The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Harriet Clark's novel called The Hill is one of the most anticipated works of fiction of this year,

and has won some extraordinary views, including by James Wood and the New Yorker.

It's a story of a girl growing up visiting her mother in prison,

where the mother is serving a life sentence.

And although The Hill is a work of fiction,

it follows the contours of Harriet Clark's own life quite closely.

One of the book's enthusiastic readers is Rachel Aviv, a staff writer at The New Yorker.

When I was reading Harriet Clark's The Hill, I felt almost this kind of sickness that I remember feeling as a kid when I read a book where, like, being apart from the book, it was like a vacuum.

Like, I just, there was something about it that felt like I was doing the wrong thing if I was not reading the book.

And one of the things that I found so compelling was the way that she captured the internal life and clock of a child.

There's that sense of being a creature who can sense things but not comprehend.

And the book really focuses on the relationship between a mother and daughter.

One is inside of prison, one is outside of prison, and they're kind of trying to figure out

who the other one is as they both age.

Here's Rachel LeVieve with the novelist Harriet Clark.

Before we start talking, I thought it would be helpful if you could just explain why your mom was serving a life sentence and who was caring for you in the early years of your life.

When I was 11 months old, my mother drove a getaway car for the robbery of a brink truck that was supposed to raise funds for the Black Liberation Army and

underground black nationalist group. And three men were killed in the robbery. Nine children

lost their fathers. My mother was not a shooter. She was not present when anyone was shot.

But for various political reasons, she did not put on a defense and wasn't present for her trial. And she received three consecutive life sentences and was incarcerated in a facility about an hour out of New York City, where I grew up visiting her every week.

...