Claire Lombardo

Claire Lombardo earned her MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. The Most Fun We Ever Had is her debut novel.

From Lombardo's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: In a review in The Guardian, Hannah Beckerman wrote, "If ever there were to be a literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler, then Claire Lombardo’s outstanding debut, which ranges from ebullience to despair by way of caustic but intense familial bonds, would be a worthy offspring." What do you think of that assessment?

A: I’m a huge fan of both, so I’m entirely star-struck and flattered beyond compare! Both Franzen and Tyler write the kind of fiction I’ve always aspired to—character driven, patient, and generous, with healthy doses of dark humor and earnestness.

One of my favorite Anne Tyler novels is The Amateur Marriage, and while the central relationship in that book is very different than the marriage at the center of Most Fun, it does so beautifully the thing I’m constantly striving for as a writer—it gives the reader the sensation of existing within another family, privy to the conflicting thoughts and egos and perceptions and insecurities and grudges of its members.

And The Corrections is really just...[read on]

Visit Claire Lombardo's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Most Fun We Ever Had.

Writers Read: Claire Lombardo.

--Marshal Zeringue