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March 15, 2002/Nisan2, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 26
Best-selling author brings back old friend
BETH OLSON
Staff Writer
There's nothing like a little murder and scandal to spice up suburban life.
Hence the popularity of Susan Isaacs' 1978 novel "Compromising Positions" and its lead character, amateur detective Judith Singer - a suburban housewife drawn to investigate the murder of a local dentist. The popularity of the novel led to the creation of a 1985 motion picture of the same name, starring Susan Sarandon as Singer.
Isaacs, who brought back Singer to solve a new suburban murder mystery in her latest novel "Long Time No See" (HarperCollins, $26 hardcover), will
participate in the Brandeis Book and Author Luncheon 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 26, at The Phoenician in Scottsdale (see sidebar).
Isaacs says she brought back Singer's character after more than 20 years in an effort to explore the changes - particularly those brought on by the feminist movement - in suburban America since the late 1970s. In the first novel, Singer was a housewife with two young children. Twenty years later, her husband has died, her children have grown up, and she has completed a doctoral dissertation and started teaching.
Isaacs used her interest in the issues of the working versus stay-at-home mothers to explore what has changed in suburbia over the last two decades.
"What interested me was that these two groups of women seem sort of antagonistic toward each other, which ... disturbed me," she explains.
Isaacs sees the benefits she reaped from being able to stay home with her own two children. "When my kids had a 103-degree fever, I didn't have to say, 'Should I stay or should I go?' " And she questions if working moms have enough of themselves to give to their children. "The women who go to work - how much do they have left at six or seven o'clock, when they come home? Quality time is important, but so is quantity."
Yet she thinks that perhaps the newest version of suburban stay-at-home mom - a woman who leaves her career at a later age to have children - may have had the biggest impact on modern life.
"(They) are getting pleasure from their children that perhaps my generation didn't because they were in the workplace longer. ... They (are) more mature and they're also more worldly. They're bringing some of this expertise and sophistication to suburban life," Isaacs notes.
While not all of her novels have featured suburban housewives - her protagonists include a variety of women, as well as a few men - her obvious admiration for everyday women is clear in her work.
"I know more women than not who are kind of stalwart and brave and strong. I think there's been an undue emphasis on women as victims in the last 10-20 years and not enough emphasis on the strong stuff that we're made of, including us Jewish women," says Isaacs. "(Our matriarchs) were all pretty tough dames. I think we have their genes and we're stronger than we believe we are."
All of Isaacs' novels are character-driven, perhaps a result of her writing process, which always begins with one of the characters in her mind.
"Depending on which character elbows the other ones in my head aside and says, 'Write my story,' that's the one I write. There's something of me invested in every one of those characters."
Most of Isaacs' novels are mysteries, and while she says she always starts with an outline for a story, she is occasionally surprised as the book takes shape. "If I know 'whodunit,' I'm always surprised at how because there's always a little twist that happens," she explains. "You have to allow for felicity when you write - sometimes the character will want to do something or form a relationship that you hadn't planned on and you have to go with it and see what happens."
Her success as an author has led to Isaacs' involvement in writers' organizations - she is currently chairwoman of Poets and Writers and recently retired as president of Mystery Writers of America.
While Isaacs fans frequently have to wait several years between novels, she does have a new book in the works.
"I love the character. She's between 28 and 30 years old and she's probably the last Jew to be born on the Lower East Side," she explains. "It's really about her life and about how she finds a place for herself in the world."
The author of nine novels, Isaacs also wrote the screenplay for "Compromising Positions," as well as the 1987 film "Hello Again."
Isaacs and her husband, Elkan Abramowitz, a criminal defense lawyer, have been married for 33 years and reside on Long Island, N.Y., and in Key Biscayne.
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