Mother and daughter authors dish the dirt
Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella makes real life funny
Lisa Scottoline, 63, and her daughter, Francesca Serritella, 32, like to “take real life and make it funny.” They do just that in their essay collections, the latest of which is “I See Life Through Rosé-Colored Glasses” (St. Martin’s Press).
In alternating chapters, the pair share effervescent “true stories and confessions” about everything from their mad love for dogs, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper (Scottoline’s celebrity crush) to dishing about their own relationship. Scottoline is also the author of many USA TODAY best-selling thrillers, including April’s “After Anna.”
The duo joined USA TODAY in New York for a live #BookmarkThis video chat. Highlights:
Question: One of your collections is called “Best Friends, Occasional Enemies.” So you are best friends who sometimes fight and, as you joke, forget about it after the second glass of rosé?
Francesca Serritella: We call them our Chihuahua fights. They’re very ferocious, then they break up, and no blood is actually shed. We want with these books to show a true version of mother-and-daughter friendship as adults. A lot of my girlfriends are very close to their mothers. I don’t know if it’s generational or we’re better able to keep in touch with (smart)phones, but whether you’re in a fight with your mother or not, when something really good, or really bad, happens, your mom is your first phone call. We do have our friction; it takes a bit of evolution to go from that child motherdaughter dynamic to “OK, I’m 30 now, you can trust me to tell us how to get to the theater.” It takes a little negotiation to find those boundaries –
Lisa Scottoline: How dare you? Serritella: … but we’re working on it. Scottoline: I remember Erma Bombeck, who was so wonderful, and I love those books and I love family stories, and I like to be funny, and I thought, “Could I write that?” Secretly I thought: “I can’t because I am a single mother. It’s always been (just) us.” I always felt acutely “less than.” I grew up on “Ozzie and Harriet.” I don’t have a husband, I’m divorced twice, I’m celibate. At some point I said, “You should write this, because you’re a family.” The conventional family, that’s changed. And that’s great. A lot of women find themselves divorced, widowed, on their own, heads of household. I bought myself an engagement ring. I said, “Lisa, first, diamonds
are fun; second, you need to stay engaged with life.”
Q: Your titles are half the fun: “I See Life Through Rosé-Colored Glasses,” “I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere But the Pool,” “I’ve Got Sand in All the Wrong Places”…
Scottoline: You have to say things no one says. I talk about the time I found my first gray chin hair and realized I was turning into an Amish man. Or this year I wrote about: “My eyebrows are gone! When did that happen?” Somebody has to say it out loud: The Case of the Missing Eyebrows. What is it like to be a woman? If it doesn’t make us cringe, it won’t make you laugh.
Q: Lisa, one of our readers asks, “Has Bradley Cooper been in touch with you yet?” Tell us about your obsession with the actor.
Scottoline: Like everybody, I’m not blind. And evidently not dead below the waist. I like his relatability; I just think he’s great. It’s a crush!
Serritella: He’s hot – that’s what she’s not saying.
Q: Francesca, you have your own Bradley Cooper story.
Serritella: Since God has a sense of humor, I recently ran into Bradley Coop- er. It wasn’t that I got the attention from him – my dog did. I have an extremely cute dog named Pip (a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel). I was walking, I played it cool, I’m a New Yorker, I’m not going to bother celebrities. He was with his girlfriend (Irina Shayk) and child, and I definitely wasn’t going to bother them.
But then he zeroed in on my dog. He’s such a dog person – he was practically seated on the sidewalk, cuddling my dog. My dog was held to his handsome, strong, buff chest. My two favorite hairy chests met, collided.