I knew from the start that I'd only be able to complete the novel if I treated each chapter like a short story. It's funny because the story I set out to tell, that of Rosie in Paris, was not the story I enjoyed telling most. Once I wrote the first Plaire scene, I couldn't stop writing about this place I had invented. I felt at home there, much more so than in Paris, where I actually lived for two years. No, I don't think I have any sort of special understanding.
Fiction is sort of guesswork.
I've observed women of all ages and am fascinated by them, and at age thirty-five I am just starting to comprehend what it means to have years of memories behind you. I'm interested in people who reinvent themselves, as Nicole did, and what lingers, what is inescapable about the past. I can't say exactly why women dominate The Pleasing Hour. In your book, one young woman gives up her baby, a mother kills herself, thus abandoning her children. Another mother absents herself from her marriage, replacing herself with the au pair.