It was a storybook beginning for ‘Storybook Ending’ author Moira Macdonald
A longtime frequenter of indie bookstores, Seattle Times arts critic Moira Macdonald collects the ephemera she finds in books – lists, bookmarks, cards. One day, she was in her neighborhood bookstore, Ravenna Third Place Books, and she observed a worker sorting through used books.
“I just had this funny aside, ‘If somebody wanted to leave him a note, they could leave a note in the book and he’d find it,’ ” MacDonald said. “And I thought, ‘Wait, that’s a rom com.’ And then I thought, ‘Well, wait, what if he didn’t find it? Somebody else found it.’ And basically, that’s how the plot just came to me.”
“Storybook Ending,” Macdonald’s debut novel, was released May 27. On Tuesday, MacDonald will be in conversation with New York Times bestselling author Jamie Ford for the latest Northwest Passages event.
As a film critic, Macdonald’s favorite genre is romantic comedies – when they’re done well.
“You leave a good rom-com just kind of feeling better about the world, and your place in it, and believing that there are storybook endings,” Macdonald said. “There are happy endings out there. And so when I was thinking about writing a novel, that was something I thought a lot about.
“I thought I would love to write the novel equivalent of one of those movie rom-coms that I love so much.”
Given Nora Ephron’s place in the pantheon of rom-coms, the reader shouldn’t be surprised that the world of “Storybook Ending” seems to exist in the same world as an Ephron movie, and the characters even refer directly to her work.
“When she was good, nobody was better,” Macdonald said of Ephron’s work. “I did try to hear her voice when I was writing, because her combination of just being funny and wise and just her ability to tell a story inspired me throughout this.”
“Storybook Ending” takes the love triangle, a popular romantic trope, and turns it on its head. The three main characters of the book – April, Laura and Westley – are in a love triangle, but none of them know it. MacDonald also gave all three of these characters a sense of feeling stuck, though they were stuck for different reasons.
Macdonald started writing the book in 2022, when the effects of the pandemic still dominated day-to-day life.
“I was thinking a lot about my colleagues, and I thought, God, what if you were in your early to mid-30s, and you’re someone who was living alone, and suddenly, boom, this isolation lands on you, and that even once it’s over, you’re now working from home, and your boss is like, well, everybody can just keep working from home,” Macdonald said. “This works for us. So, you’re sitting at home all day with your laptop, you’re at that age where a lot of your friends have kind of paired up, or they’ve had kids, so their lives are in different places.
“And I thought, ‘OK, what does that look like for her?’ ”
This was the impetus for April, the first character Macdonald began writing. To get “unstuck,” April is the character who writes a letter to a Read the Room employee (Westley), and the story unfolds from there.
“All of them are just kind of experiencing different levels of loneliness and isolation,” Macdonald said, “and I just wanted to kind of ponder that and look at that and maybe help those three people I made up sort of step out of that eventually.”
Tickets for the 7 p.m. Tuesday event at the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center can be purchased for $10 at the MWPAC box office or online at spokesman.com/northwest-passages. For $45, VIP guests receive a book, reserved seat, beverage token and reception with the author at 6 p.m. Students get free admission with ID.