Emily Adrian, "Seduction Theory" (Little, Brown, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Emily Adrian, "Seduction Theory" (Little, Brown, 2025) Host: Chris Holmes | Guest: Emily Adrian | Date: Sept 12, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode of Burned by Books, host Chris Holmes interviews novelist Emily Adrian about her upcoming novel Seduction Theory. The conversation explores the campus novel as a genre, the subversion of its tropes, the boundaries between autofiction and fiction, and intimate depictions of marriage, desire, and power. Adrian reflects on narrative strategy, unreliable narration, and the shifting terrain of storytelling itself, all while offering insightful literary references and recommendations.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Rethinking the Campus Novel (04:13–09:22)

• Adrian’s Subversion of Genre Expectations

  • Adrian intentionally omits traditional “campus world-building”—the familiar leafy, autumnal imagery—in favor of focusing on characters and narrative artifice.
    "It doesn't really evoke that sort of collegiate, nostalgic, you know, autumnal campus covered in falling leaves vibe that you see in a lot of books like Donna Tartt's The Secret History." (04:52 – Emily Adrian)
  • The campus operates more as a backdrop for examining writing, the lives of semi-public intellectuals, and the performative nature of academic "celebrity."

    “I wanted it to be about writing. And you know, who is more concerned with the artifice of the novel than somebody immersed in it for a few years?” (05:47 – Emily Adrian)

• The University and Marriage in Crisis

  • Holmes and Adrian discuss how the campus novel resonates in an era of institutional uncertainty and shifting social norms, drawing a parallel with cultural preoccupations about the “death” of marriage and academia.

    “I feel like every hot take article I read now is either about the death of the American university or about the death of marriage.” (10:01 – Chris Holmes)

2. Gender, Power, and the Dynamics of Desire (10:20–16:13)

• Role Reversals and Stereotype Play

  • Adrian discusses intentionally reversing the "hot professor" trope by making Simone, not Ethan, the charismatic and powerful writing figure.

    “Simone, who’s the hot professor and the icon of the writing department, the real talent and the brains rather than Ethan. But that also gives Simone the reins to harness Robbie’s attraction to her in ways that appear to cross all manner of power imbalances.” (10:20 – Chris Holmes)

  • The blurred boundaries between sexual and non-sexual intimacy––demonstrated in scenes like Simone and Robbie’s shared, fraught post-workout showers—underscore shifting power and desire.

• The Nature of Seduction

  • Adrian elaborates on how seduction, unlike simple courtship or lust, is inherently about shifting power, sometimes contrary to the wishes of those involved.

    “In a really sexy partnership between two people... the power imbalance is there, but it’s always shifting. So people really take turns having power in their relationship and sort of wielding it over each other.” (20:02 – Emily Adrian)

3. Meta-Narrative, Unreliability, and Autofiction (21:47–26:07)

• Fiction About Autofiction

  • Adrian’s protagonist, Roberta (“Robbie”), is herself writing an autofictional master’s thesis, complicating the boundaries between truth and narrative invention.
  • Readers and even interviewers sometimes conflate Adrian with Robbie, blurring reality and fiction:

    "Robbie is the one who wrote autofiction... I’m not a 23-year-old graduate student. How these boundaries get blurred is a little bit lost on me." (23:44 – Emily Adrian)

• Unreliable Narration and the Limits of Truth

  • Robbie’s candid unreliability and awareness of her own narrative limitations cast doubt on all depictions, prompting questions about whether fiction, memoir, or autofiction can ever truly capture reality.

    "When you've taken on the task of translating life to the page, accuracy is unattainable and is kind of beside the point because what really matters is... the conclusions that you are writing your way toward." (25:53 – Emily Adrian)

4. Marriage as Narrative—Private Intimacy vs. Public Story (26:08–30:57)

• Unconventional Depictions of Marriage
  • The central couple, Simone and Ethan, defy typical “marriage-in-crisis” arcs: they remain deeply in love and sexually active despite infidelity and external pressures.

    “These two people have not lost interest in each other at all… they are having sex all the time, and yet they still find themselves straying… caving under pressures that are external to their marriage.” (26:57 – Emily Adrian)

  • The novel distinguishes between the private truth of their marriage and the public narrative they present, as well as raising questions about how much of their story can be trusted as "real" when filtered through Robbie’s writing.

5. Reading Recommendations (31:08–33:11)

• Emily Adrian’s Recommendations
  • Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark: Adrian praises its warmth, humor, and meta-literary themes.
  • Reboot by Justin Taylor: A novel structured as the ghostwritten memoir of a child actor.
  • The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers: An upcoming marriage novel about the fantasy of infidelity transforming into a parallel life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Resisting Campus Nostalgia:
  "It really just kind of takes the campus setting for granted... The appeal was to make it about writing." (05:24 – Emily Adrian)
• On Academic Micro-Celebrities:
  "They are kind of living life in the public eye on a campus... It's a really sort of almost claustrophobia inducing environment." (05:44 – Emily Adrian)
• On Power Games and Gender:
  "When Simone does the same thing, on one hand it's really familiar...on the other hand, it's so bizarre and absurd to even think of a woman behaving this way toward her own graduate student." (12:15 – Emily Adrian)
• On the Nature of Seduction:
  "Seduction has a driving purpose that even sometimes goes against the desires and wishes of the person on the other end... definitely implies some sort of power, power imbalance." (19:22 – Chris Holmes)
• On Reliability in Autofiction:
  "What fiction does, regardless of whether it has no resemblance to the author's life... accuracy is unattainable and is kind of beside the point." (25:53 – Emily Adrian)
• On Marriage’s Public and Private Faces:
  "They almost have two separate marriages. They have the truth of their own intimacy... and then the story of their marriage that they have sort of presented to the world." (27:39 – Emily Adrian)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening & Introduction to Seduction Theory – 01:20–04:11
• Campus Novel Discussion & Deconstructing Genre – 04:13–09:22
• Breaking Gender Roles: Simone’s Power – 10:20–13:12
• Excerpt Read by Emily Adrian (Department Party Scene) – 13:48–16:13
• Seduction, Power Dynamics, and Bad Lust – 16:52–20:02
• Metafiction and Unreliable Narrators – 21:47–26:07
• Marriage as Private/ Public Story, Meta-Narrative – 26:08–30:57
• Reading Recommendations – 31:08–33:11

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Tone and Style

The conversation is lively, insightful, and laced with humor. Both Holmes and Adrian discuss serious theoretical and ethical questions about fiction, power, and marriage while maintaining a conversational, accessible, and sometimes self-deprecating rapport.

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Closing Recommendation

Seduction Theory is celebrated here as a boldly subversive campus novel, a nuanced portrait of marriage, and a witty meditation on the labyrinth of fictional truth. Emily Adrian’s writing is recommended not only for its narrative innovation but also for its ability to challenge our understanding of storytelling, desire, and authenticity.

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For more on this episode, Emily Adrian’s work, and the titles discussed, visit burnedbybooks.com

Transcript

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That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings varied under Written by Libby Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Chris Holmes and this is Burned by Books. Here you'll find interviews with writers you already love like Jennifer Egan and Rebecca Mackay, mixed in with up and coming voices like Alexandra Kleeman and Roman Alam. You'll find us wherever you listen to podcasts, but check out previous [e-mail] and on Instagram and Twitter at Burned by Books. Let's start the show. We open Emily Adrian's most recent novel, Seduction Theory, to find a very recognizable cover page to a master's thesis submitted for a degree in creative writing entitled Seduction Theory. Its author, Roberta Green, has put the auto back in auto fiction to write in novel form of her seductive entanglement with the star professor in her department, Simone. The contours of that sexually charged but ultimately sexless involvement are placed alongside the sexually consummated but deeply unsensual affair that Simone's husband Ethan has with the department's administrative assistant, Abigail, in Robbie's manuscript. The tightly focused narrative at times unwinds to show the knitting work that Robbie is doing behind the scenes, adding, subtracting, editing the emotional and psychological lives of her focal characters but the magic of seduction theory, both in its novel and thesis forms, is that we fall under the spell of its fictionality, believing ourselves to be witness to the secret lives of others. A campus novel that rewrites the rules for that genre, seduction theory trammels over limits and expectations for how gender, desire, marriage, commitment and love itself should act. A piping hot novel that is never satisfied with easy answers as to how fiction should draw from the DNA of so called real life, Seduction theory takes us to places rarely seen or felt in the campus novel. Emily Adrian is the author of Daughterhood, the Second Season and Everything Here Is Under Control, as well as two critically acclaimed novels for young adults. Her work has appeared in Granta, the Point, Joyland Epoch, Alta Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Millions. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Emily currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Welcome to Burned by Books, Emily Adrian.

[Emily Adrian]

Thank you for having me.

[Chris Holmes]

So I want to start with the campus novel, which is a bit of an obsession for me. And I would say that I've become particularly enamored with it in the last five years when novels like Julia Made Jonas's Vladimir, Roofy Thorpe's Margo's Got Money Troubles, Brandon Taylor's Real Life, and Ursula Villarreal Mora's Like Happiness just smashed the conventions to pieces and started to return to campuses with new perspectives and new excitements. I think you are doing that as well, but I, I wonder how the conventions operate for you in your reading and writing life and were you aware of breaking them?

[Emily Adrian]

So I was aware of breaking the conventions to some extent. And I think the, the main thing that my book sort of neglects to do, that campus novels traditionally have done is it doesn't spend a lot of time on the world building of campus life. It doesn't really evoke the. That sort of collegiate, nostalgic, you know, autumnal campus covered in falling leaves vibe that you see in a lot of books like Donna Tartt's the Secret History.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah. The most sumptuous of the nostalgic campus novels.

[Emily Adrian]

Right. And it really just kind of takes the campus setting for granted. A lot of the action is off campus. Even the department itself is rendered almost unbelievably, simplistically. Like there are like apparently like four professors teaching in this English department.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah. At an, at an college.

[Emily Adrian]

Right, right, right. I mean, there's no influence from other departments. There appear to be very few students hanging around this campus. So, you know, I really, it's, I think for me the appeal of, of making this story a campus Novel or an off campus novel, as the case may be, was that I wanted it to be about writing. And you know, who is, who is more concerned with the, the artifice of the novel than, than somebody who's, you know, immersed in it for a few years. And I was also, I was also really interested in writing about these people who are not by any real means celebrities, but are kind of living life in the public eye on, on a campus. They are, you know, sort of revered and mythologized by their own students. They are very aware of how much their students know about them and about their marriage. And so they kind of get to act like celebrities in a really sort of almost like claustrophobia inducing environment.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, it's that thing about the like, the like crock pot of it. It's so small and their territory is so tiny. But because it gets to, you know, on a campus, those things get to be like pressure cookers and have a kind of like voyeuristic aspect to them with people sort of like looking into this, what seems like a, a place of power, but in the context of the country has like little to no power at all. Are there any particular campus novels that are important to you or were part of your research and, and reading as prep for Seduction Theory?

[Emily Adrian]

Yeah, so I, my favorite novel, I share a favorite campus novel with Ethan, whose comfort novel is Pennine by. This is also my comfort novel. And it's funny because people keep invoking that as like a kind of like a burn. They're like, oh, that's so, that's so silly. Just a comfort read. And I'm like, yeah, it's so silly. I also, I love the prime of Ms. Jean Brody by Muriel Spark, which is kind of also an unconventional campus novel. I'm not sure it's always thought of.

[Chris Holmes]

In that genre and also referenced in the, in the novel.

[Emily Adrian]

Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

In your novel.

[Emily Adrian]

Yes. Yeah. And then some more recent ones. Like I have read the Marriage Plot by Eugenides many times. I love On Beauty by Zadie Smith, as you mentioned. I like, I read some more recent ones. I read Vladimir, Ruthie Thorp is a good friend. So I read, I've read Margot. And I read an early, early draft of Margot too. So I know it. And it's many iterations. And one thing that that novel always was from the beginning was a campus novel. It's again, like not something that we often think of when we're talking about campus novels because it's sort of eclipsed by the only fans aspect. But I think that is such a sort of off kilter and surprising beginning to that novel.

[Chris Holmes]

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. There's all kinds of wonderful alt off kilter things. I have a. You mentioned like that that seduction theory doesn't really obsess over the nostalgia for the, you know, the leafy autumnal campus. But I do have a kind of personal theory about the campus novel, which is that I, I feel like our current interest in it as writers and readers may have something to do with the fact that the campus university, as we understand it, seems to be in a kind of atomic collapse.

[Emily Adrian]

Yes.

[Chris Holmes]

With. With both like out external and internal forces working on it. It sounds like that's your sense as well.

[Emily Adrian]

Absolutely. And I think it has sort of shaped the reception of this book. And I also. The other thing is, you know, the book is sort of. It's considered a marriage story. Right. Which is another thing that our culture is sort of currently obsessed with reshaping and redefining or may maybe abolishing altogether.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, no, that's, that's a hundred percent true. And it does. I feel like every like, hot take article I read now is either about the death of the American university or about the death of marriage.

[Emily Adrian]

Right.

[Chris Holmes]

So you've, you've grappled with both of them here. And, and maybe that's our own kind of not if not like nostalgia for, you know, the particular conventions, at least the nostalgia for having something that we understand as having certain kinds of structures.

[Emily Adrian]

Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

And. And you know, one of the conventions that you happily smash through is that it's, it's Simone who's the, who's the hot professor and the icon of the writing department, the real talent and, and kind of the brains rather than, rather than Ethan. But that also gives Simone the reins to harness Robbie's attraction to her in ways that appear to cross all manner of power imbalances.

[Emily Adrian]

Right.

[Chris Holmes]

So Simone is empowered, but to what end? And you talk a little bit about that kind of fraught empowerment.

[Emily Adrian]

Yeah. And I mean, I think because their central roles are kind of gender swapped, it allowed me to play with some stereotypes or maybe familiar tropes in a way that gives the novel some, some tension and some of its confusion, I think. And, and it's the, the, you know, in Robbie's narrative, she's sort of self aware about some of these things. Like there's this scene where Simone, in arguably her most like sort of boundary crossing moment, like, barges in on Robbie in the shower and it's like, okay, get out of the shower. It's My turn to get in the shower. And, you know, they've just worked out together. And I. I think in an earlier. In. In an earlier dialogue, Simone has compared them exercising together as like, men. You know, men. Men strike business deals on golf courts and they hang out in the sauna together afterward and. And shower naked. And this is like, strictly not sexual. Like. Oh, absolutely not. But it's still very much about, like, power and shame and trying to dominate somebody. Right. And when Simone does the same thing, on one hand it's really familiar and there's like a script for that exchange. And on the other hand, it's. It's so bizarre and absurd to even think of a woman behaving this way toward her own graduate student.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, no, it is. And that's actually one of my favorite scenes of the book. And. And Robbie trying to, like, work through it in the narrative and also just, like in her internal life and try and understand what Simone is trying to do in that moment is. Is a really great. Yeah, it's. It's a great set piece for it. And also just, you know, that. And their kind of training together, as you say, which she. Simone, writes off as kind of. This is what men do. But there's like a real sexuality to their kind of, like, effort and. And, you know, wearing very little sweaty clothing and then stripping down and showering it. You know, it might as well be sex.

[Emily Adrian]

Right. And it's. It's also acknowledged that this is what Simone and Ethan do together too. Right. Like when they're out jogging.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, It's.

[Emily Adrian]

It's sort of openly about their sex appeal and their status as a couple in this small town.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah.

[Emily Adrian]

So she's. She's messing with Robbie by. By having her participate in all of those same rituals.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, she's making her like a. A little fungible replacement Ethan for while he's out. So she's not, like, she doesn't want to get bored. So she has something that can, you know, someone that can slot into that spot. I wonder if you'd read from the opening for us to give us a sense of Ethan's. What will be his dalliance outside of the marriage. And it. It opens in. In a rather comic sequence at a. At a department party.

[Emily Adrian]

Sure. Chapter one. At the Creative Writing department's end of year party, Ethan's secretary fed him kale with her fingers. Ithan wasn't supposed to call Abigail his secretary. Trouble was, Abigail often referred to herself as his secretary and rise subversion of the school's progressive Values and her jokes had eclipsed her actual job title in Ethan's memory. The party was crowded. Grad students were crammed into the kitchen, hoping their advisors heard them talking about sex in the adjacent living room. Academic spouses grew weary of discussing summer plans, as if everyone had summers off. Soon the house would overheat, guests would spill into the yard, but for now stayed close to the collapsible buffet table on which they'd placed their offerings. I brought the kale salad, said Abigail, who was not attractive but to whom Ethan was attracted. He'd formed a habit of fixating on her least appealing features, her crusty eyelashes and fleshy earlobes, daring his lust to subside, which it did not. I'm not a fan of that vegetable, he admitted. Oh, I massaged it. Have you ever had it massaged? She looked deep into his eyes with an intensity that might have indicated sexual devotion but was not uncommon in the type of person by whom Ethan found himself daily surrounded. I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know how it's usually prepared. She stuck an R between two adjuncts and grabbed a fistful of her own salad. She was drunk. He was excited. Abigail shoved the greens through Ethan's closed lips. Oh, they were terrible. Coarse and curled and bitter gritty with some kind of debris. Are there nuts in this? He asked. Quinoa. Ah, he said, chewing indefinitely. That is different. Pleased, she drank her drink. Ethan stood, asked to ask with party host and department chair Joyce Lockhart, who was engaged in a separate conversation. We adopted him when he was 7, Joyce was saying he was called Humphrey on his papers, which. No. Then we discovered he hates females his own age but loves puppies. So we named him Humbert. Temperate laughter. Someone's sandalwood perfume. Lola by the Kinks. Do you want to smoke a cigarette? Ethan asked Abigail. These were the first words he had spoken to his beautiful wife Simone, when they were just shy of 21. Abigail would not want to smoke a cigarette because Abigail was 39, a single mother, and wearing a scarf in June. Abigail said, oh, and yes. That, Abigail said yes, might be the whole story.

[Chris Holmes]

Thank you so much. That's such a funny scene and really gives us a good sense of the voice that is going to be, well, yours and Robbie's carrying us through the narrative. But there's so much interesting happening here with seduction, you know? Can we talk for a second about seduction theory? Because this is terrible seduction. Yeah, this. This shouldn't work. And it's, you know, it certainly doesn't abide. By any of what we think of as the kind of like male professor and underling interaction. So talk about, like bad seduction for a second.

[Emily Adrian]

Well, I mean, I. There's a couple of things going on, I think. One is that they're in a very crowded room, right? So they're not. They're not going to do anything like totally outrageous. But it's also crowded enough that I think nobody's really listening to them. So what they do have at their disposal is the ability to say kind of outrageous stuff. And the other thing I think is Ethan. He's been with the same woman since college. So the only thing he has at his disposal romantically is like the awkwardness of. Of being young and you know, you know, knowing that somebody has a crush on you and just sort of bumble in your way through to that first kiss or first exchange or whatever.

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[Chris Holmes]

It's such an interesting thing that his desire and lust seems to be in some way kind of externalized from. From Abigail. She is not. I mean, maybe he is feeling desire towards her, but it seems almost as though she is a cipher into which he can kind of throw a misplaced, perhaps longing for his past relationship with Simone or. Or some other unquenched desire.

[Emily Adrian]

Right. I think he wants more. More than he wants this particular woman. He wants to go, you know, back to a time when somebody saw him, you know, saw all the potential of him saw, you know, just. Just saw him as. As nobody had seen him before. And he feels like that possibility has waned in his middle age.

[Chris Holmes]

And unfortunately it's going to have to come with quinoa and massaged kale this.

[Emily Adrian]

Time, but couldn't possibly come from anywhere else.

[Chris Holmes]

To get a little bit deeper into seduction. It's. Seduction is something different than courtship or lust or even desire it and at least in its Connotations, it has a driving purpose that even sometimes goes against the desires and wishes on the, of the person on the other end of, of seduction. And it definitely implies some sort of power, power imbalance. And we see seduction happening in different forms with Simone and Robbie, with Ethan and Abigail and even Ethan and Simone. So what's the theory of seduction that you're exploring with these relationships?

[Emily Adrian]

That's a good question. And I think I, I think one answer is that in a really, I think in, in a really like sexy partnership between two people that the power imbalance is there, but it's always shifting. So the people really take turns having power in their relationship and sort of wielding it over each other. And Robbie sees that, I think in the history of Ethan and Simone. And part of what's motivating her is the desire to have her turn sort of wielding power against Simone.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, that's, that makes a lot of sense to me. And I like that idea of the, you know, on one hand maybe trading the power imbalance versus, you know, it being wielded on, on one side of that. So to get in a little bit to this, the kind of meta narrative that operates as Robbie's thesis, we could say that she is regularly breaking the fourth wall of fictionality and revealing her desires for certain kinds of outcomes, certain revelations. This is really comically the case in their wonderful scene of her defense of her master's thesis where she briefly narrates a heroic absolution both of her work and actions, but then kidding and takes us into something that may or may not be closer to the truth. But the meta quality of her narration reminds us of her unreliability. It makes the boundary crossing seduction of Simone less clear cut in some way. What was interesting about violating these tenants of realist fiction to have Robbie's decision making as a writer break through.

[Emily Adrian]

I think I mean, something I'm always telling my own students who might be writing, you know, short stories or novel manuscripts for the first time is that your narrator has to, or your, your protagonist has to want something, right? And it's a really simple idea, but in, in a, in a novel or in a more, you know, advanced piece of literature than we might see in like an undergrad workshop, that that desire is complex. And I think that Robbie is, you know, she's writing a book for the first time and at this, and she has herself in mind as a character. But the writing of the, of the manuscript, of the thesis is itself motivated. So I wanted to see, I wanted to sort of Play with the tension between what she thinks she wants as a writer, whether that's, you know, personal or professional or both, what she sees herself wanting as a character, and then what the, what the outcome reveals about what she might not have understood even about her own motivations.

[Chris Holmes]

I want to think for a second about Robbie's, you know, place within this. There's a sense that like auto fiction, which has obviously been a kind of a dominant form, genre, whatever we want to call it for a while now, more than, more than a decade, probably two decades, and that auto fiction giving license to sort of bring autobiographical details into a work. Here you have a fiction, fiction that contains within it a auto fiction and that does something else to what autofiction is, re, fictionalizes it or asks us. I, and this is the point of my question, does it ask us to reconsider what it is we think is truthful writing to begin with?

[Emily Adrian]

Totally. And it's, it's funny because I, I have noticed that people take it a step further and, or, or is it a step further or are they failing to take an extra step? I'm not sure, but there is, there's a lot of steps. Yeah, there's some misstepping, there's some confusion about whether I am Robbie to the point where I was doing a fairly like high profile interview. And the interviewer, she, she read aloud the disclaimer that's at the front of every novel about how similarities to real life are a coincidence and this is a work of fiction. And, and she said, you know, but this doesn't really apply to a book like this. And I got, I got flustered and insisted that it does because it does. It's entirely a work of fiction. It's my own invention. But what I wish I had said is that I didn't write auto fiction. You know, as you pointed out, Robbie is the one who wrote autofiction. I, I, whatever, I'm not, I'm not a 23 year old graduate student. So it would be, it, it's how, how these boundaries get blurred is, is a little bit lost on me. But I think that Robbie as a narrator is so openly unreliable. Right. Like she's really not trying to trick you. She, she sort of refers over and over again to the limits of her own understanding or her own knowledge of what really went on between Ethan and Simone. But what she is trying for is some level of, of accuracy or some kind of like profound truth that allows her to make sense of her own experiences. And I think that is sort of what fiction does, regardless of whether it has no resemblance to the author's life or whether it is a. Adjacent to a memoir. And really, if, if I'm being completely honest, I think memoir does this too. It's really. There is no when. When you've taken on the task of translating life to the page. Accuracy is, is unattainable and is kind of beside the point because what, what really matters is, is like the conclusions that you are writing your way toward.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah. And. And that sounds like really a theory of. Of writing that I am fully behind and than this idea that autofiction just does something because it has, you know, true things in it.

[Emily Adrian]

Right.

[Chris Holmes]

And I want to talk about and speaking of true things, the way that marriage is understood as its own kind of constantly written and rewritten narrative in this. In the book. So at, at one point, you know, after the revelations of. Of the affairs at. Simone is trying to think about what would it mean to kind of put the pieces together that equals something like a love narrative. And into that she puts the idea of sex as an act that then has a consequence which is essentially a lifetime. And I wonder if you'd talk a little bit about the other kind of meta narration that happens in the book, which is about a love story or a marriage story.

[Emily Adrian]

Yeah, I mean, I think so. One thing that is sort of unconventional about the novel as a marriage story is that these two people have not lost interest in each other at all. And I mean, maybe even to sort of mythic proportions. They are deeply in love, they are having sex all the time, and yet they still find themselves straying from each other and sort of caving under. Under pressures that are external to their marriage. And I think because so much of their identity, especially Simone's identity, is. Is wrapped up in this idea that they have the perfect marriage. They almost have two separate marriages. They have the truth of their own intimacy and their relationship with each other behind closed doors. And then they have the story of their marriage that they have sort of presented to the, to the world. And so. Right. So part of it's. It's interesting because I think that, you know, Simone and Ethan don't really find it that difficult to forgive each other privately, but to. In order to fully re. Inhabit their marriage or recommit to it, they have to figure out how they're going to present it publicly or if they are simply going to let go of that and only have what they have when they are alone together. And I think that insofar as they sort of undergo Character growth in their own right on, you know, un. Unaffected by. By Roddy's manipulations like that is what they are learning to do is to sort of divorce themselves not from each other, but from. From the public eye.

[Chris Holmes]

Yes. And, but. And that leads me to this really interesting tension in the novel, which is we really do buy Simone's internal workings around the crafting of this marriage that can divorce itself, as you say, from public perceptions and just be a thing of. Of private intimacy. But then we get this sort of, you know, flash of remembrance that this is Rob Robbie's imagining and that maybe none of this is true and maybe it is. There are sort of deeper flaws and, and deeper misunderstandings that prompted these dalliances, and, And I don't think those need to be resolved. I think that's the. That's the real fun of this novel. And is that something that you. You wanted to play with the reader just never being able to be sure?

[Emily Adrian]

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, as. As some people have pointed out, I kind of gave myself a get out of jail free card by making it. Making it all written by Roddy. Because if it's. If it's really good in the reader's mind, then, you know, like, I did a good job. And if. If it's really bad, obviously it's bad. She's a. She's a child.

[Chris Holmes]

And I wrote it bad on purpose.

[Emily Adrian]

Yeah. And, you know, there are things in there that are amateurish or sloppy on purpose. And then I think a real question is whether the story of Ethan and Simone, stripped of its artifice and of the framework that I have imposed on it, is. Is a good story in its own right, whether they are believable as characters, whether you care about them, whether you even think they're supposed to represent real people, or if they're just totally ridiculous. And I actually, I do think of the book as a legitimate love story. I do. I. I do care about them, and I do. I do really, you know, I, I. Those thoughts on marriage that Simone kind of, you know, turns over and over in her head, like, those are. Those are real to me. But I also think, you know, they do really apply to. To Robbie's own inner conflict, which is that she, you know, wants to be loved and she wants to love, and she doesn't know exactly how that's going to work out, and it. It becomes her mission to kind of understand this person who has captivated her on a really deep level.

[Chris Holmes]

Before I let you go, Emily, would you be willing to tell us about some things that you are reading and for sure.

[Emily Adrian]

So I just read. Okay. I'm going to go with three things. One is from a while back, one is recent and one is forthcoming.

[Chris Holmes]

Okay.

[Emily Adrian]

So I just read Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark. Have you read that?

[Chris Holmes]

I haven't, but I love Muriel Spark.

[Emily Adrian]

So this is my favorite Muriel Spark and it's also the one that I, it's my new favorite. It's instantly like a favorite novel of all time for me.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh my gosh. Wow.

[Emily Adrian]

And I also, I cannot believe that I hadn't read it when I wrote Seduction Theory because it is engaged with a lot of similar questions about like what it means to, to steal things from real life for your fiction.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh, I'm very excited about this and.

[Emily Adrian]

It'S just, it's just delightful. It's so, it's, it's a lot warmer than some of our other books. It's really, really funny. And it's still like 140 pages or something so you can read it in a day.

[Chris Holmes]

That's very exciting.

[Emily Adrian]

And then something that came out within the last year or so is a novel called Reboot by Justin Taylor which has another kind of like more subtle but, but tricky framework that emerges as, as the book picks up steam. Where it is the ghost written memoir of a, of a child actor.

[Chris Holmes]

That's not something I've heard of before as a, as a conceit. I really like that.

[Emily Adrian]

It's, it's a great, it's a wonderful novel. And then forthcoming is it's Aaron Summers new book called the Only reason I can't Remember this is because I'm so deeply sleep deprived right now. It's called the Ten Year Affair. Okay. And it is, is a marriage novel about a woman who has a, you know, a fantasy of an affair that runs so deep it becomes a sort of like parallel secret life.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh, this is the. Aaron Summer wrote that. Incredible. Such a hysterical first novel about that woman interning for a famous late night host. Right. Okay. Exactly. Yeah, I, I, I am, this is one of my most anticipated novels of the year.

[Emily Adrian]

Great. Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh, awesome. Well, those are great. But I really want to recommend Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian. This is a campus novel. It's a marriage novel. It's a novel about dogs. It's a novel about what fiction can do with real life and what it can do to change the, the very essence of what we think is real. And I hope that folks will run out to their independent bookstores and get a copy and it was a real pleasure to get to talk to you about it.

[Emily Adrian]

Thank you so much for having me, Chris.

[Chris Holmes]

Thank you, Emily. Well, that's all from me for now. My thanks to Emily Adrian for coming on to talk about her latest novel, Seduction Theory. You can find links to purchase Seduction Theory and all of Emily's recommended books at the website burnedbybooks.com there you'll find our previous episodes, links to buy, a podcast T shirt, and ways to get in contact as you listen. Take a moment to rate the show on itunes, Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts. Until next time, this has been burned by books.

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