We chat with author Mariko Turk about The Museum of Modern Love, which is an irresistible instant classic about the thrilling, often infuriating, rush of first love, guaranteed to sweep you off your feet.
PLUS you can read an excerpt at the end of the interview!
Hi, Mariko! Welcome back! What have you been up to since we last spoke for the release of The Other Side of Perfect?
I’m so glad to be back! I can’t believe it’s been five years since my debut published. I just went back to look at my old interview with The Nerd Daily, and it’s such a time capsule! I’m talking about how sleep-deprived I am from having a six month old, and how I can’t wait to get all of my doses of the Covid vaccine. I’ve been up to a lot since then, both with parenting and writing. I feel more experienced in both but also like I still have so much to learn, which isn’t a place to be!
Your latest novel, The Museum of Modern Love, is out October 13th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Swoony night at the museum 😘
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect a YA enemies-to-lovers romance that takes place entirely over the course of one night in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They can expect lots of banter, swoon, and art. Maybe most importantly, they can expect to experience large doses of “sneaking around the sprawling galleries of a closed museum while falling in love with the guy you thought you hated” vibes.
Where did the inspiration for The Museum of Modern Love come from?
When I was trying to figure out what to write next, I knew I wanted it to be the kind of book that makes you want to live inside it. The kind of book with such a rich, vivid setting that it feels like you can conjure up the world of the story in perfect detail inside your own head. I thought about what books made me feel like that when I was younger, and I immediately thought of E.L. Konigsburg’s middle grade classic, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, about a sister and brother who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spend several nights there.
It made me think: what if I could write a book that captures all the magic of an overnight museum adventure…but also add kissing? The Museum of Modern Love was born!
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I LOVED researching the Met’s collections and figuring out which pieces of art would play a role in Miki and Lou’s journey to falling in love. It was so cool to come across an 18th century French painting and realize that discussing it would definitely elevate the romantic tension between them. Or discovering a fascinating, centuries-old Chinese instrument that would make Miki yearn to know Lou on a deeper level. If research was always this fun, I would do it all the time!
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Speaking of researching the Met, I not only had to pore over the art in their collections, I also had to know the geography of the museum. Drawing on my memories of the Met gave me a lot of good vibes to work with, but to get the logistics of Miki and Lou’s overnight jaunt right, I had to study all the floor plans and images and videos I could find online. That was really hard! And since the Met is a real and very famous place, I couldn’t just make up convenient details to suit the scene. So I tried to stick as close to reality as I could, putting all the galleries and restrooms and drinking fountains where they are in the real life Met. Which is hard to do when you live in a state many miles away from NYC.
Luckily, my superstar editors, Jennifer Besser and Hana Tzou, helped me out with these logistical details. Hana walked Miki and Lou’s entire journey through the Met (over 10,000 steps!) to make sure it was right. And she even took a video of the entrance to a particular stairwell (where some romantic tension is afoot) so I could describe it accurately. Editors are amazing!!
This is your third novel! What are some of the key lessons you’ve learned since your debut when it comes to writing and publishing?
In terms of writing, I’ve learned a form of outlining/plotting that works for me. I completely “pantsed” my first book (which means I wrote the draft by the seat of my pants, with no outline or plan). But I’ve realized I can’t do that with other books. The biggest thing my subsequent books have taught me is how to develop an plotting system that works for me. Basically, now I have a way of planning the major beats, themes, and character arcs of a story that give me some direction before I start writing. Then I can still explore and discover a lot of new stuff while I’m drafting, but I always have the roadmap so I don’t get completely lost.
In terms of publishing, I’ve learned (or maybe am still learning) to let go of expectations and concerns regarding things that are out of your control, i.e. mostly everything about the book besides how it’s written. You can’t control how your book will be received by readers and reviewers, if it will be popular, if it will be understood in the way you want it to be, etc. All you can control is the writing, so that’s what I try to focus on. Again, still working on learning this one!
What’s next for you?
I’m currently revising my next YA romance! I don’t know what I can say about it yet, but it will have ‘romantic adventure in a big city’ vibes.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I absolutely loved Clare Osongco’s UNFINISHED BUSINESS! It’s such a smart, unique romance with that perfect balance of humor, poignancy, and swoon.
I’ve also been getting into cozy fantasy lately, and WATER MOON by Samantha Sotto Yambao is next on my list. Fall is such a good cozy fantasy season!
EXCERPT
LET ME PAINT you a picture.
A seventh-grade girl is on a school field trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. She is wearing her favorite shirt—a canary-yellow tee with Women on the Gogh written in bold letters above an illustration of three elderly ladies marching across a reclining Vincent van Gogh. The height of both comedy and fashion.
Girl is randomly paired for a scavenger hunt activity with Boy who has dimples and hair the color of caramel. Girl expects she will do all the work while Boy texts because life is unjust. Instead, Boy points at Girl’s shirt and laughs. Not in a mean way. In a way that says: I get you.
Girl and Boy have more fun than anyone should while completing a mandatory museum assignment. They bubble over at Mary Cassatt’s depiction of natural light. They pepper an ancient docent with so many questions about pointillism he pretends to get an important phone call from his wife.
Girl and Boy become best friends.
Secretly, Girl develops a crush on Boy, one that flits in her chest like a brushstroke, lighting her up from the inside.
The summer after eighth grade, Girl is forced to move because her parents stop believing in love and get divorced. From her lonely, humid home in Gainesville, Florida, Girl is convinced that Boy, all the way back in Pittsburgh, will forget about her. They’re fourteen hours away from each other now. And high school is starting. High school changes things.
Girl spends a lot of time moping in her new town’s tiny art museum.
It’s there that she discovers something extraordinary. The tiny museum has a Van Gogh painting on loan from Amsterdam: Drawbridge. It shows a faraway woman with a parasol standing on a bridge. A small white house sits on one side of the bridge, and on the other, two cypress trees. It feels like a sign. Van Gogh is her favorite artist, and his cypresses—rising out of the ground like green flames—are her favorite of his subjects.
It’s like the painting traveled all this way to send her a message.
So she listens. And a bolt of inspiration strikes, making her do something uncharacteristically brave. She stands in front of the painting, presses Record, and pours her heart out. She says she’s seen Drawbridge before in a book and thought it looked happy and bright. But now, it seems lonely, full of yearning. She says art does that sometimes, shows you how much you’ve changed. The thing is, she says, Boy does that, too. Because after she met him, the world felt bright and happy. And now that he’s nine hundred miles away, everything feels empty.
Before she can chicken out, she texts him the video.
She waits for the rest of the day, worrying, wondering if she’s made a huge mistake. She didn’t outright confess her feelings, but . . . it was pretty obvious.
And then Boy texts back.
A video of him standing in front of Mary Cassatt’s Young Women Picking Fruit at the Carnegie. He says it makes him think about that field trip in seventh grade, the one when they first met. He says he’s visited the painting a lot since she moved away. When he looks at it, it makes him miss her less. But as soon as he walks away, he misses her more.
For the next three years, Girl and Boy send art videos back and forth. They email and text when they need the words to come faster. They talk about parents and teachers, homework and movies, after-school jobs and what they would ask Michelangelo to paint on their bedroom ceilings if he ever came back from the dead. All the important stuff.
Girl’s crush grows and grows, like Van Gogh’s cypresses. At first, the trees appeared in the background of Van Gogh’s landscapes, but his obsession with them grew until they were spreading over whole canvases, until he produced painting after painting of bold, bottle-green cypresses soaring into the sky.
That’s what it feels like inside her chest, like cypresses taking root in her heart and spiraling up, ready to burst out. But they can’t. Because, on paper, Girl and Boy are still just friends. It’s hard to be anything else from opposite ends of the East Coast.
And so, Girl is left with videos and words on a screen and the fracturing feeling of unrequited love.
Which gives her a lot of time to paint pictures in her head.
Of what it would be like to see him again.
Of wandering through the vast quiet of an art museum, just the two of them.
Of looking into his extraordinary eyes—the perfect shade of cypress green—and finally saying I love you.
Will you be picking up
