Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Throughout my reading life, I've enjoyed many memorable meals-if only fictionally. The oysters at dinner near the beginning of Anna Karenina, the dinner Nana throws for her overflowing guests in Zola's Nana, the walk through Les Halles for breakfast in Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, and nearly every meal in Monique Truong's The Book of Salt.

I was trying to make a novel about something no one wanted to read about into something they couldn't put down or look away from.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

I realized that my identity as a novelist was private. Only I knew how much of a novelist I was!