Before there was the book, there was the title. And before there was the title, there was the hair.
The book is “See Jane Snap,” author Bethany Crandell’s funny, occasionally heartbreaking, always relatable new novel about a dutiful suburban wife and mother whose tidy, upscale world careens off its axis in a publicly humiliating way.
The title popped into Crandell’s head while she was blow-drying her mane of thick, curly hair, a painstaking process that involves two products and about 20 minutes of labor. The result is a good hair day, and if Crandell is lucky, a great writing idea.
This was one of them.
“It was a blow-dryer epiphany. I have them all the time,” said Crandell, who grew up in Rancho Peñasquitos and now lives in La Mesa with her husband, two teenaged daughters and two dogs.
“I played with the idea for a while, and then I realized that it made sense. A woman having a midlife crisis? I could relate to that. And then I started thinking, ‘What can we do to this poor woman to blow up her life a little bit?'”
What Crandell did involves one huge secret and a pileup of indignities, all of it leading to a hilarious, but totally understandable, meltdown in a grocery-store parking lot. (It is not a spoiler to say that the parking-lot incident is definitely rage-worthy.)
The big secret involves Jane’s handsome, successful surgeon husband. If the truth about Dan comes out, it could jeopardize his job and the secure life Jane has built for herself and her family. That nice private school for their daughter? That would be gone. The top-flight care facility for Jane’s ailing mother? Also gone.
The perfect-family façade? Goodbye to that, too.
But the cost of keeping Dan’s life under wraps is making Jane sad, angry and a little bit crazy. Which is how she ends up bonding with other trouble-making women in a first-time offenders group. Epiphanies ensue, along with confessions, reconciliations, and a creative crafting project that you will have to read about to believe.
Jane did not think this was how her life was going to turn out. And yes, Crandell could relate.
After writing eight young-adult novels, including 2014’s “Summer on the Short Bus,” Crandell made her adult-fiction debut earlier this year with “The Jake Ryan Complex,” a light romantic comedy about a thirtysomething woman who creates a fake boyfriend to get her mother off her back. Then a family wedding rears its pesky head, and fantasy must become something resembling reality.
By the time “The Jake Ryan Complex” was published, Crandell had already finished “See Jane Snap.” It generally takes her about a year to complete a book, thanks in no small part to the routine that has made it possible for her to write while working full time as an and keeping up with a busy home life.
Typically, Crandell writes at night, wakes up early the next morning to edit the previous evening’s work, then heads off to her day job. After work, she picks up where she left off the night before.
But a few months into writing “See Jane Snap,” it was March of 2020, and life was no longer typical.
“Normally, I can do my writing, go back to bed, and then wake up in my calm little world. This time was different. The whole world was humming with tension and fear, and it felt like we were all sitting in a pressure cooker all the time,” the 46-year-old Crandell said of writing during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.
“It made for a more intense writing experience for me, but I think Jane benefitted from that. As things started ramping up in the real world, things started ramping up for Jane. I can stress out pretty well on my own, and that just intensified during COVID. I think that makes for a more authentic read.”
Even if you have never been arrested while on an accidental Ecstasy trip or blown off steam by taking a baseball bat to the hood of a car, there is one way in which Jane’s fictional drama might feel true to life.
As she comes to discover, outward perfection can be a prison. Especially when you let other people and their opinions hold the key to your happiness. It isn’t until Jane hits her version of the bottom that things start looking up. Her new life is messy, but at least it’s really hers.
“See Jane Snap Back” has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
“The fun of writing Jane was watching her evolve from a pushover who didn’t know herself at all to an empowered, confident person,” said Crandell, who is already at work on her next book, a female-empowerment romp that she describes as “‘Good Girls’ meets ‘Golden Girls,’ with a twist of ‘Steel Magnolias.'”
“None of us is without imperfections. No one is doing it exactly right. But I think you have to give people the grace to grow. When I get from people, they say, ‘I can relate to her. I am her. I am Jane.'”
