Robinne Lee's 'Crash Into Me' portrays middle age as complicated – and sexy
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What is the premise of Robinne Lee’s new novel *Crash Into Me*?
Hi, I'm Alyssa Nadbourney, and you're listening to NPR's Book of the Day. In Robin Lee's new novel, Crash Into Me, a middle-aged married couple moves from Paris to LA. The wife, Cecilia, deals with this tumultuous transition by falling into a love affair with a much younger woman. It's a multi-generational, multiracial story of marriage at a crossroads. Lee spoke with all things considered host, Juana Summers.
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Why did Lee choose to center the story on a romance between two women?
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Midlife can be complicated. Marriages well past the honeymoon phase, children with big questions or stony silence, careers in flux. But it can also be very, very sexy. That's the message at the heart of Robin Lee's new novel, Crash Into Me. It's the story of Cecilia Chen, an artist married to a director. They've recently moved their cat and two kids to Los Angeles after years living in Paris. It's a rocky challenge. transition for Cecilia, but things pick up when she runs into a model named Anuke and feels instantly drawn to her. Their relationship quickly becomes physical, and when we talked, I asked Robin Lee what made her want to explore a relationship between two women and crash into me.
I did not set out to write a story about two women. With this kind of relationship. I was writing about this one woman returning to America after twenty years. But the more I wrote for the characters, the more I I liked them together. I liked their it was there was something kind of tantalizing about the way they engage with each other and sometimes they tell you to just let your characters speak to you and lead you and I felt that
very much with these two.
How does the novel explore the tension between artistic vision and commercial appeal?
There's a question that's central to this book about the intersection of art and commerce. And I that's something you've navigated throughout your own career. I wonder how it came up in the process of turning your writing and the idea of you, your first book, into a a blockbuster movie. That's
so interesting. I th I think that there is this battle between like holding on to the artist's vision and then finding something that's going to sell to the mainstream or whatever that is. I very much wrote the idea of you for myself. It was a little bit of my history, a little bit of my fantasy, a little bit of the things I was encountering as a woman turning forty in Hollywood and the way that we're kind of written off in a certain way of no longer being desirable and I kind of wanted to fight back with that. And so when they adapted the book for the film There were changes that were made to make it more commercial. And so it it is. It's something that I think about when I'm writing even now. Like I want to be true to myself as a writer, the things that I find interesting.
Like if I find something interesting that happens to sell in a big way and feel commercial, then that's great. But I don't want to kind of change my idea of what would make a great story or what what is good writing just to sell it in a large way.
What challenges did Lee face writing a multi‑generational, multiracial narrative?
This
book is a multi generational, multiracial story. The idea of you featured white characters, and if I understand from reading previous interviews, that was a deliberate choice to get the book published, so I wonder what it was like to То врать вик, сому diversity and racial complexity.
For me, it's harder to write a book like this because I'm layering in so many factors and elements that mean something to me and I want it to be good, I want it to mean something, I want to be fair and honest. I would not have been fair to my characters if I was kind of writing
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the premise of Robinne Lee’s new novel *Crash Into Me*?
0:02–0:59
2
Why did Lee choose to center the story on a romance between two women?
0:59–2:19
3
How does the novel explore the tension between artistic vision and commercial appeal?
2:19–3:38
4
What challenges did Lee face writing a multi‑generational, multiracial narrative?
3:38–5:00
5
How does Cecilia talk to her children about race after moving from Paris to Los Angeles?
5:00–6:38
6
What insights does the book offer about the institution of marriage and infidelity?
6:38–7:39
7
How does Lee balance personal experience with broader cultural themes in the story?
7:39–8:57
8
What final thoughts does Lee share about love, midlife, and storytelling?
8:57–10:29
Speakers
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