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 Silverbladden. Welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guests, are two first novelists,

the first of whom is Paul Kafka,

whose novel Love Enter has just been published

by Houghton Mifflin,

and it's won the LA Times Literary Award,

the Art Sidenbaum Award for First Novels this year.

You know, this is a question I've always wanted to ask a first novelist,

and I somehow never get around to it, so I'll ask it first.

Have you learned anything in the course of this that you would never do in a second book?

Like most first novelists, I wrote a couple other first novels first. And this one, I went back

to something that I had done 10 years ago. first person grounded the work in research and in a very

concrete context, in this case the maternity ward at Charity Hospital. I want to get away from

the first person now for a while. There's a real danger in it. It's very powerful, but it's also

very confining to be with one point of view real danger in it. It's very powerful, but it's also very confining

to be with one point of view for an entire novel.

It seemed like an enormously good-natured first novel with an immense amount of writing skill

that was so busy brandishing its tail feathers

...