I love to write about fictional characters. That's my favorite part of writing. But it takes me a very long time to sort of give birth to them.

And he was my mother, perhaps the most colorful character I've ever written about, who was right there to be written about.

The novelist Brian Morton is here to talk about his first work of nonfiction, Tasha, a son's memoir.

The sound was very important to me, and I really let the sound guide me.

Rachel Karo joins us to discuss her new translation of two novels by Collette, Sherry and the End of Sherry.

Plus, my colleague Lauren Christensen and Jumanica Tee will be here to talk about what they've been reading.

This is the Book Review Podcast. It's May 20th. I'm John Williams.

Brian Morton is here. He is the author of five novels, including Florence Gordon and starting out in the evening.

But he joins us to talk about his first nonfiction book, Tasha, a son's memoir. Brian, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Okay, so that was a partial lie. We will primarily discuss your memoir.

But I want to start with your first novel, The Dilliness, which was published in 1991,

because it plays an important role in setting up this new book. Tell me about how your real mother and father

might show up in that work of fiction and how it in some ways inspired your memoir.

I started The Dilliness shortly after my father died, and the parents in the book are very much my parents,

or one version of my parents. The premise of the book was that I was writing about an imaginary younger sister of mine,

the child of American communists, someone who'd inherited their parents dissatisfaction with the world,

but not their faith that the world could be changed.

In the course of the book, jokes that she's a dilliness, rather than Marxist or atroskiist.

As I say, I started the book shortly after my father died, and the portrait of him, I think,

was bathed in the glow of idealization that one feels for a pair of diptoid.

And I'm afraid that the portrait of my mother in the book was a more satirical one,

...