Latest news with #AishaMuharrar
Vogue
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
How Aisha Muharrar Managed to Write a Fun Novel About Grief
There is a lot of nonfiction out there about grief, from the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross classic On Grief and Grieving to Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (and Blue Nights, for that matter). But it can be a tricky thing, trying to transform the essentially human yet distinctly intimate experience of loss into fodder for a novel. Photo: Courtesy of Aisha Muharrar That's exactly what television writer Aisha Muharrar has done with her new book Loved One, however. Although the story that she tells about Julia—an LA-based jewelry designer who, reeling from the death of her close friend (and longtime situationship) Gabe, builds an unlikely relationship with Gabe's most recent ex, Elizabeth—is a painful one, the comedic voice that Muharrar has honed on shows including Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, and Hacks makes it a genuine pleasure to read. This week, Vogue spoke to Muharrar about being excited for 'the people part' of promoting Loved One, building a postmortem love triangle, diving deep into jewelry-design research, and how she balances fiction with screenwriting. Vogue: How does it feel seeing Loved One out in the world? Aisha Muharrar: It's such a mix of feelings. It's such a solitary experience, writing a novel, and one thing that has just been really great is seeing the community around me support me. I've had friends volunteer to co-host events; my friend has a bar and we worked together with this fundraising organization called the Freya Project. There's this wine bar in Kingston, New York, that I really love that's one of the places I kind of based Elizabeth's restaurant in the book on, and I was talking about it to a waitress there, and then she told me that her husband works at the bookstore in town, so now we're doing an event with that bookstore and the bar. That's what I'm most excited about, actually—seeing people. One of my best friends is making the drive to Kingston, and then we're going to hang out. People who were following my work on Parks and Recreation or when I was on the Gilmore Guys podcast are coming in to support, and that's the part I really like. I like all of the parts of writing, I guess, but I really enjoy the part of the process where there's that exchange: I put something out there, someone else consumes it, has their own interpretation, and tells me about what they think. I'm excited for that. I have a lot of great conversation partners too, so I'm just excited for the people part.
Toronto Star
11-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
Book Review: Debut novelist Aisha Muharrar deftly explores love and loss in ‘Loved One'
I picked up a copy of 'Loved One' based solely on the fact that its first-time author, Aisha Muharrar, was involved in three television comedies that made me laugh: 'Hacks,''Parks and Recreation' and 'The Good Place.' The opening scene of 'Loved One' could be a set piece on any of those shows, as we jump inside the head of our narrator, 30-year-old Julia, who is delivering the eulogy at a friend's funeral, a popular indie musician at the time of his death. She thinks in pop culture tropes. 'Gabe and I were actual friends… We weren't the kind of friends who were never really friends. The kind of friends you see in a romantic comedy where there are two incredibly attractive people who are deeply emotionally invested in each other, and we're supposed to believe they have never once considered the idea of sexual intercourse.'
Associated Press
11-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: Debut novelist Aisha Muharrar deftly explores love and loss in ‘Loved One'
I picked up a copy of 'Loved One' based solely on the fact that its first-time author, Aisha Muharrar, was involved in three television comedies that made me laugh: 'Hacks,''Parks and Recreation' and 'The Good Place.' The opening scene of 'Loved One' could be a set piece on any of those shows, as we jump inside the head of our narrator, 30-year-old Julia, who is delivering the eulogy at a friend's funeral, a popular indie musician at the time of his death. She thinks in pop culture tropes. 'Gabe and I were actual friends… We weren't the kind of friends who were never really friends. The kind of friends you see in a romantic comedy where there are two incredibly attractive people who are deeply emotionally invested in each other, and we're supposed to believe they have never once considered the idea of sexual intercourse.' Julia next goes to the bathroom and ends up needing to borrow a tampon from Elizabeth, a British woman Gabe had been dating for more than a year at the time of his accidental death. (He slipped and hit his head on a marble sink when exiting the shower of an L.A. hotel.) Elizabeth's words to Julia in their brief bathroom encounter set the rest of the story in motion: 'I know exactly who you were to Gabe.' After some required background about how Julia and Gabe met at a program for arts and architectural students in Barcelona in the summer between high school and college, Julia is on her way to London to retrieve a few of Gabe's things at the request of Gabe's grieving mother. 'I was a set of house keys buried at the bottom of a purse, finally plucked out, jangling with a purpose,' is the poetic way Muharrar describes Julia's feelings as she heads overseas. Once in London, the story takes on an almost buddy comedy feel, with Julia and Elizabeth warily befriending one another as they attempt to collect mementos of Gabe's — from a guitar he once played to a Mets cap he wore. We stay inside Julia's head most of the time, as she travels around London, still delivering inner monologues wrapped in her pop-culture sensibility: 'I liked learning a new tidbit about him. It was never-before-seen footage that kept the movie of his life rolling.' As the two women get to know one another, we as readers get to know more about their relationships with Gabe, and especially what happened in the final month or so before his death. Muharrar's work developing her main characters throughout the story allows her to explore deeper themes of grief and loss in the final third of the book without too much sentimentality. Closure may be too much to ask for these grieving women, but it's enough that they realize they still have lives to live without the object of the book's title. ___ AP book reviews:
Condé Nast Traveler
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Condé Nast Traveler
Women Who Travel Book Club: 9 New Books to Dive Into This Summer
If you're in the midst of finalizing your vacation packing list, don't head to the beach or that hideaway Airbnb without tossing an exciting new read into your carry-on. So far, 2025 has proven to be a year with a bounty of great books. Victoria Lomasko's The Last Soviet Artist is a superb entry in graphic reportage. Charmaine Wilkerson returns with her sophomore novel Good Dirt. And Aisha Muharrar takes her screenwriting talents to the small page with her debut novel Loved One, which releases later this August. In this edition of the Women Who Travel book club, our editors are sharing the new books they just can't put down. Whether you choose to escape with another slam dunk from Taylor Jenkins Reid or delve deeper into the thornier sides of friendship, love, and parenthood, we've got you covered. Let us know what you're reading—and which great new books we've criminally missed—on Instagram or Facebook. Here, nine of our favorite reads to check out yourself this summer.
