1021. Lily Meyer

Feb 10, 2026

Lily Meyer, novelist, translator and critic (The End of Romance), discusses reimagining a male story as a contemporary woman's romance. She talks about Me Too's effects on publishing, craving nuanced straight love stories, crafting Sylvie's romantic triangle, Jewish American identities, and why theory collides with desire in realistic portrayals of intimacy.

01:15:03

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INSIGHT

Skepticism About Me Too's Public Narrative

Meyer was simultaneously moved by Me Too and skeptical of its public narratives that pressured women into performing victimhood.
She worried Me Too's gains hadn’t translated into widespread, concrete improvements in everyday women's lives.

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INSIGHT

Writing Into A Literary Love-Story Gap

Meyer wanted to fill a gap in contemporary literary fiction for complicated straight literary love stories for straight women.
She found excellent queer love stories but fewer nuanced straight love narratives, which motivated her novel.

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ANECDOTE

Sylvie's Family Shapes Her Choices

Meyer describes Sylvie's upbringing between dour parents and joyous Holocaust-survivor grandparents who modeled fierce living.
Sylvie marries her high-school sweetheart, leaves him, then entangles with two very different men, setting up the novel's triangle.

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Origin: Rewriting Singer into a Woman's Story

04:22 • 4min

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Early Skepticism About Me Too

08:13 • 3min

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Market Trends: Victim Narratives in Fiction

10:52 • 3min

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Hunger for Literary Straight Love Stories

13:47 • 2min

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Introducing Sylvie and Her Romantic Triangle

15:58 • 3min

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Tone, Humor, and Literary Comparisons

18:53 • 1min

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Divorce Memoir Trend and Public Storytelling

19:54 • 5min

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Why Anger Isn't Always Productive

25:01 • 3min

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Robbie: The Comfortable, Complicated Partner

28:18 • 2min

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A.B. and Varied Jewish American Histories

Survivor Joy Versus Victim Identity

Writing Jewish American Fiction Beyond Roth

41:38 • 3min

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Philosophy, Research, and Sylvie's Dissertation

45:02 • 5min

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The Limits of Theory vs. the Body

49:33 • 3min

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Realistic Sex Scenes and Intimacy

52:37 • 7min

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How Culture Misleads About Romance

01:00:00 • 6min

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Valentine's Day, Performance, and Privacy

The novel is about a woman named Sylvie Broder who is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Sylvie escapes a bruising marriage and develops a personal philosophy that posits that human happiness is only possible through the eradication of all romance. Then Sylvie finds someone who might end up changing her life forever. The book explores themes of love, romance, and intimacy as Sylvie juggles three men while trying to make sense of her feelings.

An Enemy's a Love Story

Isaac Bashevis-Singer

Set in post-World War II New York, the novel tells the story of Herman Broder, a Holocaust survivor who grapples with guilt, love, and identity as he navigates a complex web of relationships. He is haunted by the belief that his first wife and children perished in the war, Herman finds himself entangled with three women: his devoted but simple-minded Polish wife Yadwiga, his passionate and troubled lover Masha, and his first wife Tamara, who reappears after being presumed dead. Caught between these conflicting loyalties and desires, Herman struggles to reconcile his past traumas with his present realities.

Short War

Lily Meyer

It is about the U.S. involvement in and backing of the coup against Pinochet in Chile in 1973. The author wrote it out of anger because she was not taught about it in high school or college and had to learn about it herself. The author also wrote it because she was angry that it isn't a fundamental part of how Americans think about ourselves in the world.

The Devil's Hour

Philip D. Ellison-Hines

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Life of the Mind

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

#3882

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Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

Published in 1969, 'Portnoy's Complaint' is a novel by Philip Roth that follows Alex Portnoy, a 33-year-old Assistant Commissioner of Human Opportunity for the City of New York, as he recounts his life, including his childhood, family relationships, and sexual experiences, to his therapist Dr. Spielvogel. The book is known for its explicit and comedic depiction of sex, which caused controversy upon its release. It delves into themes of Jewish identity, the impact of family upbringing on personal neuroses, and the struggle between sexual desire and societal expectations. The novel is structured as a non-linear monologue, jumping between various memories and experiences that highlight Alex's conflicted feelings about his Jewish heritage and his sexual obsessions.

Lily Meyer is the author of the novel The End of Romance, available from Viking.

Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.

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