Novel tackles price of politics
Election tides in Washington, as staffers gear up for change, at centre of The Hopefuls
As the Democrat and Republican national conventions dominate headlines and late-night talk-show chatter, for many Washington, D.C., politicos currently working for President Obama, the event marks another kind of personal milestone. Regardless of who is elected the next American president in November, many staffers will be leaving their jobs, or the city, or politics altogether.
Washington author Jennifer Close compares the feeling in the Capitol right now to senior year in college.
“There’s a lot of nostalgia already happening, and so many goodbye parties,” Close says. “It’s the feeling of ‘this is the end,’ and a whole new group of people will come in, which is so weird about the city.”
Close’s observations of living in Washington, D.C., are at the centre of her entertaining new novel, The Hopefuls. After the release of her debut novel, Girls in White Dresses, about a tight-knit trio of women in search of happily ever after, Close had a hard time convincing people that the book wasn’t a thinly veiled personal story. With The Hopefuls, she is open about her inspirations: the city and people of Washington.
After Close, a former Condé Nast editor, left New York for D.C., to support her husband as he worked on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, she found the transition to the new city difficult. But while she initially disliked her new home and its dominating political culture, she also found it fascinating. And so she began writing a story about a group of characters living in the world’s most powerful city, which would eventually become The Hopefuls.
“The first thing I wrote for the book is a rant about how much the character hates D.C.,” Close says. “I think that was really therapeutic for me.”
The book’s protagonist, Beth, is also a journalist who follows her politically ambitious husband, Matt, to the Capitol. Beth has a long checklist of things she hates about the city: the relentlessly humid weather, the uniform Ann Taylor dresses, the driving culture and the lack of decent bodegas.
Most of all, she is both bored and frustrated with the fact that it’s impossible to have a social conversation that doesn’t involve politics or BlackBerries. Beth is inches away from a full-on meltdown when they meet charismatic White House staffer Jimmy and his wife, Ashleigh. The two couples immediately bond, but when Matt becomes Jimmy’s campaign manager, ego and ambition creeps into the friendship.
Close’s own transition was not as painful as Beth’s, in part because she began teaching creative writing at George Washington University (Beth ends up working for a Gawker-style online gossip magazine). She also met a group of women from outside the political circle, and found support in fellow non-political spouses.
Even though six years later she now thinks of Washington at home, she knew her book needed to capture her original outsider’s perspective.
“I was really interested in this world,” Close says. “A lot of people will never get to see it.” Sue Carter is the editor of Quill & Quire magazine.