Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Kathleen Shine, the author most recently

of The Evolution of Jane.

It's published by Houghton Mifflin.

Her books are all available in paperback, starting from the beginning.

Alison Bell to the Birdhouse, Ramos Neese, The Love Letter, and now most recently the Evolution of Jane.

Now, it's very amusing to be reading social comedies of ideas by an antisocial person who is distrustful of ideas.

And I wonder how this perspective came to be.

I don't know if I'm distrustful of ideas.

Maybe I'm distrustful of the people who have them.

I am kind of antisocial.

I think that I find people and their ideas amusing,

and what else is there to write about?

But it is odd. You know, usually people who write comedies of manners, people who display enormous dexterity in social

situations, if one can go from the evidence of four ruins, all of whom are rather appalled by the circumstances

of being in public, one comes to assume that the author is writing social comedy, which

requires being inside from the outside.

Well, I think my characters are funny.

...