Hey, it's NPR's book at the day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Sometimes you listen to an author,

and you hear a definite bond of sorts between them and their main character. Claire Alexander's

debut novel is titled Meredith Alone about a woman who chooses to stay inside all day, day

after day after day. It's ultimately a book about dealing with mental health,

something Alexander knows a lot about, you know, dealing with mental health issues herself,

and constantly reading other characters with mental health issues get, you know, what she calls

shortchanged. She actually told NPR Scott Simon that she's started countless novels

over the past two decades, but it was

this book with this character that stuck. And there's just something kind of beautiful about that.

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Meredith is not alone, although she is the character at the center of Claire Alexander's novel

Meredith alone.

She's got a job writing website copy remotely.

She has a cat named Fred.

Sadie, her friend, visits with her children.

She has an online friend named Celeste and in-person visits from Tom,

who's with a group in Glasgow called Holding Hands. But let's ask Claire Alexander to read the

entire page three of her novel. Wednesday, November 14th, 2018. My name is Meredith Mags,

...