“My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.” DoeBookFactsMotherLinesNovelMysteryAdventureDadMurderMy DadObsessionSpyGrandmaMachoMy GrandmaMurder MysteriesAdventure BooksShoguns Author:Christopher Bollen
“Washing the Dead is an illuminating and intricately layered novel about the complicated legacies that pass from mother to daughter, and about the ways that understanding our own history helps make us who we are. Michelle Brafman is an insightful writer who never falters or flinches in her quest to uncover the hearts of her characters.” WayHeartCharacterHelpingMotherUnderstandingNovelDaughterComplicatedLegacyWho We AreInsightfulQuestsWashingMother DaughterIlluminating Author:Carolyn Parkhurst
“Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be a writer. I worked at my writing whenever I could snatch a moment, and I assembled several manuscripts. I was just about forty when my first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published. Then a few months later came The Good Earth. My career was launched at last, and it has given me the richest possible satisfaction” WritingFirstsMomentsEarthLastsMotherGivenCareersNovelHappenedWindMonthsWestSatisfactionEastSignificantFortyHousewifeManuscriptsLife HappensGood Earth Author:Pearl S. Buck
“My mother read secondarily for information; she sank as a hedonist into novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.” SpiritMotherReadingNovelInformationDickensHedonist Author:Eudora Welty
“My mother would like me to start all interviews by stating that she and my father are perfectly normal. They are proud of me, and as perplexed as anyone by my novels.” MotherFatherNovelProudNormalLike MeInterviewsPerplexedProud Of MePerfectly Normal Author:Lisa Gardner
“I have sat with the mothers who have lost addicted sons. I have sat with families of kids who have been killed in drug-related gang violence. I have been to the prisons. I have seen the effects. At some point in time, I felt I had to do something other than write a novel about it, that I needed to try to make some sort of contribution, at least try to make some sort of difference in the real world.” WorldWritingTryingHas BeensRealKidsMotherLostFeltDifferencesNovelViolenceEffectsSonNeededDrugPrisonSatRelatedContributionReal WorldGangGang Violence Author:Don Winslow
“The book that made a lasting impression was the one my mother gave each of us when she decided we were ready for our first "adult novel," Lucy Maud Montgomery's The Blue Castle.” FirstsMadeBookMotherNovelReadyAdultsDecidedBlueImpressionLastingCastlesLucyLasting Impressions Author:Hallie Ephron
“Fathers have a special excitement about them that babies find intriguing. At this time in his life an infant counts on his motherfor rootedness and anchoring. He can count on his father to be just different enough from a mother. Fathers embody a delicious mixture of familiarity and novelty. They are novel without being strange or frightening.” DifferentEnoughMotherFatherNovelSpecialStrangeBabyExcitementFrighteningDeliciousInfantMixturesNoveltyFamiliarityIntriguingBeing A FatherRootedness Book:Oneness and separateness: from infant to individual Source: Oneness and separateness: from infant to individual
“Philip Galanes has fashioned a novel both bleak and funny about a young man's struggle to sort out his troubled love: the too-strong love for his mother, the too-weak love for his suicidal father, and the all-consuming love of anonymous sexual encounters. Pointed and acute, this story tells of the narrator's many betrayals of others and their many betrayals of him. It exists in an uncomfortable moral space where the humor of terrible things sometimes outweighs, but never obscures, their poignancy.” MenSometimesStoriesYoungMotherFatherStrongSpaceMoralNovelStruggleTerribleWeakBetrayalUncomfortableYoung ManEncountersSuicidalTerrible ThingsConsumingBleakPhilipNarratorsStrong LovePoignancyConsuming LoveWeak Love Author:Andrew Solomon
“I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had a cold and withholding mother, about being divorced. The more I've been writing novels, each novel I've written has become successively less grounded in anything approaching autobiography.” KnowsWritingChildrenIdeasMotherNovelWrittenColdAutobiographyGroundedDivorcedOnly ChildWithholding Author:Anna Quindlen
“I always tell people, if a young girl read "Beloved" as her first novel, she'd have to kill either herself or her mother, because in "Beloved" you have a mother killing their children. This is not something a child would accept very easily. And would never understand.” PeopleIfsFirstsChildrenYoungMotherGirlAcceptingNovelKillingBeloved Author:Walter Mosley
“After my first novel, my mother said to me, 'Why don't you make your writing more funny? You're so funny in person.' Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don't know, but something about what she said was true. 'Yes, why don't I?' Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I've done has a comedic edge to it.” KnowsWritingFirstsPersonsSaidBookDoneMotherDarkNovelSevenEdgesComedic Author:Jonathan Ames
“I had a story-telling mother; she's written novels and short stories. So I feel like maybe I'm staying alive by telling tales.” FeelsStoriesMotherNovelAliveWrittenTalesStayingShort StoryStaying Alive Author:Ayshay
“Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (whose mother died ten days after she was born) wrote a novel that anticipates Semmelweis's discovery and serves as a parable for the destructive power of decaying matter.” MatterMotherBornNovelTenDiscoveryDiedDestructiveMaryAnticipateParablesMother DiedShelleyDestructive Power Author:Laura Mullen
“[The Yellow Birds] is based on a novel written by Kevin Powers, who is an Iraq War vet. I play a soldier who promises my friend's mother I'm going to keep him alive. But when we go overseas to Iraq, he gets killed. It's about what happened to him, my reckoning and dealing with that as I return home from the war.” WarPlayHomeMotherNovelAliveWrittenHappenedReturnPromiseBirdMy FriendsSoldierIraqYellowIraq WarKevinReckoningVets Author:Alden Ehrenreich