12. Do you think she’s a slightly different person from who she is at the start of the book?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Read Carol Anshaw’s previous book, Carry the One, with your book group and discuss the similarities and differences between it and Right after the Weather.

2. Discuss whether you ever done something that you had previously considered yourself incapable of doing.

3. Pull up a map of Chicago and plot the settings for scenes from the novel.

A Conversation with Carol Anshaw

Both Right after the Weather and your previous book, Carry the One, deal with the repercussions of a single life-changing act. Why do you think your work comes back to this?

A while back, in an interview, a writer said what follows violence is always interesting. In these two books I follow that trajectory in different ways. In both cases, characters are yanked out of their usual lives and set down in an entirely different place. That gives me a lot to work with.

Much of this novel grapples with the aftermath of the 2016 election. Why did you choose to write about the topic? How did the election affect your writing process?

As I was writing the book, the election happened. There’s no way these characters would’ve been able to ignore it, so I had to put it in and use it to underline the characters in their relation to it.

In addition to writing, you paint, so you have a foot in multiple artistic worlds. What kind of research did you do for Cate’s work in the theater?

I read a lot. I talked with several set designers and I went on a backstage tour of a Broadway theater. It was a world that was new to me so it was fiercely interesting. I hope I got it right.

How did you come to the shocking revelation Maureen shares with Cate on p. 20?

I needed something that would probably be a deal breaker in a budding relationship, something that would make staying in it very tentative.

What was the most challenging scene to write?

The scene in the kitchen.

In the course of working on this novel, did any of the characters’ actions or reactions surprise you?

Well, of course I’m writing book so surprising me is not an option, but the character I had to keep figuring and refiguring was Neale. How would she react to being attacked? To Cate’s rescue? To her parents’ stepping in? To her husband’s return?

Why did you choose not to dramatize the scene where Cate rescues Neale?

I did. I just broke it up into pieces of flashback. That way I got to both show it and run it through Cate’s memory.

In writing the scene where Neale is assaulted, did you consider what you would do in Cate’s situation?

Every step of the way.

Instead of chapter numbers, you give each a word or two. Can you explain these?