72 MINUTES WITH ...Sophie Brickman

On a recent mercilessly hot morning, the eastern sidewalk of Central Park West is filled with women in linen and sandals pushing strollers north.

- KATIE ARNOLD-RATLIFF

It’s a holiday, the kids are out of school, and the city’s parents have hours to fill. So they converge on the American Museum of Natural History, where the doors have just opened. Every entrance is swarmed. Which isn’t a problem for me or Sophie Brickman, the author of a frothy new novel, Plays Well With Others, that seems destined for the Hamptons beach totes of every uptown mom—and plenty of regular people who can’t help being a little enthralled with them. We’re members, so we use the museum’s members’ entrance, the dim cobblestoned walkway beneath the front staircase on Central Park West. As we sit and talk, a frizzy-haired 9-year-old girl materializes before us. “Hi!” Brickman says. It’s her eldest’s best friend from school, who was over for dinner the night before. “Boy, this really is a small town,” Brickman says to me.

One that she knows well. She grew up in this neighborhood; her father is the screenwriter and frequent Woody Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman. She went, in rapid succession, to Hunter, Brearley, and Trinity, then on to Harvard, where she majored in social studies—a mix of social theory and philosophy. Then, like many Upper West Siders whose parents are more concerned that their children find a passion than a salaried job, she wandered around a bit. She worked as a line cook at Gramercy Tavern before holding various writing and editing roles, mostly in food media. Inspired by the experience of raising her first child, she wrote a book about parenting and technology. Chelsea Clinton blurbed it—“This is a book for parents, grandparents, and anyone who loves kids or is curious about childhood, including their own”—suggesting it “deserves a place in your bookshelf.” During covid, Brickman started trying to get her eldest child into private school. (She declines to name which one.) Which is about when she realized that there was fodder for a book there, too.