Laura Zigman

Harvard Book Store welcomes LAURA ZIGMAN—author of the novels Animal Husbandry and Dating Big Bird—for a discussion of her latest novel, Separation Anxiety. She will be joined in conversation by beloved local author ALICE HOFFMAN.

About Separation Anxiety

Judy 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.

Praise for Separation Anxiety

“I love Separation Anxiety . . .Laura Zigman is an emotional sharp-shooter—she is able to home in on the most tender, revealing, exquisitely painful aspects of our relationships with others and with ourselves. And somehow she manages to come out the other end with hope, having found what was most meaningful after all. And by the way, I can totally relate to the desire to wear one’s dog. If I could, I would.” —Chelsea Handler

"What a gem of a novel. Separation Anxiety is wickedly funny, heartrending, poignantly wise, and hopeful. It's laced with moments of self-doubt and marital mayhem, but also the many small daily acts of mercy and heroism that love inspires, though we too often overlook them. The main character, Judy, is hilariously offbeat, yet very easy to identify with, honest and thoughtful, and I loved spending time with her." —Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper's Wife

"In Separation Anxiety, Laura Zigman has given voice to the exquisite nuances of the struggles we all face in the course of our lives and at the same time leaves us feeling less alone and more hopeful. With striking humor, tender vulnerability, and pitch-perfect portraits of the complexities of our relationships, she's captured the human condition in a way I often don't see outside of the therapy room." —Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone