April 'Get Lit' Preview: Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney on 'Lake Effect'

Summary

Podcast Summary: April 'Get Lit' Preview — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney on Lake Effect

Podcast: All Of It with Alison Stewart
Host: Alison Stewart (WNYC)
Guest: Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Episode Date: April 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of "All Of It" spotlights Lake Effect, the April selection for the Get Lit Book Club. Host Alison Stewart sits down with author Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney for an in-depth discussion about her new novel, which explores the long-lasting impact of a single affair on two interwoven families. The conversation delves into themes of divorce, the social landscape of the 1970s, family dynamics, and the creative choices behind the novel.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of the Novel (01:35–02:19)

• Setting and Inspiration:
  • Cynthia shares that she wanted to set a novel in her hometown, inspired by her own teenage years in Rochester, NY, during the late 1970s.
  • The "social tumult" in her Catholic community, especially as families began to grapple with divorce, served as fertile ground for her story.
  • Quote:

    “I think I just really wanted to set a book in my hometown… The social tumult in my little Catholic world when parents started to divorce was a huge part of that.” (01:39–02:19, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

2. Exploring Divorce in the 1970s (02:26–03:24)

• Personal Impact and Societal Change:
  • As a young person, Cynthia found divorce among family friends destabilizing and initially judged those involved.
  • With age, she sympathized more with adults trapped by early decisions, recognizing the pain in choosing personal fulfillment at the cost of others’ happiness.
  • Quote:

    “Getting out of it, you know, choosing love for yourself might mean really hurting the people you love. And that just felt like such a deep, rich vein to go into.” (02:40–03:24, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

3. The Role of the Dinner Party Scene (03:24–04:15)

• Revealing Character through Social Rituals:
  • Cynthia loves dinner party scenes for exposing interpersonal dynamics—through food, conversation, and silence.
  • These moments reveal the complexities of group and couple interactions.
  • Quote:

    “The way people eat, the way they approach food, the way they act in a group conversation… The dynamics of couples can sometimes be achingly clear in that kind of social situation.” (03:31–04:15, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

4. Nina’s State of Mind (04:39–05:20)

• Discontent and Apprehension:
  • Nina, the protagonist, is on “autopilot” in her marriage, devoted to family routine but increasingly anxious as her daughters approach independence.
  • She worries whether her marriage with Sam will be enough when the children are gone.

5. Reading from the Prologue (05:22–07:04)

• Cynthia reads the opening of Lake Effect, introducing Bess bringing "The Joy of Sex" to a suburban consciousness-raising group—setting into motion the novel’s defining incident.
• Memorable Moment:
  • The passage humorously and poignantly details the suburban wives’ discussions and their disconnect from the realities of modern adolescence and sexuality.

6. Cultural Upheaval: “The Joy of Sex” as Catalyst (07:15–08:17)

• Objects as Agents of Change:
  • The introduction of "The Joy of Sex" and other progressive materials in the 1970s filtered into even insulated communities, prompting comparisons and questions about marital and sexual satisfaction.
  • Quote:

    “Everyone just starts to think like, is this what we’re supposed to be doing?... It was just a fun device… for showing how something from the outside can really upend the inside of a family unit.” (07:53–08:17, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

7. Shifting Narrative Focus to the Children (08:17–09:01)

• Intergenerational Impact:
  • Cynthia always intended for the novel to explore how adult choices reverberate across decades, affecting children long into adulthood.
  • A mother-daughter relationship in distress was central to her vision.

8. Developing the Second Generation: Clara and Doon (09:04–10:47)

• Creating Authentic Characters:
  • Clara came most naturally to Cynthia—she is the same age as her, and writing a teenage voice was “just really enjoyable”.
    • Quote:

      “I enjoyed how she’s a much braver, sort of sarcastic, unkind person than I am. And so that is a fun… place to live in temporarily.” (09:04–09:39, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

  • Doon, originally split into two brothers, came together as a single character defined by being in the shadow of a charismatic, dominating father.
    • Quote:

      “How do you define yourself when you’re living in the shadow of a super successful, super big personality … That’s a heavy load to carry your entire childhood.” (09:44–10:47, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

9. Clara’s Career as a Food Stylist (10:56–11:57)

• Food as Family Battleground:
  • Clara's profession symbolizes her complex connection to food and her mother: she shapes appearances, not sustenance.
  • Cynthia's own curiosity about food styling contributed authenticity to this detail; she researched with the help of a real food stylist named Joy, whom she honored in the book.

10. Easter Egg for Readers (12:07–12:29)

• Something to Notice:
  • Cynthia is particularly proud of the novel’s final 75 pages, especially the ending, which required deep personal excavation.
  • Quote:

    “I really had to dig a little deeper in myself than I have in previous books to write that ending. And yeah, I’m proud of it.” (12:07–12:29, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On divorce and judgment:
  “As a young person … it felt very threatening to me, and I was very judgmental about it.” (02:40, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

• On social dynamics:
  “The dynamics of couples can sometimes be achingly clear in that kind of social situation.” (03:37, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

• On Clara as a character:
  “I enjoyed how she’s a much braver, sort of sarcastic, unkind person than I am.” (09:15, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

• On writing the ending:
  “I really had to dig a little deeper in myself than I have in previous books to write that ending.” (12:08, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:35 – Origins of Lake Effect
• 02:26 – Divorce in the 1970s
• 03:24 – Dinner party as narrative device
• 05:25 – Author’s reading from the prologue
• 07:15 – The arrival and impact of "The Joy of Sex"
• 08:17 – Story expansion to children
• 09:04 – Creating Clara and Doon
• 10:56 – Clara as a food stylist & research
• 12:07 – Something for readers to notice

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Summary Flow

This episode offers a lively and thoughtful preview of Lake Effect. Alison and Cynthia move seamlessly between personal reminiscence, analysis of 1970s social change, deep dives into character motivation, and revealing behind-the-scenes insights into the writing process. The conversation maintains a candid, engaging tone, inviting listeners to engage more deeply with both the novel and its broader cultural context.

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For more information about joining the Get Lit Book Club or to access a free e-copy of Lake Effect, visit wnyc.org/getlit.

Transcript

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

Foreign.

[Alison Stewart]

You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. It wouldn't be a proper book day here on all of it without spotlighting our Get Lit Book Club Book Club selection. This month, we are reading the novel Lake Effect by Cynthia Dupree Sweeney. The novel tells the story of how one affair changes the course of two families forever. We begin the novel with Nina Larkin, who is living in Rochester in New York in 1977. She's bored in her marriage and unsatisfied in the bedroom. When a friend gives her a copy of the book the Joy of Sex, Nina experiences something that opens her up. She begins to have an affair with her neighbor, a man named Finn. But their new relationship has lasting consequences for their children. Nina's daughters, Bridie and Clara, and Finn's kids, Doon and Fernanda. Years later, we meet Clara as a food stylist in New York City. And as the family wedding. As a family wedding approaches, Clara grapples with the continued effects from her mother's decision. New Yorkers can borrow an E copy of the novel right now thanks to our great partners at the New York Public Library. Plus, you can snag your free tickets to our get lit event on Monday, April 27th. Head to wnyc.org getlit for more information. But first, joining me now for a little preview to get you excited about Lake Effect is author Cynthia David Dupree Sweeney. Hi, Cynthia. Thanks for being with us.

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

Hi, Allison. I'm so thrilled to be here. What a terrific episode.

[Alison Stewart]

What was the first seed of the idea for this novel?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I, you know, it's hard for me to remember, and I sort of backed into this book a little bit in a way that I haven't in the other two. I think I just really wanted to set a book in my hometown. And I was immediately feeling like that should be the 1970s, probably because that was the last time I lived full time and in my hometown when I was a senior in high school. And so I just started thinking about what, like in my teen and formative years, what were some of the things that really preoccupied me. And the social tumult in my little Catholic world when parents started to divorce was a huge part of that.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah, that's a big part of the book. It's funny cause I read the book and now I'm listening to it. It's narrated by Maren Ireland, which is great.

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

She's so good. She's so good.

[Alison Stewart]

And you know what? And the divor part of the book Comes through a little bit more in the audiobook. How interesting it is interesting. What did you want to explore about divorce during the 70s?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

Well, I think as a young person, when people in, you know, my parents, friends or the friends of my parents started to get divorced, it felt very threatening to me, and I was very judgmental about it. And then, of course, as I started to get, you know, as I aged and matured a little bit and thought about how terrible it would be to have just made a bad decision when you were probably 22 in the 50s, and to have to live with that for the rest of your life. But getting out of it, you know, choosing love for yourself might mean really hurting the people you love. And that just felt like such a deep, rich vein to go into.

[Alison Stewart]

You begin with a dinner party to celebrate a birthday. What does a dinner party tell us about our main characters here?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

Oh, so much. I mean, I love dinner party scenes in novels. They're really hard to write because you sort of have to juggle a bigger cast of characters than is ideal for a scene. But, you know, the way people eat, the way they approach food, the way they act in a group conversation, who is dominating the conversation? Who's saying nothing? The dynamics of couples can sometimes be achingly clear in that kind of social situation. So that, again, just felt like a really a good way for me to say a little bit about a group of characters that we were going to be spending a lot of time with.

[Alison Stewart]

My guests are April get lit with all of it, book club author Cynthia Dupree Sweeney. We're spending the month reading her novel Lake Effect, about how one woman's affair changes the course for family forever. To find out how to borrow your E Copy and to grab your tickets to the April 27 Get lit event, head to wnyc.org getlit when we first meet Nina, what's going on in her life? How is she feeling about her marriage?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I think that Nina, when we meet her, has sort of been on autopilot in her marriage and has been preoccupied as many people are, with small children, with just her family life. And what's happening at the moment that we meet her is she's starting to look down the road and understand that these girls are going to be gone soon and it's going to be her and Sam left, and what do they have that is going to be enough? And I think she's a little troubled by the answer, by what she and her knows. The answer is we would love to

[Alison Stewart]

have you read a little bit from the book, would you?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I would love to, yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

Great.

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I'm going to read the prologue, so it's pretty self explanatory. Bess Pfeiffer didn't mean to start anything when she walked into Honey Finnegan's house with seven copies of the Joy of Sex. She thought it would be fun. Their group had been meeting for years, and even though it started as something that kind of sort of resembled the consciousness raising groups they'd been reading about, the group had predictably become a watered down suburban version of conscious business raising. The wives and mothers of Cambridge Road weren't talking politics or sex or activism or civil rights. Not even a light sugar coated feminism. They were mostly trying to help each other as their children climbed the slippery shoals of adolescence to the sebum soaked years of puberty. They discussed teachers and curfews and their concerns about cigarettes and liquor and peer pressure. That their kids, some of them only yards away from where they met, were already smoking pot and bringing grape jelly jars refilled with Smirnoff to the massive treehouse in the Tannenbaum's backyard would not have occurred to any of the mothers in the room. Except for Bess, who was a high school nurse and trusted confidant of some of the older teens, especially the girls who couldn't talk to their parents about sex or God forbid, in this neighborhood of Catholics, birth control. The women chatted about husbands and cooking and which families were not obeying the local leash laws and should their bowling league move from Wednesdays to Tuesdays? And why were Father John's sermons so excruciatingly boring? And did they still need to abstain from meat on Fridays? So when Bess saw the book on display while browsing at Sibley, she thought, why not?

[Alison Stewart]

That was Cynthia Dupree Sweeney reading from Lake Effect, our choice for get lit. What was it about the Joy of Sex that upends things?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I mean, I think that, you know, a lot of things were happening in the 70s and the culture at large that crept into our houses. And whether it was the joy of Sex or our bodies, ourselves, or everything you wanted to know about sex, or whether it was a movie or just things going on in the neighborhood or on television that made people think, how do I compare to this? Now, no one should be comparing themselves to the Joy of Sex, but if you've never seen a book like that, you might.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah.

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

And so everyone just starts to think like, is this, is this, is this what we're supposed to be doing? And then you know, of course, it makes its way into the hands of some of the kids, and it was just a fun device for me to play with and showing how something from the outside can really upend the inside of a family unit.

[Alison Stewart]

The story begins with Nina, but it certainly expands to include her two daughters as well as the children of the man she's having the affair with. When did you know you wanted the story to be as much about the children as the parents?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

From the very, very start, I thought that, you know, of course, it's interesting to write a book about people who are unhappy in their marriage and what they do to resolve it, but I was really interested in moving forward in time and seeing how those. How those decisions affected the extended family decades on. And I also knew that I really wanted to write about a mother daughter relationship that was in distress.

[Alison Stewart]

Who came to you the easiest of the four kids?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

Clara. I love writing teenage girls. I am exactly Clara's age. And so it was. It wasn't easy, but it was much easier for me to put myself back in 1977 when I was 17 years old. And I just really enjoyed her. I enjoyed how she's a much braver, sort of sarcastic, unkind person than I am. And so that is a fun. It's a fun place to live in temporarily when there will be no real life consequences.

[Alison Stewart]

How did you come to write Dune?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

Dune's interesting. I originally had two brothers in that family, and I felt like they were kind of bumping into each other a little bit, and so I collapsed them into one character. And when I did that, everything, I felt like I was really on solid ground. And Dune, I just thought of as someone who, you know, he's the son of this very dynamic, gregarious leader in town and really is lost. And so I just. That was sort of where I pinned him. Like, how do you define yourself when you're living in the shadow of a super successful, super big personality, someone who makes things happen, who makes decisions pretty much without a second thought. And that's like a heavy load to carry your entire childhood. When it comes to the point in life when you have to see your parents as separate humans, as flawed humans, and then figure out who you are.

[Alison Stewart]

The book moves forward in time and we meet Clara as a grownup, and she's a food stylist in New York City. Why did you want her to have that job?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I wanted food to sort of be a battleground between her and her mom, Nina. And I just thought it was apt that Clara would still want to be involved with food somehow, but it wouldn't be nourishing people. It would just be making the food look good for a brief moment. And also I was just, I had this, I was just really curious about food styling. And so that's always a good thing to do when you're writing a book. If you are, pick something to write about that you have a genuine curiosity about, that writing is gonna be ever so slightly easier.

[Alison Stewart]

So what kind of research did you do into food styling?

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I found a food stylist online and her name is Joy. And I named a character in the book after her. And she talked to me for a really long time on the phone and it was wonderful because she had done food styling in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, and she pointed me to some books about food styling so, so I could make sure that everything was very period specific.

[Alison Stewart]

We like to ask our authors to share with us something you'd like readers to spend a little extra time noticing, whether it's an Easter egg or just something you're really proud of.

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

Well, I'm really proud of the last 75 pages in the book. I'm really proud of the end of the book. And yeah, I think I'll just leave it there. I, I really had to dig a little deeper in myself than I have in previous books to write that ending. And yeah, I'm proud of it.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest has been our April get lit with all of it author Cynthia Dupree Sweeney. To borrow your E Copy thanks to our partners at the New York Public Library. You can do that by going to wnyc.org getlit and grab your free tickets to our April 27th event to discuss Lake Effect. Thank you so much, Cynthia. We'll see you in a few weeks.

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

I can't wait. Thank you, Alison.

[Alison Stewart]

There's more book day on the way coming up. Journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. His new book digs into the mysterious death of a London teenager who had been lying for years about his identity and pursuing the trust of dangerous criminals. He joins me to discuss London Falling. It's out today. That's coming up after the news. WNYC's journalism and storytelling is heard by

[Cynthia Dupree Sweeney]

millions of passionate listeners. Sponsors of our programming gain our listeners

[Alison Stewart]

attention and their respect. Learn about how your organization can support WNYC and wnyc [e-mail].