Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE’s books column. In this ongoing series, authors share an assortment of their most memorable reads: the books that have shaped their lives as writers and as human beings. Every month, ELLE will feature authors with a new and upcoming release of their own, asking them which stories have impacted their work most—and which stories they recommend you pick up next. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to move you, calm you, or change you, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

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Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney has long wanted to write “about what happens when desire conflicts with duty,” she says. Now, almost exactly 10 years after the release of Sweeney’s smash-hit novel The Nest, that time has come: Her latest novel, the juicy-yet-layered Lake Effect, is both a tribute to and an exploration of that messy, intimate friction between duty and desire. The story follows the Larkins and the Finnegans, two families in 1970s Rochester, New York, where their upper-middle-class Catholic community thrums with the thrill of scandal after the Larkin matriarch, Nina, and the Finnegan patriarch, Finn, embark on an affair—and an eventual elopement. Their children, Clara, Bridie, Dune, and Fern, must contend with the fallout years down the line as Sweeney’s chapters hop amongst these characters’ varied points of view.

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what we owe the people we love and what happens when someone chooses personal happiness over family stability,” Sweeney tells ELLE. “Lake Effect is my attempt to grapple with those heady questions.” Yet in spite of those “heady questions,” she adds, she describes her latest book as primarily “joyful and sexy,” though undoubtedly also “heart-wrenching.” She recommends Lake Effect, particularly, for fans of Laurie Colwin’s Another Marvelous Thing, Lily King’s Heart the Lover, and Evan S. Connell’s Mrs. Bridge.

Sweeney was herself raised in Rochester; earned an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars; published The Nest, her debut novel, in her mid-50s, after it sold in a seven-figure deal; was a marketer and copywriter before she became a novelist; and prefers to do her reading “somewhere—anywhere—that requires a passport”.

Peruse her book recommendations below.

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The book that:

…helped me become a better writer:

Every book on this list and, frankly, every book I’ve ever loved. They all sort of sink in and linger and sometimes surface in ways that help when I’m grappling with a story.

…I wish I’d written:

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is a book I admire and love wholeheartedly. The repression and self-delusion, the regret and heartbreak of a life deferred, all packaged in pitch-perfect narration.

…I wish I could read again for the first time:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, which I am re-reading now. I can remember exactly where I was when I devoured the book for the first time in my twenties, during a stifling long weekend on a beat-up sofa in a too-hot living room in Long Island City.

…I’ve re-read the most:

Heartburn by Nora Ephron. A smart, funny, wise, perfect bite of a novel.

…I read in one sitting; it was that good:

The English Understand Wool by the brilliant Helen DeWitt. I always have several copies on hand to gift to people. The book is that good: smart, funny, surprising.

…I’m most eager to read this year:

So many books! I think Xochitl Gonzalez is a superstar, and I can’t wait to read her newest novel, Last Night in Brooklyn, coming in May. I will read anything Patrick Radden Keefe writes, and London Falling will also be published in April. I will have to wait a bit longer for American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee, but I’m thrilled she has something new to anticipate.

…has the best sex scenes:

Ego is making me want to put something a little more highbrow here, but c’mon, everyone knows it’s Clan of the Cave Bear.

…has the best setting:

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin. Now that I’m back living in New York City, I would take my chance with the devil worshippers for a classic six in “The Bramford,” a.k.a. The Dakota.

…has the best plot twist:

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. An elegant and devastating book about guilt and memory.

…got me out of a reading slump:

Aja Gabel’s Lightbreakers. I moved cross-country this year and was so distracted that I had a hard time reading anything until I picked up Aja’s beautiful novel about grief—which makes it sound like a hard read, but it is a gorgeously propulsive read about parenting and loss and love.

…has the best opening line:

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. “Where’s Papa going with that ax?”

…has the greatest ending:

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”

Bonus question:

If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:

Shakespeare and Company in Paris, of course. I’d love to be one of George Whitman’s “Tumbleweeds,” the writers and artists he let stay at the shop in exchange for work. Ruth Reichl’s The Paris Novel beautifully portrays some of the real-life characters who worked and lived in the bookstore.

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