Former study abroad girls, assemble. Naima Coster’s Take What You Can opens in 2004, when Val and Milly first meet in France as the only Black students in their study-abroad program. The two bond over beaches and baguettes — and Helene, an older woman who becomes a mother figure to the girls, each grieving their own mom for very different reasons.
Years later, both friends are pregnant, and Milly — now a successful influencer — convinces Val, a skilled but struggling journalist, to move from North Carolina to NYC so they can raise their daughters together. But as they navigate having kids and an unresolved rift from their time in France, the question isn’t whether they can pick up where they left off — it's whether a friendship built on who they were can survive who they've become. We asked Coster a few questions. Here’s what she had to say…
Q: What’s one thing you can’t stop listening to?
Coster: Phoebe Bridgers’s live rendition of “Lost Boys” on The Tonight Show. The sweet little musicians playing along helped me fall in love with the song.
Q: What's one unpopular opinion you have?
Coster: Drip coffee can be just as good as French press, pour-over, espresso — all the fancier brewing methods.
Q: What’s one recipe everyone should make?
Coster: Catherine Newman’s cottage cheese pancakes. They taste like blintzes, and my kids literally cheer whenever I say I’m making them. They eat them with jam and powdered sugar.Q: What should be required reading for every human being?
Coster: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It has everything — desire and interiority, missteps and self-determination, disaster, survival, love.
Q: What's your favorite unapologetic indulgence?
Coster: I can’t say no to a good teen romance full of yearning. Twilight, The Summer I Turned Pretty, One Tree Hill. My love of the genre spans 30 years.
Q: What’s the last thing you read that you can’t stop thinking about?
Coster: A wonderful essay about failing to gentle-parent: “Little Monsters” by Meghan Flaherty.
Q: What is your most prized possession?
Coster: I wear a necklace with three small medallions: one for each of my three kids. I never take it off.
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