You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Alice McDermott, the author of At Weddings and Wakes.

She also wrote The Biggamous Daughter and That Night.

You know, I've been thinking that more than many of the writers who write about family, you know,

when I was growing up and reading, the serious writers were writing about people who were raised

as goats and who, you know, you know what I mean?

Yes.

But you really do shape sentences according to the subject that you're writing about. It seems to me here that the

sentence style is one of constant suspension and interruption, and that that's sort of the

theme of this book, too, about a family that's always being interrupted by what it's lost

and what it had. I wondered, you know,

is it conscious? Do you work out a sentence structure that becomes the thematic of the book?

No, I don't think so. I think that the language and the themes develop together.

I would have to know the theme in order to know, I guess I'd have to know the theme first

in order to get the sentences to match, and I don't know the theme first.

So it's voice is very important to me and the sound of the language and the sentence probably has more bearing on what the story actually is about

than the story shaping the language.

So, for me, it's listening to the sound of the language

...