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.

Today, my guest is Barbara Gowdy. She's the author, most recently, of the Romantic

published by Metropolitan's books. But around a year ago or so, when Joy Williams was here, Joy Williams is one of my

favorite writers, I'm always asking people, you know, what to read next. And she said, and there's a

great new book called The White Bone. Well, when it was described to me, even by Joy, I said,

no way that I want to be in the soul

of a hunted African elephant until I started to read the book and I actually found myself

there and was kind of astonished by the intensities and poetry of the language there.

Now, there's a huge distance between that book, The White Bone,

and this new one, the romantic. And I must think they define the poles or the spectrum of your

sensibility. I think they're probably a couple of corners, for sure.

But there's kind of, you know, I don't write to theme, like I shall now write a book with this theme.

It's only when I'm done a book that I think I know what it's about.

And I realize that in both books, I am dealing with memory and loss, certainly with the elephants who probably have mnemonic perfect memories.

That was a big part of the white bone.

But in this book we know that one of the main characters, it's a memory.

The book is actually a memory of a beloved who dies.

...