I'm Glad About You
Theresa Rebeck, 2016
Penguin Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399172885
Summary
The pathos and missed connections of One Day meet the hilarity of Crazy Rich Asians in this comedic and tender novel.
Their meeting in a parking lot outside a high school football game was both completely forgettable and utterly life-changing. Because no matter how you look at it, it is piss-poor luck to meet the love of your life before your life has even started.
Fierce and ambitious, Alison is determined to shed her Midwestern roots and emerge an actress. Kyle, all heart and spiritual yearning, believes medicine can heal the world.
What could these mismatched souls have to do with each other? Everything and nothing. Even as their fates rocket them forward and apart, neither can fully let go of the past.
When Alison gets her lucky break in New York City, she ends up on the fast track to stardom and a world far more different from Cincinnati than she could have ever imagined. Back home in Ohio, Kyle marries in haste and repents at leisure. Reluctantly embracing life in suburban hell, he becomes a pediatrician.
While Kyle’s dreams begin to molder, Alison learns that the spotlight is always circled by shadows. As their lives inevitably intersect, Alison and Kyle must face each other in the revealing light of their decisions.
I’m Glad About You is a glittering study of how far the compromises two people make will take them from the lives they were meant to live. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 19, 1958
• Where—Kenwood, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Notre Dame; M.A., M.F.A., Ph.D., Brandeis University
• Awards—Edgar Award; Athena Film Festival Award (see below)
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television.
Early life and education
Rebeck was born in Kenwood, Ohio, and graduated from Cincinnati's Ursuline Academy in 1976. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1980, and followed that with three degrees from Brandeis University: an MA in 1983, a M.F.A. in Playwriting in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Victorian era melodrama, awarded in 1989.
Career
Plays
Past New York productions of her work include Mauritius on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre in a Manhattan Theater Club production; The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage Theatre; Bad Dates and The Butterfly Collection at Playwrights Horizons; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop.
Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre in 2003. Her play The Understudy, premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the summer of 2008, with a cast including Reg Rogers, Bradley Cooper and Kristen Johnson, and ran in New York at the Roundabout Theatre from October 2009 - January 2010, featuring Julie White, Justin Kirk, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar in the cast.
Her play Seminar, starring Alan Rickman, opened on Broadway in 2011; it later opened at the San Francisco Playhouse, receiving outstanding reviews. Poor Behavior premiered at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum in 2011 and opened in 2014 at Primary Stages on Off-Broadway. Her play Fool premiered at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas, in 2014.
Screenplays/TV
In television, Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury’s Law, Smith, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. Through March 2012 she was one of the executive producers for the NBC musical series Smash, which she created, and which also debuted in 2012. Her produced feature film screenplays include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent feature Sunday on the Rocks.
Books and essays, etc.
Rebeck’s other publications include Free Fire Zone, a book of comedic essays about writing and show business. Her first novel, Three Girls and Their Brother, was published in 2008. Her second novel, I'm Glad About You, was released in 2016. She has also written for American Theatre magazine and has had excerpts of her plays published in the Harvard Review.
Recognition
She has received awards including the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, the Writers Guild of America Award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody Award, all for her work on NYPD Blue.
She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award in 2003 for The Bells. Mauritius was originally produced at Boston’s Huntington Theatre, where it received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Elliot Norton Award. In 2010, Rebeck was honored with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for an American playwright in mid-career.
Rebeck is a board member of The Dramatists Guild and the Lark Play Development Center in New York City, and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University. In 2014 she joined the faculty of the University of Houston School of Theatre and Dance as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Playwriting.
Rebeck lives with her husband, Jess Lynn, and two children, Cooper and Cleo, in Brooklyn. Her first novel Three Girls and their Brother is dedicated to both Cooper and Cleo.
In an article in the New York Times in September 2007, she said that her plays were about "betrayal and treason and poor behavior. A lot of poor behavior." (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/16/2016.)
Book Reviews
Theresa Rebeck's take of two star-crossed Midwesterners passed my screen test with flying colors. You know the one—you have a little pocket of time (15 minutes in the eye doctor's waiting room, three minutes while waiting for the coffee to perk), and you have a choice: You can check your phone or dip into a book. When you pick the book, you know you're reading a winner. I'm Glad About You is one of those novels… Allison and Kyle may fall short of Catherine and Heathcliff's iconic love, but…I still found myself more invested in them than I've been in any thwarted couple since Ross and Rachel dominated Thursday nights…satisfying…funny, heartfelt…[Allison's] a scrappy, deliciously flawed character, impossible not to root for… [I'm Glad About You] strikes a buzzworthy balance between down-home charm and Hollywood glitter. People will be talking about this one. Remember, you heard it here first.
Elisabeth Egan - New York Times Review
This tale of thwarted former high school sweethearts is a pleasurable blur of inside dish, major erotic energy and refreshing realism about love and destiny.
People
Bombshells, assemble: The Smash creator is once again training her shrewd spotlight on the inner workings of the entertainment industry, introducing a new can’t-help-but-cheer-for-her ingenue.... [A] smart, heartfelt tale about the price of our dreams—and whether they’re ultimately worth it.
Entertainment Weekly
Can small-town romance compete with big-ticket success? The award-winning playwright and creator of NBC’s Smash examines how love fits into the fame game.
Cosmopolitan
[This] unputdownable novel pairs the competing fates of two former lovers...both defined by their inability to forget the other.
Vogue.com
Rebeck’s sharply funny I’m Glad About You is a cautionary tale—choose your dreams with your eyes open.
Vanity Fair
Rebeck...puts her showbiz expertise to good use, following a young actress in NYC. While Alison’s future looks bright, she can’t shake the memory of an old flame.
Us Weekly
Rebeck takes on a lot, including the vagaries of entertainment media...as well as the problematic impact [of] religion.... [S]he entertainingly gets her message across that celebrity is not as fabulous as it looks and that people who follow their dreams need to stay true to themselves to find true happiness.
Publishers Weekly
"You never get over your first love" seems to be the premise of this novel.... Rebeck is strongest when portraying Alison's experiences in Hollywood after she's discovered in New York, no surprise given her screenwriting credentials as the creator of the television series Smash. —Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Library Journal
Rebeck’s comedic and heartbreaking love story...is anything but predictable. From Hollywood red carpets to Midwestern mansions, Rebeck takes us on a wild ride through the lives of two high-school sweethearts who just can’t seem to get it right.... [A] refreshingly honest character study that explores how flawed people attempt to build a love that thrives in a messy, complicated world.
BookPage
Like Nick Hornby and David Nicholls, Rebeck possesses an effortless prose style that edifies as much as it entertains.... Rebeck delivers some hilarious riffs on the venal nature of show business, even as she also imparts some hard truths on the need for compromise in relationships.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A rare honest story about love, ambition, and compromise.... The snappy dialogue and plot you'd expect from a veteran dramatist plus the rich exploration of character that novels are made for.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. While Alison and Kyle both dream of leaving Cincinnati behind, only Alison ends up leaving. Why do you think this is? Do you think people can be constrained by younger perceptions of themselves and how their lives will be? How is your own life different from the way you thought it would turn out?
2. The novel moves between life in New York City and life in Cincinnati, Ohio. Why do you think the novel is set in these cities? How is life different in each? Which would you prefer?
3. Kyle dreams of being a Doctor Without Borders, but instead finds himself a pediatrician. Do you think that he compromised his goals? Do you think that childhood dreams are sometimes worth reevaluating? Why or why not?
4. After moving to New York, Alison seems embarrassed by her Cincinnati background. Why does she feel the need to escape her past? When she first visits Cincinnati for Christmas she looks at Dennis and thinks, "If he left Ohio he would have turned into nothing, but it would have made a man of him.... He’ll turn into nothing here and it will just make him even more bitter than he is already." What does Alison mean? Do you agree with her? Does her reading of Dennis stay true throughout the novel?
5. Catholicism is a determining factor in Kyle’s life, and a huge part of the community in which both Kyle and Alison were raised. Discuss the role of religion in the novel.
6. At first, Alison struggles to meet the physical expectations of her agent and network television, but when she stops eating she notices that even her family is impressed by her new look. Discuss how the novel handles women’s body issues in Hollywood. Do you think expectations in these industries are changing? Should Alison have fought these standards more?
7. Kyle never sleeps with Alison because "he believed what he was told: Sex is a sacrament, which belongs in marriage. He loved Alison and he refused to have sex with her" (p. 48). How did you feel when Kyle slept with Van so quickly, after waiting with Alison for so many years? Do you think Kyle made the right choice in either instance? Why or why not?
8. Van’s relationship with Kyle is continually troubled by Alison: "No matter how distant her rival was in this situation, the mere fact of Alison’s presence—her significant presence—in Kyle’s past was an unacceptable irritant" (p. 50). How do you feel about her description of their marriage? Were you surprised by the developments in Kyle and Van’s marriage?
9. Did you ever sympathize with Van? Why or why not? Would you have behaved differently if you were in her shoes?
10. Why don’t Kyle and Alison end up together? Should they have? What do you think might have happened if Alison had stayed in Cincinnati?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)