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?

Hi, this is Michael Silverbladden. Welcome to Bookworm.

My guest today is Helen Schulman, author of Out of Time, a novel just out from Athenium,

and also a book of short stories called Not a Free Show, published by Knapp a couple of years ago.

Well, I wanted to begin by saying that after reading so many books

which purported to enter various people's minds and imaginations,

but to my ear, hearing very little difference. This book, out of time,

displayed an almost unearthly ability to penetrate and embody very different sensibilities.

Is this an old trick?

I mean, do they always say, oh, she can understand anyone?

It's a funny.

I think every character in the book is me.

So maybe I'm like Sybil and I have several personalities. But I've always

been interested in people's voices in the way that they talk. And I think it came out of that

more than anything else.

Because there's an astonishing, you know, presence, immediacy to each of the voices, it seems to me, and also,

how to put it. I would say that one of the sub-themes of the book is what do people

do who cannot stop feeling, you know, who feel too deeply?

There, you know, many characters in this book have, you know, because they are almost,

...