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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

Today, I'm rejoining Elizabeth Whatmore, Beth Wentmore, to talk about how, at age 52, she published her first novel, Valentine, a novel that not only is superb, it made its debut at number two on the New York Times bestseller list.

The book is wonderful.

An impressive demonstration of the power of women's voices to carry a novel.

Now, I'm very interested, Elizabeth.

How is it that this is your first novel at age 52? When did you start writing?

Well, I don't think I wrote my first short story until I was in my late 20s. And I was a reader and I loved books. And I read voraciously

and compulsively as a little girl, in a somewhat unfocused manner. And really, you know,

I don't come from a background where one becomes a writer, you know, at least not as a profession.

So I think that the sort of combination of kind of holding writers in such esteem,

as a little girl and even as a young woman, I thought authors were just otherworldly.

They were sages and priests and rabbis and holy people of all sorts.

But I did not think of writers as being particularly human or occupying the same, you know, world as the rest of us.

So I didn't write my first short story until I was in my late 20s.

But I read a lot and I love to read.

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