Popularity Has Become Its Own Justification.

I Was About 13, In Some Ways, When I Wrote The First Book. Approximately 18 When I Wrote The Second.

Each New Thing He Encountered In Life Impelled Him In A Direction That Fully Convinced Him Of Its Rightness, But Then The Next New Thing Loomed Up And Impelled Him In The Opposite Direction, Which Also Felt Right. There Was No Controlling Narrative: He Seemed To Himself A Purely Reactive Pinball In A Game Whose Only Object Was To Stay Alive For Staying Alive's Sake.

I Can't Stomach Any Kind Of Notion That Serious Fiction Is Good For Us, Because I Don't Believe That Everything That's Wrong With The World Has A Cure.

He And His Wife Loved Each Other And Brought Each Other Daily Pain. Everything Else He Was Doing In His Life, Even His Longing For Lalitha, Amounted To Little More Than Flight From Circumstance. He And Patty Couldn't Live Together And Couldn't Imagine Living Apart. Each Time He Thought They'd Reached The Unbearable Breaking Point, It Turned Out That There Was Still Further They Could Go Without Breaking.

Nell Zink Is A Writer Of Extraordinary Talent And Range. Her Work Insistently Raises The Possibility That The World Is Larger And Stranger Than The World You Think You Know.