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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.

I'm Michael Silverblad, and today my guest is Francine Prose.

Her new novel is Blue Angel.

It's published by Harper Collins.

She's the author as well, and you've heard her on Bookworm about her book guided tours

of hell. But from the beginning, Judah the Pious, the Glorious One's, author as well, and you've heard her on Bookworm about her book Guided Tours of Hell,

but from the beginning, Judah the Pious, the glorious ones, Marie LeVoe, up until the very most

recent Blue Angel. One of them was turned into a movie, Household Saints. One of them

enthralled me and put me to bed happy,

animal magnetism. Several of them are still in paperback. It's a very various career, and there

are two distinct kinds of novels that she's written. Early on, she wrote books that involved essentially parables, fairy tales,

about figures of power, an Old Testament prophet, a voodoo queen. They were extraordinary

and lovely, very much influenced by the spirit of the 60s, and now

these sourer books and fun here have begun to appear.

Blue Angel is a marriage, it seems to me, of two kinds of books, a satirical novel on the one

hand and a novel, a psychological novel,

a novel of penetration of character. And I wanted to begin by asking you, because it seems

...