CR 017: Sophie Brickman on Her Delightful New Satire, ‘Plays Well With Others’

The journalist and author discusses her debut novel and how she made the transition from nonfiction to fiction.

Sophie Brickman, photo by Rosalie O’Conner

Sophie Brickman is all too familiar with the at-times maddening world of parenting. The longtime journalist and mother of three has written about the topic for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New Yorker, among other outlets. Her first book, Baby, Unplugged, garnered rave reviews from The Boston Globe and Publishers Weekly, which referred to it as “equal parts informative and entertaining.” But when it came time to work on her second book, Brickman couldn’t bring herself to tackle yet another journalistic exploration of the parenting space.

“I had an idea for another nonfiction book,” she says. “As I was writing the proposal for that, I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to sustain my interest for the year or so of reporting I’ll have to do. Maybe I can try something different.’ I thought I’d write something serious about education. I banged my head against the wall for two weeks, and was like, ‘T…