'What Will People Think?' and 'Climbing in Heels' star women trying to make it big
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Hey, it's Ampere's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today, we've got two novels for you about women trying to make it in show business. But they're also more generally about the boxes women get placed into, the societal roles women have to navigate in order to achieve their dreams. In a bit, we'll hear about a novel centered around women in the 1980s entering the Boys Club of Hollywood talent agencies.

But first, Sarah Hamden's novel, What Will People Think?, is about a Palestinian-American woman doing stand-up comedy, a fact that she has to keep secret from her family. Hamden talks to NPR's Elsa Chang about writing a book starring a Palestinian-American woman without making it all about religion or conflict or war. That's coming up.

I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long-form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.

Mia Elmas lives a double life. She works as a fact checker for a news publication by day and as a stand-up comedian by night. And then one day, she discovers her Palestinian grandmother's diary dating back to the 1940s in what was then Jaffa, only to learn that her grandmother, decades before, also kept a secret from her family, a forbidden love.

How Mia and her grandmother disclose their mutual secrets to each other forms the storyline of the new novel by Sarah Hamden called What Will People Think?,

It's a book that reckons with how the pursuit of passion can collide with a family's love and the consequences of being forced to choose. Sarah Hamden joins us now. Welcome. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. We're so excited to have you, Sarah. Well, I want to just begin by saying it is refreshing to see a book that...

It's about Palestinian women, but it's a book that's not primarily about religion or politics or regional conflict. And I was wondering how intentional was that choice to make this a story more about love and family and comedy?

It's exactly that. I mean, this is the message that I wanted to put out from day one, and especially for an Arab woman, and especially so, even now more than ever, perhaps, for someone of Palestinian heritage, because it's a very misunderstood, politicized identity. And I just wanted to see if it was possible to write a really great story that happened to feature a Palestinian woman who is

American and messy and funny and real and not just reduced to these headlines and just centered around joy because we're not monoliths. It is so fun to see an Arab woman, particularly a Palestinian woman, who is not a stereotype, right? Like, why did you choose to make Mia a New York City comedian specifically? Yeah.

I could think of no better way to talk about cultural stereotypes than through comedy, because it's a wonderful way to be honest, but also to show vulnerability. And comedians, they just stand up on stage and they bare their souls and they make people laugh by sharing these little insecurities. And they want to feel seen, literally seen and understood. And I just thought that this was a beautiful way to tell the story.

Well, Mia, she has to keep her comedian life a secret to protect her family. And we won't get into why that is right here. But decades before her, her grandmother, Zaina, also pursued a forbidden passion that placed her family at risk. And it made me wonder, you know, these two women, they're connected at that level. What is it that you wanted to show about the trade-offs of a family's love?

So I think this is such a beautiful question because this book really does tackle different forms of love. So you have platonic love with Mia's friendship with Katie, her co-worker. You have the forbidden crush that Mia has on her boss at work. And then you have the Zaina story, who's her grandmother, and this illicit affair she has with a British soldier. And

all of this behind the family expectations of you're supposed to marry the right kind of guy. And I think part of this is coming of age for both of them. It's just showing that at any age, you can find the right love that's meant for you. So I think my approach was just to show a very layered look at the different ways that we fall in love and how

how our own family expectations play into that. What do you hope people will reflect on when they think about love after reading your novel? Because we've talked about so many different kinds of love, the love of friendship, the love in romantic love, a family's love. What is it about love that you want people to take away?

I think real love builds bridges and it's just a way of connecting. And this is what life is about. It's just experiencing joy. And I do say that with the full acknowledgement that the last couple of years has been so heartbreaking, not just for me as someone of Palestinian heritage, but just as a mother, as a journalist on so many levels, what's happening in

in the Middle East and Palestine is devastating. And literature has a quiet but powerful role here because it reminds us of people's humanity. And this is what I've tried really hard to do in this novel. Sarah Hamden's new book is called What Will People Think? Congratulations on your debut novel. And thank you so much for speaking with us. Thank you for this honor. It's been wonderful speaking to you.

Hey, it's Sarah Gonzalez. The economy has been in the news a lot lately. It's kind of always in the news, and Planet Money is always here to explain it. Each episode, we tell a sometimes quirky, sometimes surprising, always interesting story that helps you better understand the economy. So when you hear something about cryptocurrency or where exactly your taxes go, ya sabes. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.

Elaine Goldsmith Thomas used to be a Hollywood agent. Her new novel, Climbing in Heels, is about three female secretaries in a Hollywood agency, and they're dealing with sexism that ranges from comments in the office to sexual assault. And when NPR's Leila Fadal asks her how she approached writing this dark side of Hollywood, all she says, before getting into kind of a wild anecdote, is that she had to tell the truth. Here's Leila.

What do you get when you mix the plot lines of Mad Men and Sex and the City? Our next guest has some ideas. Elaine Goldsmith Thomas is the author of Climbing in Heels, a new novel that follows the precarious path of three women secretaries at Hollywood's

hottest agency in the 1980s. It just came out and it's already being developed into a TV series. It's Goldsmith Thomas's debut novel, but she knows Hollywood. She was an agency executive, studio partner, and producer, and she started, like her characters in this book, as a secretary. And she joins me now. Elaine, welcome. Thanks, Layla. So this book is a ride. There's backstabbing, illicit affairs, men using their power to take advantage of women, and

And there was this one line about the three main characters that stood out to me. They were women trying to rewrite a rule book for a place that didn't recognize them as players. Elaine, if you could just describe these three women at the heart of the novel and what they're navigating.

You know, I like to think of it as a story of friendship, of survival, of betrayal, of standing up when they walk by, of saying, I won't quit when they want you gone. But it's also the story about how some of those women...

become very much like the monsters they worked for. And I try not to judge these characters. It was the terrain in front of them. It was the mountain in front of them, and they wanted to break through. And all three of them had one, a few things in common, but...

Beanie especially cannot, will not take no. No just means try again. And yes means love. And Beanie is the character that really wants to be an agent. She's going to find a way in, even though every answer is no, women don't get to be agents. It's the sliver of hope that she hangs on to. It's the idea that if you try right, if you do it again, if you can make them see you, you can show them how smart you are, even if you don't look the part.

And in the 80s, there wasn't a girls club. Let's talk about that because you broke in in the 80s and you started as a secretary, right? At the William Morris Agency? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So is this how it was for women then? Because in your book, the male agents refer to secretaries as sexitaries. And God forbid they get a secretary with a degree and ambition. They're just looking for women they're attracted to. Well, you weren't allowed. I mean, first of all, not all of them were like this. And some of this is, most of it is completely made up, but some of it isn't. You realize that people like Harvey Weinstein were not

The exception, they were the rule. Wow. While they would get their hands slapped sometimes, the bad boys, they were secretly celebrated by the boys on the first floor who had their days in the 60s when they were the raucous young bucks. So again, it's fictional, but some of it isn't.

So how did you break in? I mean, you ended up with this incredible career working with Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Nicolas Cage, so many others. First of all, I would say that I stood on the shoulders of some remarkable women. And I had a rather abusive boss. And it was difficult at times.

And I was able to survive it barely, but it was difficult and ingrained in my memory. But the more they said no, the more I wanted it. I knew I would be a good agent. You know, your novel is described as...

sexy and smart and entertaining and it is all of those things. But it's hard to read in moments, reading the way women are contorting themselves to be what a man wants, to try to have the things she wants in life, which is in places what these women are doing. How did you navigate writing about this darker side of Hollywood, including sexual assault and knowing that sort of whisper network everybody knows and men are celebrated for?

I decided to tell the truth. And I could only have the truth from my experiences, right? I decided to tell it. Yeah.

Do I have time to tell you my Bill Cosby story? Yes. Tell me your Bill Cosby story. I was going to ask about that. So Mr. Cosby was giving a luncheon for the secretaries at William Morris. Very nice of him because his show was such a success and I was invited. And again, when you're a secretary, you just say you want to be a secretary because the personnel finds out, oops, you can lose your job. Or so I believed. So I was there and he came up to me and I had a name tag. He goes, Elaine, tell me about you. Where did you go to college? And I said, Berkshire.

Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. Wow. What do you want to do with your life? I said, I, you know, I want to be a secretary. Really? You went to those two universities. You want to be a secretary? Come on. What do you want to do? And I said, you want to know what I want to do? He said, yeah. I said, I want to be an agent. I want to be the best agent that ever lived. And I want to represent you someday. And I want you to say she was the best there ever was. And he laughed out loud.

And then he left, and later on I got a call from one of the executive secretaries on the first floor who said to me, Mr. Cosby has some contracts and has asked that you come to his hotel room and...

wait for him to sign them. No way. And I was so excited. I was like, yes. And I went to the bathroom and I was fluffing my hair or whatever. And the secretary to the president of the agency walked in and said, don't do it. Wow. Now she didn't say anything untoward would happen. She just said, you want to be an agent and anybody else who's ever done anything with him or for him, they always end up, you know, he helps them get other jobs, I think she said.

And knowing what we know now, though. Right. But she scared me. And she scared me enough that I just didn't do it and regretted it forever until I realized I would have been the person who said, yeah, I'll have another Kool-Aid. You know, I would have been because I felt so seen by him. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Which is so much of what's in your book. And you do so well in this book, seeing the way that these power dynamics are abused and

And the way that people have to navigate them also abuse them back. Like, okay, if this is what I have to do, let me figure out how to create the rule book that works for me. Yeah, the strategy, because it is strategy. The people behind the people are the ones that hold their legacies and their secrets. And this is a book about the people behind the people. And the secrets. And the secrets. ♪

That was Elaine Goldsmith Thomas, author of the novel Climbing in Heels. More than 60 women have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. In 2018, he was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home, citing a violation of his due process rights. That conviction was overturned in 2021. Cosby has maintained his innocence.

And that's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. If you want more, you can sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash newsletter slash books. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The podcast is produced by Chloe Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Mayer. The show Elements for this week were produced and edited by Shannon Rhodes, Samantha Balaban, Patrick Jaron-Watananan, Jason Fuller, Todd Munch, Julia Corcoran, Ed McNulty, Andrew Craig, Christopher Antagliata, Gurjeet Kaur, Natalie Winston, and Taylor Haney. Yolanda Sanguini is our executive producer.

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