Susan Minot is the author of the new novel Don't Be a Stranger. Her other books include the story collection Why I Don't Write. She lives in New York City and in Maine.
Q: What inspired you to write Don’t Be a Stranger, and how did you create your characters Ivy and Ansel?
A: I decided to write the book because I wanted to explore motherhood alongside eroticism alongside obsession alongside the struggle to live with oneself.
Characters were created—I don’t mean to be coy—one sentence at a time. One tries of course to make them believable each in his or her own experience.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between them?
A: It really did take a book to describe it. Complicated? Mysterious?
Powerful and elusive?
Q: The Booklist review of the novel says, “Minot exquisitely explores desire and denial, intimacy and illusion in a ravishing, haunting, and insightful tale of sexual ecstasy and emotional torment, integrity and creativity, self and motherhood.” What do you think of that description?
A: I appreciate the description and think it fits the book.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I did not know how the novel would end. At one point I
thought it would end earlier, when the relationship changed…but there seemed to
be more on Ivy’s side to discover.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am writing a road trip love story about a traveler who
visits Lesotho in the late 1990s with a group of fellow travelers from
different countries on the occasion of the coronation of the king.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Always the less said, the better.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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