Lihi Lapid’s new nov­el, I Want­ed To Be Won­der­ful, braids togeth­er two sto­ry­lines — a con­tem­po­rary love sto­ry and a fairy tale one. JBC spoke with Lapid about craft­ing these two nar­ra­tives, what ​“hap­pi­ly ever after” looks like for women in our mod­ern world, and more. 

Simona Zaret­sky: I Want­ed To Be Won­der­ful weaves togeth­er the sto­ry of a con­tem­po­rary mar­riage and a fairy­tale love sto­ry fol­low­ing a prince and princess. What drew you to this more whim­si­cal sto­ry­line? How do you see these two voic­es in conversation?

Lihi Lapid: Today, we call every girl a ​“princess,” and we’re all try­ing to raise them to believe that life is a fairy tale. But then, real life hap­pens — and it’s often much more chal­leng­ing and some­times painful. In this book, I want­ed to explore the promise of love and use those char­ac­ters as a reflec­tion of our own more real­i­ty-based sto­ries. The con­tem­po­rary sto­ry is a tale about all of us. I think that’s why it res­onat­ed with so many women — because they some­times see them­selves as princess­es and, oth­er times, they see the raw, vul­ner­a­ble parts hid­den beneath. It’s about the com­plex things we don’t tell girls before bed­time — strug­gles as well as vic­to­ries. Because with­in each of us there are both of these char­ac­ters — the one who wears a mask to sur­vive, and the Cin­derel­la who stayed at home, afraid.

SZ: Each of these female pro­tag­o­nists’ sto­ries begins with mar­riage, the princess not­ing of her union that this was ​“the pin­na­cle… the end of this process.” And yet mar­riage is the open­ing of the nov­el and the cat­a­lyst for their respec­tive jour­neys’. To me, this felt a bit like an inver­sion of the clas­sic fairy­tale trope, where­in the sto­ry typ­i­cal­ly ends with a mar­riage. Could you speak on this?

LL: In this book, I want­ed to talk about what hap­pens after ​“hap­pi­ly ever after.” Most love sto­ries end at the wed­ding, but I believe that’s actu­al­ly when life begins. I don’t think many peo­ple write about the chal­lenges women face, in par­tic­u­lar the women who want to pur­sue their dreams and build careers, but then some­thing shifts when they become moth­ers. I used the fig­ures of the prince and princess to explore my own dreams of a per­fect home, fam­i­ly, and mar­riage, and to con­front the real­i­ties and com­plex­i­ties that come with them.

SZ: Pho­tog­ra­phy is the work and pas­sion of the con­tem­po­rary nar­ra­tor and I know that you your­self are a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. As the women’s lives change, so too do their per­spec­tives. Does pho­tog­ra­phy cap­ture the deep­er truths of life or a sit­u­a­tion? Or allow us to have new per­spec­tives or lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive distance?

LL: I was a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for many years. I believe there’s a sim­i­lar­i­ty between writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy — in both cas­es, it’s about try­ing to cap­ture some­thing from real­i­ty, iso­lat­ing it, and giv­ing peo­ple a chance to look at it or read about it. These moments, whether in pho­tog­ra­phy or writ­ing, if they are spe­cial and sur­pris­ing — they allow us to gain a new per­spec­tive on ourselves. 

Once my moth­er said to me — she doesn’t under­stand pho­tog­ra­phy, so how would she know when a pho­to is good? I told her: When a pho­to­graph touch­es your heart, it’s a good one. The same goes for writ­ing, for sto­ries, and for a book. That’s art — when it touch­es you emotionally. 

I know this book has touched many women’s hearts in Israel, because they see them­selves between the pages. And I believe and hope that this will also hap­pen now for any­one who reads it in English.

SZ: Moth­er­hood and par­ent­ing play an inte­gral role in these women’s lives and in their mar­riages. Could you speak on how these women nav­i­gate these demands and joys?

LL: One of the things that’s less talked about is what real­ly hap­pens to us when we become moth­ers. That’s what I Want­ed to Be Won­der­ful is about. It’s about suc­cess­ful women, full of dreams and plans, who were sure they would be won­der­ful moth­ers. But when our already busy lives are com­pound­ed with the expec­ta­tion that we must also be per­fect moth­ers and great part­ners, it’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. I want­ed to be won­der­ful too, and some­times I wasn’t. Our kids aren’t always the most suc­cess­ful, and we don’t always feel so great our­selves. That’s what I wrote about — giv­ing our­selves per­mis­sion to some­times be less than per­fect, to not always take care of every­one else, and some­times, to put our­selves first. That’s more impor­tant than we often realize.

SZ: I know that you imbued this book with a lot of your own life, what was the expe­ri­ence like of writ­ing so personally?

LL: I didn’t plan to write such a per­son­al­ly reveal­ing book, but it was writ­ten straight from the heart. From the gut. When I fin­ished writ­ing it, I was afraid to pub­lish it. It felt very expos­ing to me. I tried to omit some parts, but I real­ized that then it wouldn’t be authen­tic. I wait­ed over a year until I had the courage to pub­lish it. Beyond the expo­sure of the expe­ri­ence of adjust­ing from a young woman to a wife and moth­er, it was also very com­plex for me to reveal being a moth­er to a child with spe­cial needs.

In the end, I felt that this is some­thing that res­onates with many fam­i­lies, so I decid­ed to take on the chal­lenge of the expo­sure and pub­lish the book. The thing that makes it so pow­er­ful — that makes it so dif­fi­cult — is also what makes it suc­cess­ful. Because some­one final­ly talks about it, with strength. Not just out of pain, but from a place of truth and empowerment.

SZ: These women are, ulti­mate­ly, on a quest to recen­ter them­selves and for their own joy, even claim­ing the small­est moments for them­selves. Through your own life and work and writ­ing this nov­el, have you come across any real­iza­tions on this?

LL: Absolute­ly. That was the most mean­ing­ful insight I had dur­ing the writ­ing process — the under­stand­ing that our lives are unpre­dictable, that there will always be chal­lenges. Being a par­ent is about fac­ing the unknown, about los­ing con­trol. Our chil­dren will be who they are. We can’t always change the world for them. And so, we need to learn to accept the moments when things are good — the moments of hap­pi­ness — and embrace them.

I believe this is not only rel­e­vant to life with­in our fam­i­lies, but also to life itself. Think­ing about what we’ve been through in Israel as a coun­try — since Octo­ber 7th — I believe that in the end, each of us — cap­tives, sol­diers, moth­ers of sol­diers, and bereaved par­ents — all of us, what we want most is to hold onto those small moments of hap­pi­ness. Moments when fam­i­ly is gath­ered around the table, when we are togeth­er, embrac­ing those we love.

SZ: What was the process like of craft­ing the two par­al­lel narratives? 

LL: It felt very nat­ur­al for me to move between the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters — between the two sto­ries, between dream and real­i­ty, between leg­end and truth. I believe there’s always with­in us both the woman who dreams and the girl we once were. 

We often look at our­selves from the out­side — through a judg­ing eye — try­ing to think if we’ve met the expec­ta­tions, both of our sur­round­ings and of ourselves. 

And that’s real­ly what the two char­ac­ters rep­re­sent. One is who we want­ed to be, and the oth­er is who we are. This book offers a space to con­nect them. Some­times, we become that one, and oth­er times, the fan­ta­sy remains and waits for a dif­fer­ent moment when we can bring it to life

SZ: Were there any authors or books that influ­enced this novel? 

LL: Many books have influ­enced me and are part of the inspi­ra­tion for this book. From child­hood favorites like The Secret Gar­den and Lit­tle Women—to The Red Tent, which tells the sto­ry of Dina from the Bible, but from a dif­fer­ent perspective. 

My dia­logue in the book is includes both fairy tale, Dis­ney-esque ele­ments, and fem­i­nist lit­er­a­ture. Essen­tial­ly, it’s a cri­tique of both, and an under­stand­ing that we’re some­where in the middle.

SZ: What are you read­ing and writ­ing now?

LL: I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing a book titled Until He Returns by Ayelet Dekel, whose hus­band has been on reserve duty in the war in Gaza for two years. They have three chil­dren, and she wrote a chill­ing book about her wor­ries for her hus­band, her strug­gles as an Israeli woman, and her chil­dren’s ques­tions. The book is told from her per­spec­tive and also from her hus­band’s, describ­ing what he’s going through dur­ing the war in Gaza — his hard­ships and long­ing for home.

I’ve just fin­ished writ­ing a screen­play based on my book On Her Own, and we’re at the end of film­ing it for a tele­vi­sion series.