There are so many niche hobbies and careers in Long Island Compromise. What was the weirdest rabbit hole you found yourself in?
I have two very close friends who are land-use lawyers. And I’ve overheard enough of their jobs to be like, This is completely absurd. I’m going to use it. So I wrote a plot that, based on what I knew about land use, had to have been true. And they both read it and they’re like, “Yes, this is close to true.” Which means it’s as absurd as I thought…So I’m excited to engage with the land-use lawyers of the world.
But I think the most interesting thing I learned about was from my friend Elisha Goldberg, who taught me enough about finance for me to start out with the question: How does money work? How could this family lose their money? And I came to understand that you can’t lose your money if you’re wealthy enough in 2024 or 2017, which is when the book takes place. It’s too diversified. Unless you are completely irresponsible, you can’t really lose your money. And when I figured that out, which was, like, nine drafts into the book, the book ended. The book was not a publishable book until I came to that conclusion. And then I realized, Oh, my God, the whole thing is that you can’t lose your money.
And here I thought we were going to discuss the merits of a kangaroo-based diet.
I mean, that stuff I did not need to research….I have a goldendoodle and he’s allergic to everything. And my sister, a veterinarian, said, “Try kangaroo.” So there’s a company in Brooklyn that delivers us kangaroo once every two weeks. It is perhaps the highest line item on my profit and loss sheet. But we love this dog.
Goldendoodles are fragile.
Goldendoodles probably shouldn’t exist.
Didn’t the person who first bred doodles regret it?
I don’t know. We should find him…My goldendoodle is very anxious and our apartment building faces the street and I can hear him bark as I’m walking away, like a child crying. It’s so sad. There’s nothing I could do to comfort him because I’m not an energetically calming person. My husband is. My husband, you just sort of want to climb onto him and just lean into him. But I’m not.
