For ‘Perfect Couple’ author Elin Hilderbrand, book organization is optional

NANTUCKET, Mass. – “I’m trying to think of how bored I would have to be to say, ‘I’m now going to organize my bookshelves,’ ” Elin Hilderbrand told me as we surveyed the floor-to-ceiling collection in the hallway of her Nantucket home last month. “Maybe if there was a blizzard for five days and I had absolutely nothing else to do?”

Hilderbrand has been busy. This year she not only published her 30th book, “Swan Song,” but wrapped up her role as executive producer on “The Perfect Couple,” the Netflix limited series based on her novel of the same name. This meant, among other things, serving as point person on all things Nantucket: helping with locations and other details of life on this tony island. “The most important thing to me was that Nantucket was done correctly,” Hilderbrand said. “I was fully engaged.”

But this year has been only slightly more hectic than the past 20. Since 2000, Hilderbrand has published roughly one novel a year while also raising three kids (the eldest is now 24). Though she retired from writing her Nantucket series, her days remain full: She and her 19-year-old daughter, Shelby, are working on a new book series, set at a boarding school; she co-hosts a podcast and makes regular appearances at local bookstores; she maintains a strenuous daily exercise regimen and keeps up with all the many tasks that come with being a mother. (During our interview, she stepped out for a bit to drive her son to work.)

Never mind the time constraints, Hilderbrand loves her ordered disorder. To be clear, her books are not strewn about messily. They are shelved in categories: favorites, cookbooks, paperbacks, foreign editions of her novels and so on. But within those groupings, you might find a book by Toni Morrison next to one by Virginia Woolf and, nearby, “Eat, Pray, Love.”

“I like the fact that the books are sort of haphazardly placed. They’re in an order that I understand. Nobody else has to understand it,” she told me. “The books are a hodgepodge of my life. The most important thing is, with very few exceptions, you could pick a book out and I could tell you where I was and what was going on in my life when I read it.”

Standing before the shelves in her living room, we put that to the test: Spotting Stephen Carter’s novel “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” she remembered the infancy of her son Dawson, who was born the year it was published. The row of Ian McEwan books reminded her of her son Maxx’s infancy. A copy of Stephanie Land’s “Maid” evoked a trip to San Francisco; Anne Enright’s “The Forgotten Waltz,” a particularly cold New England winter.

Shelf of favorites

Hilderbrand bought this airy shingle-style house in 2015, following her divorce. Many books were purged during that life change, she says, but her collection remains extensive and personal. Each of the hundreds of books on the shelves along her first-floor hallway comes with an anecdote. There is, for instance, a first edition of J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey,” a gift from her ex-husband for her 50th birthday and her favorite book. Like many Gen Xers, Hilderbrand read it in high school, and it stuck with her. “I remember thinking, I will never read a book I love as much as this,” she said, as she returned the book to its face-out position on the shelf. Among the other beloved books near it, arranged in no particular order: Jane Smiley’s “Moo,” Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History,” Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections,” Ellen Gilchrist’s “Starcarbon,” Amity Gage’s “Sea Wife,” A.M. Homes’s “May We Be Forgiven,” Anna Quindlen’s “Every Last One” and two books by Kate Atkinson: “A God in Ruins” and “Life After Life.”

If the shelf were longer, it might include other books elsewhere in the house that she associates with formative periods in her life: “Sex, Art, and American Culture,” by Camille Paglia, which she read as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins; “Spartina,” by John Casey, who was a professor of hers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; Jay McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City,” which she read when she was living in New York, working in publishing and then as a teacher.

Well-loved cookbooks

Hilderbrand loves to cook, but she doesn’t keep cookbooks in the kitchen. She has too many of them. These books are what you would call well-loved: tattered, torn, stained. Hilderbrand’s copy of the 1980s home-gourmet bible “The Silver Palate Cookbook” is particularly beaten up. “Look at this thing!” she said, holding its pieces in her hands. “That is how much I loved this book.”

As Hilderbrand became more proficient, her tastes evolved to Martha Stewart and Ina Garten. When she moved to Nantucket in the mid-1990s, Hilderbrand went all in on the place. She and a friend took a cooking class from a local chef, Sarah Leah Chase, who influenced not only Hilderbrand’s cooking but her writing. Chase’s “Nantucket Open-House Cookbook” (1987) makes a cameo in Hilderbrand’s novel “28 Summers.” (For anyone who hasn’t read Hilderbrand, her novels are full of meal descriptions, restaurant names and sometimes recipes.) As she turned the pages of Chase’s book, Hilderbrand gushed about its “classic Nantucket” recipes, like sausage-and-brioche and scallop puffs. Naturally she also has a copy of “The Preppy Cookbook,” by Christine Nunn. “This is so on-brand,” she said as she searched its pages for the Pinecone Cheese Ball recipe she says went viral after she mentioned it in her book “Christmas on Nantucket” (2016). It is, essentially, a pinecone-shaped blob of soft cheese, studded with salted almonds.

In the study

Hilderbrand doesn’t write in her study. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the writer known as the “queen of the beach read” typically drafts her books on the beach, beside her pool, or in the kitchen or living room – longhand, on notepads. (After typing them into her computer, she stores her handwritten drafts in drawers.) No, the centerpiece of the study is not a writing desk but a Peloton bike. Hilderbrand’s exercise routine is vital to her work. “It sets up discipline in my day,” she explained, “and moving my body increases my creativity.”

The books shelved here are primarily paperbacks, and their authors are a highlight reel of literary stars of the 1980s, ’90s and aughts – Laurie Colwin, Jayne Anne Phillips, Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Andre Dubus, Anne Tyler, Susan Minot, Ethan Canin, Mona Simpson, Michael Chabon. Also: Philip Roth. She plucked “Goodbye, Columbus” from its spot and began reading his description of fruit in a fridge. “I channeled that when I wrote about fruit in ‘Hotel Nantucket,’ ” she said.

Memories and mementos

Hilderbrand isn’t particularly sentimental, but her shelves are peppered with memories: a 1970s photo of her and her siblings with their father, who died when Hilderbrand was 16; several Bibles, including one in a paper-bag cover marked up with her doodles; the ball she used to throw a ceremonial first pitch before a Yankees game in 2016 (she grew up a Phillies fan and now cheers for the Red Sox); a framed photo of her children that was a gift from her nanny when Hilderbrand was being treated for breast cancer in 2014 (“If anyone asks, what do you get someone who has cancer? You should get them a framed photograph of their children. I was so touched by this.”); a Hunter S. Thompson quote embroidered by a college friend; three Nantucket baskets from her wedding; an “emergency” bottle of champagne.

Hilderbrand is running out of space. She looked at the bottom shelf, where unread books called for her attention. She’s considering donating them. “If I had time,” she said, “I’d more likely cull my books than rearrange them.” Next up: her storage locker, where she keeps thousands of copies of her own novels.

“I want to give them to a women’s prison. That would be my rainy day project.”