Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

You know, I wanted to talk to Alice Sebald before The Almost Moon got published, and so this

interview is being taped two months before its pub date because I feel absolutely sure that this book is going to be causing a lot of argument, talk, enjoyment, conversation.

I think it's great when there's a difference of opinion. That's what literature is meant to provoke.

And so I wanted to talk before all the fuss started getting made. Now, the title, The Almost Moon,

appears in the book when a woman who we learn on the very first page has just killed her mother, is talking, remembering a talk

with her father about the moon, that the moon is always full, but you don't see it. You may see

only a sliver of it. And I thought that perhaps this book was written

to present as full a reading of characters who mostly keep themselves in the shade like the

moon and are very rarely fully exposed.

Exposure seems to be one of the metaphors of this book.

I think, like many writers, I like to listen to you talk about my book.

I would agree with that, and I think that after writing it, one of the things that was just very

hard to sit with is the amount of isolation that each character experiences while they're

ardently trying to make you know, make connection,

but they experience connection as ultimately painful. And so it's this mixed bag of true intimacy

should not seemingly be painful, but they experience it that way, particularly the main

...