You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal,

who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm, KCRW's literary show.

You know, nothing makes the bookworm happier than to read a first novel

and to talk to the author.

If it's a book, the bookworm likes.

And today I'm very happy to have in my studio, Jane Vandenberg, whose first novel,

Failure to ZigZag, has just been published by North Point Press.

Jane Vandenberg, What's More, is a fourth generation Californian, and spent a lot of time around Los Angeles, was born in Berkeley, and now lives in Oakland.

The book is called Failure to ZigZag.

It's really a wonderful novel, very intimate, very mysterious, sometimes frightening, and often very funny. I'm,

you know, really delighted to meet you. Hi. Thank you. You were born in when, are you asking when?

Where and when? I was born in Alta Bates Hospital,

which is a wonderful maternity hospital in Berkeley,

in 1948.

And I think my parents moved to San California when I was five or so.

And so I grew up mostly in Southern California.

Mm-hmm.

And where, what took you to writing?

Where were you?

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