Cynthia Zarin Explores Mid-Life Relationships in 'Estate'

Acclaimed novelist and longtime New Yorker contributor Cynthia Zarin visits Writer’s Voices to discuss her latest novel, Estate, a companion piece to her debut novel, Inverno. Her story centers around Caroline, a woman and mother in her late forties (possibly early fifties) who has been married twice, is currently separated from her husband, and involved with an old friend. As if that weren’t enough, she also falls in love with Lorenzo, a man who is simultaneously in relationships with two other women. According to Zarin, “Caroline’s life is extremely complicated… I think she feels she’s stuck with herself. It would be wonderful if she could lose herself, but she can’t… [however] she stays right where she is and has that, as I think most of us do, in the midst of our lives… she has no intention of leaving her life, she’s just trying to live a number of lives at once, which I think we all do in some way… Caroline has agency over her life. She’s not a victim of anyone, she’s made these decisions and she’s making her bed and she is going to lie in it, and she accepts the consequences of that.”

While there are elements drawn from her own life, Zarin emphasizes that Caroline is a unique character shaped by her own distinct, intimate experiences. She reflected, “Caroline is a character. Of course, she has many of the references that I grew up with… but she speaks for herself… She was talked about quite a lot in the first book, and then she kind of said, ‘Well, it’s my turn now and I’m going to speak…'” And as far as what is really happening in the story and what Caroline is imagining, Zarin says that the uncertainty was intentional. “She is telling her story and it’s a true story, according to Caroline. I mean, we all tell stories about ourselves all the time. We emphasize certain things, we leave out what we call ‘telling details’ because they would tell something we might not like to have told, right? So, Caroline is no different. She is telling a story about herself, and I am really almost like a reporter writing that down.”