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 Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm. My guest today is Leslie

Marmon Silco and I'm pleased to be able to say that her new novel, a very big new novel,

The Almanac of the Dead, is one of the most powerful and disturbing and beautiful books that I've

read in a very, very long time. And it'll be very interesting because this is one of those books that you feel the writer

survived writing.

It's such a dark book.

And a big one.

How did you, I hate to make it sound like

climbing the Alps or something,

but how did you live through it?

Well, I lived through it, first of all,

by not knowing what I was climbing on.

I started out to write a short,

simple Cops and Robbers' Dope Smuggling Book

about Tucson.

So when I started out, I didn't realize what it would become.

And then as I went along, I could see, you know, it began to get more complex and darker.

And luckily, though, the stories and the different narratives and the different characters sort of took over.

...