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In her debut novel Worry, Alexandra Tanner investigates millennial stagnation, sisterhood, and the detrimental impact of social media. Jules, a struggling writer, gets a visit from her sister, Poppy. They end up living together in Brooklyn as both try to piece together what they want their lives to be like. This novel asks the reader to consider the ways we both disappoint and show up for the people we love. Written with an episodic structure, Worry contains both the chaos of Lena Dunham’s Girls and the neurotic humor of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
I first read Alexandra’s work, My Mommies and Me, in Jewish Currents, and was drawn to the way she explored the crevices of social media. In My Mommies and Me, she examines the ugly undercurrent of influencers and consumers, and how they both prosper off misinformation. Similarly, in Worry, the apathy of Jules compared to the desire of Poppy serves as an apt mirror for the obsessive, hyper caring people do on their screens versus the often lethargic action in the real world.
I spoke with Alexandra about her process writing an unlikeable narrator, and how the Internet is positioned in contemporary literature.
Olivia Cheng
So much of this book centers around millennial ennui, angst, and the perpetual problems of sisterhood. Where did the idea of this story come from?
Alexandra Tanner
In 2016, I had just finished grad school and was living in a studio in the West Village that was 200 square feet. Teeny, tiny. Not even big enough for a full bed. I had a daybed that had a trundle bed underneath it. My sibling was in college and was coming from New York to do a six-month internship. And they had student housing arranged. But when they got there, there was mold in the unit, and they were breaking out in hives, and they said they had to come and stay with me. There was nowhere else for them to go! So they stayed with me, and slept on my trundle bed for six months, and we were stepping all over each other. It was a nightmare. Very difficult and very fun at times.
A few years ago, like 2019, I was thinking about how that time was so much fun. That was my favorite part of living as a student in Manhattan. And I wanted to write about it. And I thought I could either write a really caustic 98-page novella about that specific incident or I could do something bigger with it and see what it would be like to have those feelings of being trapped with someone in close quarters over a longer period of time, fitting in the bigger themes of ennui and the Internet and problems with work and your family. That was the original seed of the idea.
Olivia Cheng
When you were writing, did it naturally spread out into all these other things like Florida, the Internet, and Mormon moms?
Alexandra Tanner
Yeah, I wanted it to be about everything. It has always been a writing goal of mine to write about something really close to life, and the texture of how days, weeks, and months feel as they’re passing by, and the onslaught of horrors from the Internet and difficulties with your family and the pressure to come home and visit. These pressures acting on you as you’re trying to move forward, and all the things that try to keep you from growing.
Olivia Cheng
There is so much sisterly affection and resentment in this story. Early in the book, I began to sympathize more with Poppy than Jules, who is the narrator. How did you think about this shift as you were writing and was this always the intention from the conception of the story?
Alexandra Tanner
I don’t know if I set out to do that, but that was what happened as I started writing Jules. I sort of wanted her to be a receptacle for my shadow-self and issues, and all the things I was struggling with and hating about myself. I wanted her to be both painfully self-aware and self-obsessed, but not self-aware enough to create any change in her life. As I started writing her, I was thinking, ‘Oh, this is someone who’s unable to cope in a way that’s only getting worse.’ In terms of doing the switcheroo with Jules and Poppy as [to] who was more likable, that’s something I did want to do.
The protagonist of the book could be read as Poppy. She’s the one who has an arc, who puts in the work to change herself, and thinks about how her actions affect other people and what she wants out of life. She’s the one with the bigger mess on her plate, so she has more to work through. It’s kind of like Being John Malkovich where you’re trapped in Jules’ head and seeing her point of view, but she’s not standing to gain much during the procession of time that the novel covers.
Olivia Cheng
Did you ever consider writing this from Poppy’s POV?
Alexandra Tanner
I think it was always a looking glass thing I wanted to do. Jules is the one narrating, but Poppy is more articulate about her feelings. I wanted to do something where you’re getting lots of information, but it’s repetitive, whereas with Poppy, you’re getting something real with her actual fantasies and fears. Jules is not able to nail what exactly is bugging her.
Olivia Cheng
Were you concerned about writing an unlikeable female narrator? Do you feel like Jules is unlikeable?
Alexandra Tanner
Yeah, she sucks! But girls who suck deserve to tell their stories too. There’s a thing happening in literature where the trope of the unlikeable narrator is popular. It’s speaking to this deeper thing that is satisfying to watch, which is that the pleasure of reading fiction is seeing a thought I’ve had but haven’t always been conscious of. It’s like something I do in the privacy of my home, but something I didn’t think anybody else does it. And those are often the parts of us that are unlikeable. To bring that to a character who’s guiding a novel, you’re opening a reader’s eyes to what it means to be unlikeable. What if you couldn’t make yourself likable the way we all have to do every day when we go to work and school?
Olivia Cheng
What did research for this book look like?
Alexandra Tanner
It looked like what it looked like for Jules. I was following Mommy bloggers because their content was so bizarre and funny. There was something about super religious Mormon and evangelical mommy bloggers in particular. When you grow up in a Jewish household, there was a specific cultural language, and seeing into someone’s household that was completely different is so satisfying. Everyone’s life is bizarre from another point of view, so that was the pleasure in it for me. And then I realized in late 2019, I was seeing more QAnon stuff. Early 2020, the conspiracy and antivax stuff that was always under the surface came to the top. Watching that take over was really fascinating. And then I would go back further in the timelines and see that those posts were always there or at least the posts were always in that tenor. Mid-2020 was when I was thinking about how this needed to be a bigger thread in the book and metaphorized the feeling of being an outsider, being baffled by the world, and being unable to look away from awful things.
Olivia Cheng
Did the Internet inspire the structure of this book?
Alexandra Tanner
I definitely wanted it to feel like the Internet. I had wanted to do a book a while back that was just transcribing things I did on the Internet, like a huge unwieldy 1000-page book, of what I was texting and looking at and posting. But through a novel, I could balance those interests with enough real-world stuff.
Olivia Cheng
Wow, that ending. Without spoiling anything, did you always see this as the ending for the novel or were there different drafts? And do you think the ending acts as some type of redemption for Jules?
Alexandra Tanner
I did always have this as the ending from the first time I started writing the book. I didn’t ever want to be precious as a writer, especially once you start working with an agent and editors. I didn’t ever want a sticking point I couldn’t compromise, but I always believed that this was where it should end. And I don’t know if it’s redemptive for Jules, but I think it’s like when something cataclysmic happens, you are your purest self in that moment. Especially when it’s something frightening or disastrous or you need to come to someone’s aid, you are purely yourself in that instant. There’s no other thought. So I don’t know if it’s redemptive for anyone, but it sort of shows Jules and Poppy for exactly who they are and exactly where their instincts are.
It was painful to write. I knew that it was going to be the ending and when I finally got to the point where I was going to write it and I sat down to write it, I got a tummy ache, I was sweaty, I didn’t feel well that night. It was one of those things that I had a lot of emotion about too.
Olivia Cheng
I want to preface this question by noting how gripping this entire book was. I finished it in literally two days. But when you were writing, did you ever have that classic writerly concern of deeply interior literary fiction, “What is the plot?”
Alexandra Tanner
I had tried writing really plotted stuff in the past and it didn’t feel true to what I wanted to observe about my characters and the physical world. I decided when I started writing this book that it was going to be for me, that it was going to have this episodic, cumulative thing where hopefully everything adds up to something. I didn’t want it to follow this traditional pyramid arc kind of thing. And that was a huge fear during the writing, that this had no plot! How am I going to get people to read it? And I still have no idea how people are going to react when it’s coming out, but I wanted to push the boundaries of what plotless fiction can do.
FICTION
Worry
by Alexandra Tanner
Scribner
Published March 26th, 2024
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