The Idea of You author Robinne Lee: ‘There was not one article about the age gap between Donald and Melania’
Robinne Lee is fed up with hearing the name “Harry Styles”. “It’s very frustrating,” the author of The Idea of You admits over Zoom, referring to how frequently the musician’s name is invoked in discussion of her bestselling book: a tale of an older woman falling in love with a young British boyband star. “In the beginning I thought it was interesting, but it’s taken on a life of its own. I’m like, come on guys! What happened to the 22 other men I used to make this character? It feels very reductive.”
The chatter surrounding Lee’s 2017 novel, which has been and , neatly proves the point the 49-year-old author and actor is trying to make. seems like your run-of-the-mill story about a regular person falling in love, as well as films including and . But by making her protagonist a 40-year-old single mother, Lee subverts the genre, offering up a piece of work that is far less interested in celebrity culture than it is in female sexuality, motherhood and misogyny.
