The truth is, just to hear other people speaking Italian is really worth it. It keeps the sound in your ear.

That's a huge subject - a writer refusing to do publicity but writing about publicity.

One naturally identifies to some extent with an "I" female narrator going through something that you recognize whether you've gone through it or not.

The truth is, just to hear other people speaking Italian is really worth it. It keeps the sound in your ear.

I think that physical actions are always hard to describe, to translate.

It's really the story of a young woman, or two women, growing up in Naples in a poor neighborhood. The way that they get out of it - or don't get out of it - that's part of it. But it's also the story of the mid-20th century in Italy so it's really like a social, historical and personal novel. I think that even though I didn't live in Italy in those years, it did cover that same type of generational upbringing that someone like me might've had in America.

I think it's important to be accurate on the level of the word, but it's also important to be accurate at the level of the sentence, at the level of the paragraph. Sometimes you lose sight of that - I remind myself to go back and read.