I have a grand - I wouldn't call my grandmother domineering, no, but this novel is about the way that family traits echo and reverberate through generations and often skip generations.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

For a novelist to create character, I think, takes a sharp objective eye but also an intuitive intelligence, a receptiveness, a wilingness to make oneself blan…

My mother didn't breast-feed me. She said she liked me as a friend.

Tuer un parent de qui l'on se plaint, c'est quelque chose; mais heriter de lui, c'est la un plaisir!

Strong families value their extended family, particularly grandparents. In one study of college students, a majority thought their interactions with grandparen…