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 Silverblanc and this is Bookworm.

I'm here today with Michelle Rattiolet, the author of even now, a first novel from Ferris

and Giroux.

She teaches writing at the University of Irvine, and I thought we'd talk both about writing in general

and the writing of a first novel

and being a California novelist and all the many things that you can talk about.

But to begin with, you know, I even now as a novel about a young woman whose parents divorce at age 16, no, at age 10, they divorce.

And most of the novel takes place when she's 16 years old.

And while the emotional atmosphere is very particular to this young woman, Lisa, there is, it seemed to me, a Southern Californian quality of quiet, of, how to put it, acquiescence that I don't think of in other novels about growing up.

Is there something that you might say about that?

That's particularly Southern California?

Yeah, well, it's...

Because I'm Northern Californian.

Oh, California. California. No, no, no, that's all right California? Yeah, well... Because I'm northern Californian, I guess... Oh, California.

California.

No, no, no, no, that's all right.

I just tend to make the distinction.

That's interesting.

...