Jennifer Belle Talks New Hilarious and Wildly Shocking Coming-of-Age, “Swanna in Love”

Swanna in Love by Jennifer Belle

How could one resist a novel called Swanna In Love? As with Jennifer Belle’s previous books, Going Down, High Maintenance, Little Stalker and The Seven Year Bitch, her wit and unforgettable voice hook the reader at once.

We are swept into fourteen-year-old Swanna Swain’s first-person narration in this latest tale. When we meet her, she and her younger brother Madding are waiting for their mother Val to collect them from summer camp and whisk them home to the Upper West Side of New York City. Instead Val brings along her young lover and they take the children to an artist’s colony in Vermont.

There their mother, freshly single, makes poor choices in her attempt to balance a lover and her two children. Since the book takes place in the early eighties and there are no cell phones and no internet, Swanna does her best to reach her father. Although only a pay phone away, he is not a rescuer in any form. Swanna faces that both her parents are invested in their social lives rather than the well-being of their children.

While Vermont is alien territory to Swanna, it is there that she meets Dennis, a young doctor who is married and the father of two small children. It doesn’t take long for him to say, “You’ve cast a spell over me.” Although Swanna tells the reader “He could be very fake”, she is drawn to him. Thus, a new adult enters Swanna’s world, bringing confusion and the façade of security.

In this outstanding coming-of-age novel, it is Swanna’s voice, so authentic and honest, that keeps us turning the pages. Swanna In Love covers much emotional terrain, including defiance, longing, heartbreak, adults versus children, purity and lies.

I’ve reached out to Jennifer Belle to ask a few questions about her latest book.

Your novel feels very personal in tone. How did you decide on this plot.

Well the first part of the book was something that really happened to me, that I had always wanted to write.

I got on the bus to go home from theater camp. I was excited to be heading back to my New York City apartment and then I was pulled off the bus and told my mother would pick me up. The whole place emptied out and hours and hours later my mother showed up with her new, much younger boyfriend, who I had never met. My parents had just gotten separated. They took me to an artist colony that didn’t allow kids inside the house. My brother, who we picked up at his camp along the way, and I had to sleep in the back of a truck, outside, alone.

I had always wanted to write this crazy road trip book, but a few things stopped me. For one thing, my agent at the time thought a book from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old girl wouldn’t work for an adult book. For another thing, I couldn’t remember much about that time. I couldn’t really remember the people at the artist colony or what it looked like, or even which of the three theater camps I’d been to or exactly how old I was. But the real thing that stopped me was not knowing what the story would be.

But then, when I started to write it anyway, just because I really wanted to so much, I started to really get into her head. I thought about how in real life I wanted to go home. And my character Swanna, would do whatever it took to get there. That’s when I came up with the idea of her meeting Dennis, a much older married dad, who she would convince to help her get there. The affair with the older man is very much made up, but it’s based on some experiences I had with older men when I was a teenager — one in California and a few in New York. So it is very much fiction, but also very much based on my real life, and definitely very, very personal.

Both Swanna’s mother and father are detached and unavailable to their children. How does this affect Swanna’s approach to her younger brother, Madding?

Yes. She often feels like the adult in the room. She’s very maternal towards her brother and feels a lot of guilt that she can’t do more for him. She has to worry about what he’s eating, if their mother will remember to put money under his pillow for the tooth fairy, and if he’s safe riding in the back of an open pick up truck on the highway. One of the reasons I kept her fourteen, instead of making her older which I had considered at one point, is because of her relationship with Madding. It’s sort of interesting that she’s so maternal toward him, and if she were older, that dynamic would be more expected. Because her parents are so out to lunch, Swanna has to grow up faster than she should have, but she wants her brother to still be able to be a kid.

Because the reader is inside Swanna’s head, the connection to Dennis is from her point of view. How did you create this — did you outline ahead?

I never outline ahead, but I do outline after I’ve finished. This book takes place over eight days, so I had to track everything — the plot and her emotions — very carefully. It was easy to create because I very much felt like her the whole time I was writing it. It was during Covid, and I was stuck in a place I didn’t want to be, just like Swanna is in the book. I felt all that frustration of a fourteen year old girl who is powerless. I also felt sort of brave at the same time — like does anything matter anymore? So her voice and point of view just came easily to me, and her motivations seemed natural.

Because it’s from her point of view, we don’t know anything about how Dennis is feeling or if he’s telling her the truth about things. In her mind, she feels like she’s in charge (even though she’s not). She feels like she’s the aggressor and she very much feels in love.

There are literary references throughout the book. Do you feel that Swanna’s knowledge equalized her relationship with Dennis in some aspect?

Well a lot of Swanna’s “experience” comes from reading. She’s read The Joy of Sex and The Sensuous Woman by J and Forever and Wifey and everything by Judy Blume. Plus plenty of Danielle Steele, Gone with the Wind, and of course some classics. So I think she might think she’s more experienced than she is. She’s fourteen, and she hasn’t done much, but she feels like she has. I didn’t have to re-read any of those books when I was writing this, because I had absorbed all those books so deeply myself when I was a kid. All those books were as much a part of me as they were her. Swanna is used to feeling smarter than most adults but I think she’s impressed that Dennis has read a lot too. I think she feels equal to him, but of course the reality is she isn’t.

I look forward to your next novel. Can you share any information?

Thank you! This book actually started as a short flashback in another book I was writing and then it took on a life of its own. My next book is the book I was writing at the time. I have to make a lot of changes to the plot and back story now, but I’m excited to work on it. Swanna in Love is my fifth book, but it’s my first book in thirteen years. I won’t take another thirteen years to write it, but I won’t rush it either.

If you were to cast Swanna in Love for a limited series or a film, who would you choose for Swanna and Madding, Dennis and Val?

I love this question because of course I’m hoping more than anything that this happens! I know from experience — my first book Going Down was optioned by Madonna and then by Muse Films 27 times — that there’s no point in thinking about the kids because it takes so long to set everything up, they keep getting too old for the part. For Going Down we had Julia Styles for the 19-year-old protagonist, and by the time we were ready she was grown up and wanted to direct! But I’ve had a lot of thoughts about the characters of Dennis and Val. For Dennis, I think Cousin Greg from Succession would be perfect — Nicholas Braun. Val would have to be a very sexy forty-year-old lead. I like Parker Posey, Gwyneth Paltrow, Aubrey Plaza, Scarlett Johansson.