Whenever I choose a book for the podcast, I’m looking for beautiful writing, a compelling story and themes that resonate with me. My latest pick, Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by debut author Katie Yee ticked all those boxes.
It’s a slim novel of 199 pages, a comic tragedy that reminded me a little of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. Both stories involve a cheating husband, a heartbroken wife, but the protagonists are very different. Nora’s protagonist is angry and funny and finds consolation in food and recipes. Katie’s protagonist is watchful, less angry, funny, and finds consolation in stories. The book title Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar makes you think of an old joke. Only when the protagonist walks into a bar, or in this case an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet restaurant with her husband, he tells her he’s having an affair with a white woman named Maggie. Soon after the protagonist discovers she has breast cancer and names the tumor Maggie.
Now divorce, cancer, not such cheery topics, but in Katie’s hands, I kept laughing, not loud, raucous laughter, but more chuckling about the narrator’s relatable observations. She hates the tiny triangular paper cups in the doctor’s waiting room that never hold enough water and the outdated cheesy magazines. She never sees issues of the Atlantic or the New Yorker. Maybe, she muses, because people who read those magazines are too smart to get cancer. She writes ‘The Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual” and ponders whether she should give it to Maggie, the mistress, not the tumor.
When I asked Katie what she hoped readers would take away from her novel, she said:
I hope readers feel like they can revisit and retell their own story. They don’t have to hold onto stories that are not serving them. They can take the pen back.
Katie talks about how we each have our origin stories, including, in the novel’s case, how the narrator met her husband. But when he left her, she realized that story didn’t work for her anymore. I experienced that same thing when my husband and I divorced. I remember thinking what do I do with all those stories, the photo albums, the letters (we met way before email), the shared memories. It was a big chunk of my brain and heart. I had to find a different origin story with a new ending.
Katie said it doesn’t need to be a long marriage; any relationship can work its way into our origin story.
Who among us, she said, has not dated someone for a little bit too long just because the meet cute story was so good. I dated this guy right out of college. We met on the subway, and he asked me what I was reading, and I was like, this is it. A meet cute to end all meet cutes. And, you know, he wasn’t amazing. But I was like, I think we just have to hang on because the universe would never have given me a story so good if it wasn’t supposed to work out.
Another element to Katie’s novel that I loved was how the protagonist mothered her young children. She doesn’t pressure them to be a certain way, to get top grades. Unlike her ex, she doesn’t correct mistakes on their homework. Instead, the mother can’t wait to see what individuals her children will turn out to be. I asked Katie if this was how she grew up.
Absolutely. While I’m not myself a mother, so much of the motherhood aspect of the book, I’ve really pulled from my relationship to my own mother. I completely credit my mother and her curiosity about me and her love of storytelling. I was never sent to bed without a bedtime story. My mom was a classics major as an undergraduate, so she would tell me kid-friendly versions of all the Greek myths, and some Chinese myths that she knew.
She would also do this cool thing, a parenting hack, where she would tell me a story and then she would say, okay, now it’s your turn. And this is kind of a nice way if you’re tired of entertaining your kids, you let them entertain you.
I remember she’d pick me up after preschool, take me to a diner where we’d get French fries and a vanilla milkshake and we would just tell each other stories. I wanted the narrator in the book to look at her children with that same curiosity and love.
And the other main way Katie’s novel resonated with me, was through the narrator’s best friend Darlene. Everyone should have a Darlene in their lives, the friend who knows exactly what we need before we do, who knows what to stay at tense moments, who gets us and is there for us when the going gets tough. When the narrator asks Darlene how she thinks Maggie, the mistress, is in bed,
Darlene replies terrible. She looks like a real pillow princess. … She lies there like a dead fish! Doesn’t move her hips. She fakes orgasms, but in the ways guys like.
Katie told me Darlene was an important character for me to write into this book because there are so many “divorce novels” out there. But I’m always like, where is her best friend? For me personally, I’ve never had to go through anything difficult in my life without the help or the shoulder or the ear of a very best friend. I’m lucky in that I’ve got a couple of Darlene’s in my life.
And I have a couple of Darlene’s in my life, who always make the bad times a little less bad. You know who you are.
The above has been edited for clarity and brevity. You can listen to the full episode here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author, or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.
November 2025
