Q: Did you set out to write a story with a message or did you just find the subject interesting? Was the story more important than the "moral?"

A: As I said previously, I found the whole topic of modern women at home fascinating, and wanted to explore it in all its permutations. But like a good Victorian, I wanted to write a story that was essentially affirming. I had no interest in engaging a reader for an entire novel, only to kill off someone at the end (I HATE that in books), nor in striking a pose of moral relativism--which produces as dull a story as those old improving morality tales for children. On the other hand, I didn't want to write the modern equivalent of those Boy Meets Tractor novels that the Soviets use to churn out to promote their ideological agenda. The minute you have an agenda is the minute you cease to write a true story. People struggle with moral choices all the time, and as a novelist, you want to explore the consequences of those moral decisions as honestly as you can. If characters are to be real, and jump off the page, they have to be allowed to go where their lives and natures take them. If I'd wished to write a propagandistic novel promoting at-home motherhood--as some critics have accused me of doing--then Amanda would never have had the inner-struggles and doubts that she suffers, and she would have had some cartoon ending cheerfully shoving apple pies into an oven while patting her tow-headed, well-behaved children on the heads. If I'd wanted to make a feminist point, Amanda would have chucked the at-home life to find satisfaction back on the job. Neither would be honest. As it is, Amanda must come to her own conclusions about what she's done--conclusions that recognize, yes, the joys and satisfactions of being a mother, but also its real sacrifices--and often, the sheer daily drudgery of it!

Q: The main character Amanda has to deal with a lot of insecurity and self-doubt. Was this a specific aspect of motherhood that you wanted to explore? Is this a largely unspoken issue among women, do mothers talk about these issues?

A: It always terrifies men to hear that women talk about EVERYTHING. It sometimes terrifies me. What I wanted to do is take these feelings of insecurity--that might come up in random conversation among women--and give them vivid expression and context. Why does a woman feel so insecure as a mother? How much of it is self-inflicted, and how much of it comes from the society around her?

Q: Amanda and Bob are not culturally or politically conservative. Was there a reason the story was set in a more "liberal" environment? Is it harder or easier to write about your own political and cultural environment?

A: It was important to make Amanda and Bob liberals and Democrats purely for dramatic--and humorous--possibilities. I wanted a character for whom being an at-home mother would be the most alien experience she could imagine (I think in the movies they call this the fish-out-of-water scenario). Not only has Amanda been raised by a feminist mother (who, by the way, expresses the most horror of anyone when Amanda quits her job), but she embodies a lot of prevailing cultural assumptions about work, home, and raising children--attitudes that parents of any political hue will agree get sorely challenged when you have children. So, at the beginning of the book, when Amanda finds herself surrounded by the mess and chaos of her house (including what appear to be the strewn plastic body parts after an attack by Suicide Bomber Ken), she thinks with exasperation that, "Four years spent earning a bachelor's degree had not prepared her for a career as a domestic curator." Of course, it gets worse for her. And that's the fun--and poignancy--of it.