Georgia Clark
Author Interview - Georgia Clark
Author of IT HAD TO BE YOU
For the past twenty years, Liv and Eliot Goldenhorn have run In Love in New York, Brooklyn’s beloved wedding-planning business. When Eliot dies unexpectedly, he even more unexpectedly leaves half of the business to his younger, blonder girlfriend, Savannah. Liv and Savannah are not a match made in heaven, to say the least. But what starts as a personal and professional nightmare transforms into something even savvy, cynical Liv Goldenhorn couldn’t begin to imagine. It Had to Be You cleverly unites Liv, Savannah, and couples as diverse and unique as New York City itself, in a joyous Love-Actually-style braided narrative. The result is a smart, modern, utterly charming love story that truly speaks to our times.
Author Interview - Georgia Clark
Author I draw inspiration from: Nora Ephron, author and screenwriter of two of my favorite films When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. Before she was really famous, she used to approach celebrities at parties and say, “Hi, my name is Nora Ephron. If I invited you to dinner at my house, would you come?” They always said yes. That’s how she became friends with Joan Didion. She was brutally smart, incredibly funny, and completely fearless.
Author Interview - Georgia Clark
Favorite place to read a book: There’s a slope-y green chair on the communal deck of my apartment building. We’re on the East River, right near the Williamsburg Bridge. Pretty spectacular.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: I really had to think about this one! Maybe Jamie Fields from Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis? She’d destroy me, I’m into it. Although to be completely frank, it would be one of the romantic leads in the f/f rom-com I’m currently writing. I’m in love with her, for sure.
Author Interview - Georgia Clark
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: I’m not sure if there was ever * a moment*, it was more like a point where I thought, “Well, what I’ve been doing so far hasn’t really panned out, how about this?” I guess I never consciously decided to become a writer: I just always wrote. I was a huge reader as a kid: magic faraway trees, the dark is rising, one ring to rule them all. We didn't have TV and the internet didn’t exist: I was addicted to being swept away in an exciting adventure. I have visceral memories of this joy and my hunger in seeking it out.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: I prefer paper books (hardcover or paperback) or audiobooks. I’m usually reading several at once, in different formats.
The last book I read: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.
Mini review: New Yorkers Amanda and Clay head to the Hamptons with their teenage kids for a quiet and indulgent weekend away. The AirBnB is lux—“The house had that hush expensive houses do . . . A house that barely needed people”—but the temporary illusion of its ownership is shattered when Ruth and H.G., the older Black couple who own the home, show up after a mysterious black-out renders New York unsafe. With the internet down, it’s impossible to parse what’s going on in the city. If they’re safe. What to do.
Leave the World Behind works on so many levels. It’s eerily prescient of 2020’s societal unraveling and the need to collectively patch together What The Fuck Is Happening with little information and a good dose of paranoia as to if we can trust our neighbors. It’s a devastating skewering of race and our assumptions as to who deserves what. It’s suspenseful (I suppose you *might* call it a literary thriller?) and it’s engaged with the very real environmental danger we’re all currently in. On a line level, it’s masterful. There’s “a whiskey old enough to vote”; children are “beautiful narcissists”; “Snow, a bit of poetry for what you saw when the signal was broken.” Rumaan especially excels when writing about parenthood and privilege. This is a novel deeply concerned with individual responsibility and the fate of the planet. Tightly plotted and paced, Leave the World Behind deserves all the praise it’s gotten and more.
Author Interview - Georgia Clark
Pen & paper or computer: Let me tell you: the only class I failed in primary school (middle school) was handwriting. And the only reason I failed is because the teacher said “Just do you regular handwriting”, so instead of trying like I usually did, I did my regular BAD handwriting and I got, like, a D or something! Maybe an F! I learned two lessons that day: 1) My real handwriting was bad; my handwriting sucked and 2) Even if a teacher tells you to do it regular, do it perfect, or be punished.
And now, I’m an author with a computer. You do the math.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Amy Dunne in Gone Girl? Ha ha, JK. I always loved George in the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton. Adventurous, gender-fluid, occasionally grumpy. If I can be best friends with a child, she/they was pretty cool.
Author Interview - Georgia Clark
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: Running a wildlife sanctuary for rescued farm animals or injured natives, sort of eating really healthily/am always glowing OR running a community theater in a charming small town where one day the murder mystery we’re all starring in happens for real, and the eccentric cast (which I’m in) have to solve it for real!
Favorite decade in fashion history: 80s. My wife has just discovered Stranger Things (I forced her) and we’re onto season three. I only want to wear what Nancy Wheeler is wearing. I love Nancy. What a character arc! Also Eleven’s shortie black jumpsuit in the first mall montage. I could pull that off, for sure. I love the 80s and I love Stranger Things!
Place I’d most like to travel: Greek Islands. Japan. Outer space. New York in the 80s. Three hundred years into the future. London in 2012. Alaska.
My signature drink: You will have my heart forever if you buy me a spicy margherita with a chill-salt rim (the rim is very important). I think being bought a drink is the ultimate flirtatious gesture, which is probably because I’m a high-functioning alcoholic.
Favorite artist: The first person who sprung to mind was Yves Klein. So curious, haven’t thought about old Yves in a while. I wrote a paper about him when I was in a first-year university class that Ben Lee was in. (Do you know him? He’s an Australian musician.) Anyway Yves Klein was French, famous in the 1960s. He notoriously used naked women as paintbrushes, but he was also a true eccentric, I think. Once he exhibited nothing - well, not nothing, but like, the space between art and the viewer - the space in between - the meaning - but it was actually just a an empty room painted white. 3000 Parisians went to opening night. He sold some of that nothing for gold leaf and threw half of it in the Seine. What a kook. He worked a lot in monochromes and patented a color: a brilliant lapis lazuli blue called Yves Klein Blue. The Art Gallery of New South Wales used to have a stature by him in that color that I would visit when I lived down under. I’d go on my own and lie in the sun in their (weirdly always empty) rooftop garden, smoke a little weed, then wander around the museum for an afternoon, having epiphanies.
Number one on my bucket list: I’d like to go to Australia, the place I was born, without having to pay $3,000 to for a mandatory quarantine. That’d be sick, mate. I’d like to visit my friend Mai and her new baby in London. A month in Mallorca at the end of the summer. Four weeks of slow heat and Spanish wine and cheese and hanging with family and swims in water so clear you can see the wrinkled ocean floor.
Anything else you'd like to add: If you’ve read this far, you’re probably gonna like my new book! It Had To Be You has five interwoven love stories (Love Actually but make it 2021) is a reminder that life-changing love is out there for all of us, at any age, no mater who you are. Babes, if that sounds up your alley this charming buzzy new novel is only a few clicks away. Support your local independent bookstores by buying from Bookshop.org!
Find more from the author:
https://www.instagram.com/georgialouclark/
https://www.facebook.com/georgiaclarkwriter
https://twitter.com/georgialouclark
Author Bio: Georgia Clark is a novelist and performer. She's the author of It Had To Be You, The Regulars, The Bucket List, and others. She’s also the host and founder of the popular storytelling night, Generation Women. A native Australian, she lives in Brooklyn with her hot wife and a fridge full of cheese.
