Excavating every little thing you love for your readers
Alright, I just started Rivka Galchen’s new book, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch. As I’m reading, I’m noticing Rivka Galchen clearly loves her main character—the mother—to pieces. In fact, I’m starting to suspect this entire book came into existence so that Galchen could construct NOT the most perfect or best mother literary character ever, but a literary character who embodies every single thing Galchen herself loves about mothering and loves about other mothers and about the qualities Galchen loves seeing in herself when she mothers. Every loving thing. Imagine writing a whole book just so you could spend a year immersed in all the details you love about some person, or about some concept. Or about yourself. Fuckin’ eh, right? What’s that book? And sure there’s conflict and pain in Rivka’s (can I call you Rivka, Rivka?) novel. Events escalate. Drama ensues. But …
Excavating every little thing you love for your readers Read More »