Author Maurene Goo is proving that single women in their 40s aren’t tragic

AA+PI literary representation in the 1990s and 2000s was rare—good representation might as well have been a unicorn—and stories that reflected my life were few and far between. Things have definitely gotten better, but we’ve still got a ways to go. So it’s always exciting when I discover a book in which I see not just one, but multiple aspects of my life on the page, and I can check off a number of things that I have in common with the characters.

Enter One & Only by Maurene Goo. Protagonist Cassia Park is 39, going on 40. Check. Settled in her career. Check. Single. Check. Thinking more seriously about whether or not she wants kids. Check. It was eerie how much of my life I saw in Cass’s.

But of course, there are also many differences. Cass freezes her eggs so she has the option of time when it comes to having kids. While I am a journalist and cannot afford to do that. Cass is on an active search to find her one true love. Whereas I am single, and don’t care whether or not I mingle.

The adult debut for Goo, a longtime young adult (YA) author, One & Only was recently selected for Jenna Hager’s book club, Read With Jenna. The book follows Cass, whose family has a matchmaking business because the women in her family are able to see into their clients’ past lives and find their fated match. Thanks to this, Cass knows her true love is named Daniel Nam, but after 10 years, he’s nowhere to be found. So as she approaches 40, Cass decides to have a fling with 28-year-old Ellis, only to find out that his boss is none other than Daniel Nam. Cue the love triangle as she tries to decide whether to follow fate, or create her own.

I recently spoke with Goo about One & Only. We talked about the transition from YA to adult literature, depicting realistic women in their 40s, and why she has to cry when writing.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Samantha Pak: This is your first adult book. What made you decide to transition from YA and try this out?
Maurene Goo: I would never say I'm not going to go back to YA, because I do love it. That time in a person's life is still really interesting to me. I have so much empathy and love for teenagers.

As far as why I decided to move to adult, it just felt like the right time. I wrote Throwback, which I loved. I put so much into what I wanted to say about relationships between mothers and daughters. And to me, that was the big white whale that I was chasing being a YA author because that was a real big relationship in my life.

I wanted to challenge myself and do something new. And 2020 was the year I got really deep into reading a lot of romance novels, contemporary rom-coms, like a lot of us. There's a reason why Emily Henry hit big. I was pregnant, so I was going through it hormonally, and I really wanted to shield myself from the hard stuff. They really saved me. And I was like, “This is a natural thing for me to write. I'm also becoming a mother. Maybe it is time for me to delve into adult matters.”

SP: “Crap. I gotta grow up.” [Laughs]
MG: Yeah. And I was like, “What am I going to write about?”

I was in my writing group one day, and it's mostly women in their 40s and older. And someone was like, “Oh my god, I'm just so sick of reading about 20 year olds in relationships. Where's the one about 40 year olds or 50 year olds?” And I was like, “I'm in my 40s. I'm gonna just write a main character that's in her 40s and see, how does that change the story?” I really wanted to write a book about a woman in her 40s that reflected the single women I knew—which is not “divorced mom,” and it's not “sad, lonely spinster who, for whatever loserly reason, couldn't fall in love.” You know what I mean?

SP: I totally get that. You don't see that that often, but you're seeing it more.
MG: Because we're all turning this age, right? You naturally follow your generation of writers. Of course, women have written about this topic before me and done it really well, but I think that we are paying more attention.

I wanted to write about a 40 year old, and I want it to be realistic to the 40 year olds that I know. They're not sad. They actually have their sh*t together. They have great jobs—or, they have jobs and are providing for themselves. They know what they like. They know who they are. They're confident. They're not like, “Oh, I'm not finding love because I'm not beautiful.” They don't feel that way. It's more like, “Men are horrible and why would I be with a man, or a woman, if I could just be alone and love my life as is?” We have good friends. We love the city we live in. We know our taste. We're discerning. I wanted to write a character like that.

SP: And I appreciated that she's single, but it's not a tragedy.
MG: No. In fact, that's a lot of women that I know. I do think we're maybe the first generation to deal with that too. From an early age, nobody was telling us you have to be in this heteronormative marriage thing, right? So, we're seeing that now. A lot of women are not getting married; a lot of women are choosing not to have children. I put in that realistic stuff, but under a very aspirational, dreamy lens. But it's a story that is real, as far as the questions that come up for women in their 40s.