But if you’re the widow, and there was another woman or man before you, you’re hurt and your instinct is to stop the book. I was left not knowing what to do with these poems I’d written – and then I started to work on this novel. Part of what the novel is about is the idea that you think you know someone, but actually you don’t. With life writing, the work is about getting past the idea that the experience itself is enough, that you’ve only to transcribe it. You must write a memoir as if you’re writing a novel; you have to give it a shape.

Source: The Guardian March 10, 2018 18:00 UTC