> Zed Book Club / In ‘Maybe Next Time,’ a Stressed-Out Working Mom Relives a Catastrophic Marriage Fail
Photo: Anya Goldenberg
> Bookshelf
In ‘Maybe Next Time,’ a Stressed-Out Working Mom Relives a Catastrophic Marriage Fail
British author Cesca Major's novel is a warning to those who take relationships for granted in a world where digital connectivity demands our attention / BY Dene Moore / April 13th, 2023
Work deadlines. Emails. Calls to make. Cranky children. Annoyed bosses. Anniversaries. Needy clients. School committees. Dinners, disagreements, life.
Every working woman, and mothers in particular, will recognize something of herself in Emma, the lead character of Maybe Next Time, the latest novel from British writer Cesca Major.
We meet Emma, a literary agent in London, on the anniversary of the day she and her husband met, as she is reminding herself to write Dan one of the heartfelt letters they exchange each year. She has a committee meeting tonight for a playgroup her children no longer attend, and she can’t be late again. Her newest author is a needy and neurotic mess, her children are fighting and her boss is inexplicably miffed at her.
“Standing on the escalator, the smell of onions and damp around me, I stared at the other commuters in a range of different coats, clutching bags, zipping up rucksacks. Another Monday, another ordinary day. How man of these faces had I unwittingly stared at on other Mondays? I pulled out my phone once more, a window of time to draft some replies to things,” Cesca writes. “Forty-two Committee notifications now, two more WhatsApp messages from Lou, whose first novel had been out for two weeks. Why didn’t I have a specific work phone? She loved a panicked WhatsApp message. And an email. And a phone call. I started to type.”
The relentlessness of the 24-hour office called the smartphone weighs on Emma as she attempts to have a romantic evening with her husband.
“Ping, ping, ping. Email, WhatsApp, text. Email, WhatsApp, text. Ping, buzz, ping. It wasn’t just the guilt making me tense. I tried to block it out, my grip on Dan firmer, but the mobile was vibrating against his back.”
And then Dan, angry, steps out to walk the dog and dies. Again, and again and again. In this Groundhog Day-like scenario, Emma wakes up every day and tries to change the outcome.
In an interview from her home in West Sussex, England, Major readily admits she is Emma. This is, after all, the 13th book from the novelist and screenwriter, who has written thrillers under the pen name C.D. Major and romantic comedies under the names Ruby Hummingbird and Rosie Blake. Maybe Next Time is, however, her first book to be published in North America. And Apple Studios has acquired the rights to the novel, to be developed into an Apple Original Film in conjunction with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company.
“Any stressed woman is like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m Emma.’ My agent is Emma. My editor is Emma. Pretty much everyone who’s read the book is Emma,” she says.
The similarities to her own life were accidental, says Major. She wrote the book during the pandemic, when her twins were just over a year old and she also had a three-year-old. Her husband, Ben, is a veterinarian, and he continued working throughout lockdown, so she wrote in the evenings when he was home.
“I think all that anxiety and stress of how you do it all, and that desperate desire to keep writing and keep being me, just completely flooded into that character,” she says. “I do find it really difficult to reread parts of it, because it does feel like a bit of a cry for help.”
Major, who has been with Ben for 17 years and married for 10, says people do become lazy about their relationships.
“Sometimes being romantic feels almost foolish, but it’s not,” she says. Writing about Emma losing Dan helped her realize that. “I have tried to remember that and be more playful and more fun in my relationships since writing it,” she says. “It’s such a lovely thing that you have something just for the two of you … It’s just you and the partner in your life, whoever you’re dating or married to, and just putting them and your relationship first for a moment.”
Major hopes it might do the same for readers who are stressed out by the modern world’s 24-7 connectivity. “Take a step back and think maybe I don’t need to be on that platform or spend an hour doom-scrolling before I wake up. Hopefully it might make some people …. take a step back.”