Laura Zigman – författare

“Separation Anxiety is a hilarious, heart-breaking and thought-provoking portrait of a difficult marriage, as fierce as it is funny.... My advice: Start reading and don’t stop until you get to the last page of this wise and wonderful novel."  —Alice Hoffman 

AN ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM:Entertainment Weekly * Cosmopolitan * USA Today * Real Simple * Parade * Buzzfeed * Glamour * PopSugar 

From bestselling author Laura Zigman, a hilarious novel about a wife and mother whose life is unraveling and the well-intentioned but increasingly disastrous steps she takes to course-correct her relationships, her career, and her belief in herselfJudy never intended to start wearing the dog. But when she stumbled across her son Teddy’s old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So: the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she’s repeated the process every day since.

Life hasn’t gone according to Judy’s plan. Her career as a children’s book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy, now a teenager, treats her with some combination of mortification and indifference. Her best friend is dying. And her husband, Gary, has become a pot-addled professional “snackologist” who she can’t afford to divorce. On top of it all, she has a painfully ironic job writing articles for a self-help website—a poor fit for someone seemingly incapable of helping herself.

Wickedly funny and surprisingly tender, Separation Anxiety offers a frank portrait of middle-aged limbo, examining the ebb and flow of life’s most important relationships. Tapping into the insecurities and anxieties that most of us keep under wraps, and with a voice that is at once gleefully irreverent and genuinely touching, Laura Zigman has crafted a new classic for anyone taking fumbling steps toward happiness.

“[A] brave and heartfelt book of truths.”—New York Times Book Review (A Group Text Pick and Editors'' Choice)

A Boston.com Book Club Pick!

From bestselling author Laura Zigman comes a heartfelt novel about two offbeat and newly divorced sisters who move in together as adults—and finally reckon with their childhood

A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and she’s developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site, Small World, for posts that help solve life’s easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, calls to tell her she’s moving back east from Los Angeles after almost thirty years away, Joyce invites Lydia to move into her Cambridge apartment. Temporarily. Just until she finds a place of her own.

But their unlikely cohabitation—not helped by annoying new neighbors upstairs—turns out to be the post-divorce rebound relationship Joyce hadn’t planned on. Instead of forging the bond she always dreamed of having with Lydia, their relationship frays. And they rarely discuss the loss of their sister, Eleanor, who was significantly disabled and died when she was only ten years old. When new revelations from their family’s history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart, or course correct their connection for the future?

Written with wry humor and keen sensitivity, Small World is a powerful novel of sisterhood and hope—a reminder that sometimes you have to look back in order to move ahead. 

Toddlers, Julia remembered hearing someone say, were like big tyrants of tiny countries. Demanding, insatiably needy, and all ego and id, her son was still by far the best boss she’d ever had.

Julia Einstein knew that being a stay-at-home mom had a lot in common with her former job as a celebrity publicist—endless, irrational demands, little to no appreciation, and constant hustle. But it isn’t until her husband is laid off from his job and she’s forced to go back to work and resurrect screen legend Mary Ford’s career that Julia realizes how very much she prefers an actual child to a formerly famous client.

For example, her child doesn’t steal ten-thousand-dollar leather coats from photo shoots. Nor does he require a constant, fresh supply of a soda that is no longer in production. He doesn’t curse at Julia, pronounce her name “Einstein” with a thick layer of disdainful irony, or incessantly poke at her with his index finger while reciting odd variations on childlike rhymes like a psych patient on day pass. With a mortgage looming and three years out of the business, however, Julia knows she has no choice but to make Mary’s comeback a success. Even if it kills her.

Which, at this pace, is a possibility. But if there is one thing Julia has learned from her time off from the office, it’s that sheer determination can solve almost everything. After all, if she can get through suburban living with its uncontrolled clutter and playground politics, how hard can it be to resuscitate the career of an aging, desperate has-been? And get over the fact that her husband is a better stay-at-home mom than Julia ever was?