Every time we tell someone about this book we get puzzled grins, raised eyebrows, and hilarious guesses as to what on earth The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook might possibly be. Every time we tell a guy about it, he becomes instantly intent on doing pretty much anything if it'll get him into the book. One boy (who swears he only went out with Thisbe in order to get a recipe named after him) found out he'd missed the print deadline by a hair but that the cover wasn't done yet and quickly e-mailed with a list of potential subtitles for the front jacket: Men Are from Marzipan, Women Are from Bean Dip; Dear John, I'm Leaving You and Taking the Cuisinart; He Would Eat His Grandmother's Pie All Night While Mine Just Sat There and Got Cold, Love in the Time of Colander... We don't have anyone exactly clamoring to be our boyfriends, yet they're practically lining up to get to be our exes!
We swear we didn't conceive of this book as a way to pick up guys. At least it didn't start out that way. Really: One day we were planning a barbecue at the Iowa farmhouse where we lived and Erin said, "Oh, I'll make Davis's spicy BBQ rub!" And we kind of looked at each other and said, "We should write a cookbook of all the recipes we've gotten from ex-boyfriends over the years!" And an idea was born.
It was the perfect project for us, too. We're both pack rats, collectors who hold on to every scrap of paper anyone's ever handed us. While all our friends grilled burgers that night and played volleyball on the lawn, the two of us took our beers upstairs and hauled out all of our aging boxes and envelopes full of tear-stained letters, ticket stubs, withered flowers, valentines....We told each other the stories behind every one of those scribbled scraps. "And, god," we'd find ourselves saying, "he made the most incredible vinaigrette...." We never made it outside to our own barbecue. We've pretty much been in our rooms since then, pecking away at this book like crazy people, the floors littered with old letters, our hands covered in rubber cement. We were driven, obsessed, compulsively determined to bring you The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook. And voila! Here it is!
Now that the book is out, we're starting to let our imaginations take hold of us again. We've got all sorts of ideas. Like maybe we could spend a year letting a different man cook us dinner every night. We'd bring along cameras, collect artifacts from the evening like budding archaeologists, and select the best dishes for a sequel! But maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves....

The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes)

Nissen, Thisbe

Ergenbright, Erin

Parenting & Relationships

William Morrow

A luminous first novel that brings a group of truly good people to life--in all their neurotic glory. When Roz Rosenzwieg, a brash and radiant New York Jew, meets Edwin Anderson at a party, she can hardly believe that she is attracted to the soft-spoken Nebraskan; she marries him a few months later, and soon gives birth to their daughter, Miranda. A golden lit trail of good fortune. But as Miranda grows, Roz's love for her becomes so fierce and focused that it skews everything else in their lives (including Roz's marriage). And yet their comedic chemistry is also a great attractor--drawing them a wonderful, eccentric, and constantly changing cast of characters who enter the Roz and Miranda-centered universe at their own risk, with both unhappy and hilarious results. Whether it's Miranda's best friend from summer camp, Darrin, or Alex, the hippie film student who rents a room in their brownstone, or Miranda's orthodontist (and Roz's new love interest). the unsinkable Steven Stone, or even Edwin's second wife, Kathy, someone usually spills the secrets that Miranda and Roz keep from each other, provocation and protection being equal elements in their slightly screwy bond.With spirited dialogue, off-beat humor, and a sharp and contemporary style, Thisbe Nissen delivers an irresistible and original debut novel.

Good People Of New York

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Anchor Books

The Good People Of New York

A luminous first novel that brings a group of truly good people to life--in all their neurotic glory. When Roz Rosenzwieg, a brash and radiant New York Jew, meets Edwin Anderson at a party, she can hardly believe that she is attracted to the soft-spoken Nebraskan; she marries him a few months later, and soon gives birth to their daughter, Miranda. A golden lit trail of good fortune. But as Miranda grows, Roz's love for her becomes so fierce and focused that it skews everything else in their lives (including Roz's marriage). And yet their comedic chemistry is also a great attractor--drawing them a wonderful, eccentric, and constantly changing cast of characters who enter the Roz and Miranda-centered universe at their own risk, with both unhappy and hilarious results. Whether it's Miranda's best friend from summer camp, Darrin, or Alex, the hippie film student who rents a room in their brownstone, or Miranda's orthodontist (and Roz's new love interest). the unsinkable Steven Stone, or even Edwin's second wife, Kathy, someone usually spills the secrets that Miranda and Roz keep from each other, provocation and protection being equal elements in their slightly screwy bond. With spirited dialogue, off-beat humor, and a sharp and contemporary style, Thisbe Nissen delivers an irresistible and original debut novel.

The Good People of New York

United States

KNOPF

From the author of The Good People of New York ("Fabulous . . . Wonderfully satisfying . . . This is a voice I'd follow anywhere" --Elinor Lipman), a book about summer, that most incandescent and evanescent season -- about lazy days, fleeting love, and tempers that flare in the heat. Very few people ever leave the tight-knit community of year-rounders on Osprey Island, and fewer yet come back. Suzy Chizek does, though, with her young daughter in tow; a single mother, she comes home in the summer of 1988 to help her father run his hotel, the Lodge. Roddy Jacobs returns to work at the Lodge, too, after a mysterious period of drifting in the wake of the Vietnam War. Separated since high school, Suzy and Roddy cannot help but come together, unsure whether they are in love or simply using each other, and the Island, as an escape from the pressures and disappointments of mainland life. Just before the start of the season, the Lodge's troubled housekeeper dies in a suspicious fire, shattering the Island's equilibrium. Lorna had protected her young son, affectionately nicknamed Squee, from the rages of her alcoholic husband, Lance. When Squee, in his grief and panic, runs away from both his father's ramshackle home and his grandparents, he seeks out Roddy and Suzy, whom he implicitly trusts, bringing the tentative lovers into conflict with volatile Lance. Roddy's mother, the controversial and independent Eden, seems to know more Island secrets than anyone. She loves Squee with motherly intensity, but her righteous defense of him may prove more dangerous than helpful. Can the community save Squee from his father, the very person who is meant to take care of him? Can a town that is fueled by secrets expose itself to responsibility? Is it brave or foolish to leave the familiarity of Osprey Island? In the uniquely ephemeral atmosphere of a summer resort, Thisbe Nissen unfolds an ever-deepening story of ancient loyalties and betrayals, while showcasing the qualities that readers have come to expect from her: exuberant wit, fierce intelligence, and unforgettable warmth and compassion. An ambitious, richly satisfying novel of indelible power and beauty.

Osprey Island

In Thisbe Nissen's award-winning debut story collection, characters teeter on the verge of love, of life, of oncoming cataclysms after which Things Will Never Be the Same. Against the varied backdrops of Grateful Dead shows, anniversary parties, sickrooms, and bright Manhattan vestibules, Nissen traces the joy, terror, and electric surprise that flash between people as they suddenly connect. A fifteen-year-old girl whose mother is slowly dying finds solace in the bed of her best friend's older brother. A wife remembers the early romance in her marriage as she watches her husband's hand, shaky with Parkinson's, lift a bite of food to his mouth. Longtime friends are jolted by their unforeseen attraction to each other; new lovers feel their way by instinct in vans, on futons, an during risky, late-night conversation. Knowing, often hilarious, and always pitch-perfect, Nissen's tales hang inside those moments when the heart is acting and the head is watching, hopeful that the heart is doing the right thing.

Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night: Stories

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

When Roz Rosenzweig meets Edwin Anderson fumbling for keys on the stoop of a Manhattan walk-up, the last thing on her mind is falling for a polite Nebraskan–yet fall for him she does. So begins Thisbe Nissen’s breathtaking debut novel, a decidedly urban fairy tale that follows Roz and Edwin as they move from improbable courtship to marriage to the birth of daughter Miranda–the locus of all Roz’s attention, anxiety, and often smothering affection. As Miranda comes of age and begins to chafe against the intensity of her mother’s neurotic love, Roz must do her best to let those she cherishes move into the world without her. On crowded subways, in strange bedrooms, at Bar Mitzvahs, in brownstone basements and high school gymnasiums, Nissen’s unforgettable characters make their hilarious and wrenching way–and prove, indeed, that good things thrive in New York City.

Anchor

As summer begins on Osprey Island, preparations at the Lodge -- the island’s one and only hotel — are underway for the busy season. On maintenance and housekeeping there’s Lance and Lorna Squire, Osprey locals and raging drinkers; and their irrepressible son Squee. There are college boys to wait tables and Irish girls to clean rooms. And a few unusual returnees, too: Suzy Chizek, single mom and daughter of the Lodge’s owners, who’s looking for a parentally funded vacation; and Roddy Jacobs, another former local, who has come back after a mysterious twenty-year absence. But when tragedy strikes, dark secrets explode, dividing the island community over the fate of a young boy suddenly more vulnerable to his violent father than ever. In the uniquely ephemeral atmosphere of a summer resort, Thisbe Nissen unfolds, with charecteristic warmth and charm, an ever-deepening story of lost loves and found romance, of loyalties and betrayals; and of lingering–sometimes fleeting–joy.

Dramas & Plays

NY: KNOPF. 2001

In How Other People Make Love, Thisbe Nissen chronicles the lives and choices of people questioning the heteronormative institution of marriage. Not best-served by established conventions and conventional mores, these people-young, old, gay, straight, midwestern, coastal-are finding their own paths in learning who they are and how they want to love and be loved, even when those paths must be blazed through the unknown. Concerning husbands and wives, lovers and leavers, Nissen's stories explore our search for connection and all the ways we undercut it, unwittingly and intentionally, when we do find it. How do we hold ourselves together-to function, work, and survive-while endlessly yearning to be undone, unraveled, and laid bare, however untenable and excruciating? How Other People Make Love contains nine stories. "Win's Girl" features a single woman who works at an Iowa slaughterhouse and uses the insurance money from a car accident to update the electric system in her dead parents' old house, only to be unwittingly embroiled with a shady electrician who ultimately forces her to stand up for herself. In "Home Is Where the Heart Gives Out and We Arouse the Grass," a young woman flees after cheating on her husband and winds up at a Nebraska roadside motel populated by participants in a regional dog show who help her decide what to do next. In "Unity Brought Them Together," a young man heads to his favorite New York coffee shop intending to finish the Christmas cards his vacationing fiancée insists on sending, but winds up meeting another displaced young midwestern man there and going home with him instead. All these stories explore the question, "how do we love?" as well as the answers we find, discard, follow, banish, and cling to in all our humanness and desperation. How Other People Make Love asserts that there aren't right and wrong ways to love; there are only our very complicated and contradictory human hearts, minds, bodies, and desires-all searching for something, whether we know what that is or not. These are stories for anyone who has ever loved or been loved.

How Other People Make Love (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

Wayne State University Press

Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night is a spirited, offbeat collection of stories, elongated riffs on that thing we call …love. All manner of love stories: thwarted love stories, imaginary love stories, love stories offhand and obsessive, philosophical love stories, erudite and amusing love stories.
“People don't meet because they both like Burmese food,” says one character, “or because someone's sister has a friend who's single and new in town, or because Billy's nose happened to crook just slightly to the left at an angle that made me want to weep…People don't fall in love with each other …they just fall into love.”
Everyone does it: women of fierce independence, men of thin character, rambling Deadheads, gay teenage girls, despondent Peace Corps volunteers, anorexic Broadway theatre dancers, the eager, the grieving, the uncommunicative. Even the confused do it. And they don't just fall in love with each other—they fall in love with certain moments and familiar places, with things as ephemeral as gestures and as evanescent as sunlight.
Quirky, real, idealistic, deluded, bohemian, and true, these are people who can—and often do—fall in love with a pair of ears, August afternoons, saucers of vitamins, New Age carpenters, and dead bumblebees. And if there's something they can teach us, it's how to conceive of alternative worlds and the terror and the exhilaration of venturing outside the confines of the lives we know and making our way into a dark, glittering unknown.

Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

University Of Iowa Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nissen, Thisbe. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Nissen, Thisbe

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nissen, Thisbe. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes)

Good People Of New York

The Good People of New York

Osprey Island

Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night: Stories

The Good People of New York

Osprey Island

The Good People Of New York

How Other People Make Love (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night (Iowa Short Fiction Award)