Jessica Handler’s ‘The World to See’ charts rock star-fan friendship

Employed by a plant-care service after “barely graduating” from UCLA in 1981, Nadine Harvey is delighted to discover her new client is none other than fading rock star Celeste Davis. The golden-haired songstress provided the soundtrack to Nadine’s teen angst years growing up in Boston.

The women soon bond as Nadine is pulled into Celeste’s plan to start a women’s empowerment organization called Her Voice at the behest of her agent Ivan. He’s eager to revive Celeste’s career by tapping into her early female fans, who called Celeste an oracle for her ability to capture their emotions in song.

That is the premise of “The World to See” (Regal House Publishing, $20.95), a new novel by Atlanta author Jessica Handler, but this book has tentacles. They reach back in time, tracking not only Celeste and Nadine’s coming of age, but that of their mothers, Helen and Barbara. And they stretch into the future, where Nadine and Celeste’s relationship plays out as Her Voice takes off.

It is an engrossing tale of friendship, identity and reinvention set in Massachusetts and Los Angeles that comes together with a satisfying twist in the end.

Accompanied by her husband Mickey Dubrow, also a writer, the author of “The Magnetic Girl” and “Invisible Sisters” spoke with me about “The World to See” while driving to North Carolina for a book event.

Atlanta author Jessica Handler is one of the storytellers participating in "Spark!" Thursday's opening program of The Breman's four-day Atlanta Jewish Storytelling Festival. (Photo by Royce Soble)

What inspired you to write “The World to See?”

The book is about friendship and how all of us have had that alpha friend, that totally cool friend that’s really amazing. You want to be in their orbit and then you are and you’re so amazed that they love you, and then it turns out they’re kind of messed up. People are messed up, right? So, then how do you reclaim yourself and how do you get out of what may be a toxic friendship ― a friendship that’s not good for you.

In addition to female friendships, “The World to See” explores relationships between mothers and daughters. How did your relationship with your mother inform the dynamics between the mothers and daughters in the book?

(Nadine’s) mother has a secret, legitimately, and my mother and I had secrets from each other. … The household I grew up in was riddled with illness and we didn’t talk about what was really bothering us. Everything was, like, ‘I’m going to protect you and everything’s fine. Everything’s great.’ But there’s an element of love to that. I spent a lot of time thinking about how that was love and not betrayal. On some level you want to be honest, but on another level, sometimes mothers and daughters don’t need to tell each other everything.

A major theme of “The World to See” is finding one’s voice — something you did literally by writing and singing two songs for the book, which can be streamed at jessicahandler.com. Despite having played a little guitar in high school and college and learning to drum a few years ago, that was a first for you. What prompted you to do that?

I wanted Nadine to listen to Celeste’s songs on the radio. We all grew up with that singer on the radio who you felt like, ‘They know me!’ … I wanted the messages in the songs to be what I wanted the character to hear, so I wrote a couple of lyric phrases to put in the book. Somewhere along the line, I decided I’m just going to try and write a couple of songs.