Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No to the bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and Mrs. Bookworm.

This week, I'm talking to someone who I've wanted to talk to for a very long time,

but it took until now that she's written

her second novel. Her first novel, Enchantment, was written over 20 years ago. The new novel,

22 Minutes of Unconditional Love, by my guest, Daphne Merkin, is recently published by Farras

Strauss and Cheru. It's a book that has been in the works for all of that time. There's a version of a crucial event in 22 minutes of unconditional love

in that novel enchantment. Daphne, tell me, what was it that held you up? What took 20 years

to create this novel? I'd go even further, Michael, and say it took

30 years. I described what I wanted to do, put it that way, to an editor who was at a press

that no longer exists, and I said I'd always been interested in obsession.

And the truth of the matter is my first novel, Enchantment,

I had originally described to Bill Yovanovitch,

the publisher who I later worked for for five years.

I said that was about obsession.

But this was to be a novel about what happens if you get involved,

...