Much In Our Lives Is Chance.

Often In Gothic Novels There's A Large House, An Estate, And It's Symbolic Of That Culture. Usually It's Sort Of Moldering Or Rotted Or Something, And Sometimes It's A Whole Community.

And I’m Drawn To Failure. I Often Write About It, And I’m Sympathetic With It, I Think, Because I Feel I’m Contending With It Constantly In My Own Life.

'we Were The Mulvaneys' Is Perhaps The Novel Closest To My Heart. I Think Of It As A Valentine To A Passing Way Of American Life, And To My Own Particular Child - And Girlhood In Upstate New York. Everyone In The Novel Is Enormously Close To Me, Including Marianne's Cat, Muffin, Who Was In Fact My Own Cat.

I Rarely Write In My Own Voice Except In Book Reviews And Memoirs; Otherwise, I Am Writing In Mediated Voices, Modulated In Terms Of The Characters Whom The Voices Express.

Your Punishment If You're A Woman. Not Loved Enough.