Ayelet Waldman

Curled Up with a Good Book's Luan Gaines interviewed Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, about her novel.

The opening exchanges from the interview:

Luan Gaines: What was your inspiration for Love and Other Impossible Pursuits?

I wanted to write about the loss of a child. I lost a baby quite late in a pregnancy -- a very different situation, but a terrible one for us. For years I was writing around this loss, dealing with it in various ways, but I finally confronted it head on in the novel.

Emilia is emotionally raw after the loss of her newborn. What is the purpose of her route through Central Park, avoiding the mothers with children on the way to William's preschool?

She needs the park -- it's her refuge, her solace. But it's full of babies, and every baby reminds her that hers is gone. She retreats to the park, but it's a terribly ambivalent experience because it fails to provide the comfort she needs.

You inhabit the emotions and turmoil of this protagonist. How did you research the grieving and angry young mother?

That was a work of imagination and experience, not research. When I lost my baby, I was in a support group and we were all devastated -- laid waste by loss. And we were all really, really angry.

Read the complete interview.

The Page 69 Test: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.

--Marshal Zeringue