Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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 reason.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblad,

and today my guest is Tony Early.

He's the author most recently

of Jim the Boy,

which was published by Little Brown,

and a book of short story

is called Here We Are in Paradise,

available in paperback

in the Little Brown imprint, the Back Bay Books.

And there's been a lot of attention paid to Jim the Boy. It's his first novel. It was reviewed, got the front cover of the New York Times book review, and a lot of fuss.

And people are speaking as if a decision

to write a book set in the Depression about a boy being raised by a mother and three uncles

were, in fact, a radical decision, the simplification of style.

And I wondered, because when I read the book,

it didn't seem to need to be placed in the context of modern or not modern.

And I wondered, you know, what it was that was your decision,

...