No Way to Avoid Things Mattering: A Dream Life by Claire Messud
The placement of a marquee tent at a party or the tension between the caterer and a housekeeper take on outsized importance.
Posts by tag
claire messud
17 posts
Life is Damage: A Conversation with Claire Messud
If you’re interested in character, then you’re interested in perspective, and intimacy, and in the distinctions—and distance—between one person’s mind and another’s.
The Mentor Series: Emily J. Smith and Chloe Caldwell
Emily J. Smith interviews her mentor, Chloe Caldwell.
Saying What Shouldn’t Be Said: A Conversation with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, why writing about teenage girls is the most serious thing in the world, and finding truths in fiction.
Unlikable and Unapologetic
Supposedly “unlikable” female characters are often the most complex, humanly flawed, and interesting ones—yet many readers are perturbed by such representations of women. In an excerpt from her collection The…
The Rumpus Interview with Sunil Yapa
Sunil Yapa discusses his debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, radical empathy, growing up surrounded by politics, and losing the first draft of his novel in Chile.
A Fair Shake for Flawed Female Characters
Over at the Guardian, Emma Jane Unsworth considers the apparent likeability divide between anti-heroes—as it turns out, a heavily gendered archetype—and their female counterparts. Why does it seem that readers…