Meg Wolitzer

“It’s a wonderful thing to see your books come to life,” says Meg Wolitzer, who saw one of her early novels turn into the 1992 Nora Ephron flick “This Is My Life.” Out this week is “The Wife”: Based on Wolitzer’s 2003 novel, it stars Glenn Close as a woman who’s been ghostwriting her husband’s books. “I love the idea that all marriages have secrets,” says the 59-year-old novelist, who lives on the Upper West Side with her husband, science writer Richard Panek. And yes, she assures BARBARAHOFFMAN, “he writes all his own books!” Here’s where you’ll find Wolitzer on the weekends.

I’m usually the one who gets up with the dog. We have a 10-year-old Havanese, Jet, who follows me from room to room, and we’ll go for a long walk in Riverside Park.

I’m a big believer in parks. I love to walk around the reservoir in Central Park, but if I want absolute silence and beauty all at once, I go to the Lotus Garden on 97th Street. It’s a community garden on the roof of a parking garage, and it has little koi ponds. It’s open to the public on Sunday afternoons, but for $20 a year, you can have a key . . . It’s amazing we live in the city with these parks.

One thing I really like to do is cook, and I finally have a kitchen that’s bigger than a postage stamp. West Side Market is a real go-to. I remember going with my mother in our station wagon [in Syosset, LI] for the week’s shopping. Now, I’ll remember something I want to make, and I’ll go for ingredients. Last weekend, my whole family — Richard, our two sons and our older son’s wife — had pizza near Kalustyan’s, that spice store on Lexington Avenue. I’ve been reading Yotam Ottolenghi’s fabulous cookbooks as if they were novels, and they’re full of ingredients I don’t have. Everybody ended up buying spices for their households.

If I’m not cooking, I love to go to Gennaro [at Amsterdam Avenue and 93rd Street]. It’s cash only, no reservations and the waiters recite long lists of specials from memory. It’s just a no-stress, delicious place to have dinner. There’s one thing I get over and over again: the pasta with swordfish and eggplant.

I never had an office in my home until now. I’d write on my bed or the living room couch. I’ll go to the vegan cafe on Amsterdam, Peacefood Cafe, in the middle of the day, and bring my computer or a book I’m reviewing. I’ve learned to fold the sounds into the background. Especially when I was writing about New York City, there was a New York buzz that was like my soundtrack.

Now and then, I’ll go for a Chinese massage at one of those Taiji places. Once, during a very brisk massage, a title for a novel came out: “The Ten-Year Nap.” Whatever you can do to get the work flowing!