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IT WAS ONE OF THOSE MAGICAL SPRING DAYS IN NEW YORK. THE SUN had finally come out after what seemed like a hundred days of rain, the trees were budding, and the outdoor cafés were filled with people smiling and drinking “half-caff lattes.” I sat down with A.M. Homes in one of those cafés. She is an insightful, honest, and intellectually curious writer who writes about the human condition, creating worlds that at times feel both real and unreal. With the music of Nina Simone and Los Lobos blaring and the sound of glasses clinking and clanking in the background, we talked about her creative process, the experience of being adopted, being a mother, and being a prolific writer since the age of 19.
Jill Choder-Goldman: In all of your work that I've read, you write about human behavior and ask the questions, “Who are we?” and “Why we do what we do?”—two very important themes in the world of psychoanalysis as well. So I guess the first thing I'd like to explore with you
A.M. Homes is the author of the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know, a travel book, Los Angeles: People, Places, and the Castle on the Hill, and her memoir, The Mistress's Daughter. Among her many awards are Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. She is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has published fiction and essays in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and The New York Times.
is what attracts you to the dark side of people's lives.
A.M. Holmes: I'm just always writing about people. I think about myself as somebody who writes in response to the world we live in. My job as a writer is to try to articulate the things that are difficult to articulate. I think about the differences between people's public lives and private lives. I think we're in a funny time, when in some ways, because of the way we communicate, our public lives and private liv