About this episode
It’s Christmas Eve in Mamaroneck, New York. Ninety-six-year-old Graziella has prepared the Feast of the Seven Fishes, as she does every year, for her daughter Grace and her granddaughter Ella. But Ella, a twenty-something idealist vegan, refuses to eat a bite. So the outspoken four foot two nonna serves her granddaughter a can of cat food instead. Ella throws the tin at a life-size plaster baby Jesus and storms out, promising she won’t be back until there’s a funeral.
That’s the first scene.
Elizabeth Wellington Rollins’s debut novel is about three generations of Italian American women, all named for the Roman myth of the Three Graces, forced to live together under one roof. They’re in each other’s business, they take care of each other, they fight, and they say almost everything through food. Reading it, I felt like I was there.
In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Elizabeth talks about the Three Graces myth as a cycle of giving, accepting and giving back, and how that idea of reciprocity shaped the whole book. We get into the generosity Elizabeth grew up around, the real neighbourhood behind Pearl Street, and why food carries so much of what these women can’t say out loud.
We also talk craft. Elizabeth describes her draft zero process, writing through a genuinely hard period in her own life, and what changed when she started writing about what she knew and where she wanted to be, which was her nonna’s kitchen. If you’re writing something of your own, that part is worth the listen on its own.
The Three Graces of Pearl Street is blurbed by authors Adriana Trigiani and Annabel Monaghan, who has been a guest on this show.