Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

And I am just given so much pleasure by the way in which she fully brings those different life stages to the page.

Yes.

And in fact, after I read The High Road, I then read the novel that that story became a part of.

And it was the first time she had innovated this form where the stories are interwoven and ultimately create what she calls a ring of

And that book and the way in which it reimagined how a novel could be shaped gave me so much permission.

Well, evolution offers two of my greatest secret pleasures as a reader.

And the first is a story that covers a lot of time.

And the second is a story that follows the adventures of a teenage girl.

Evolution I was ten when my mother had to take me to the emergency room.

I'd sort of skidded on our fire escape while I was recklessly dancing around on it, showing off for the kid in the apartment across the way.

I'd done a bump-to-bump, and I was singing woofty-woofty and starting a foxy little move while waving the ends of my bathrobe sash when I slipped on the rusted flooring that was splashed with snow and collapsed on its see-through slats in an unnatural crumple.

The backyard was three floors below, too visible.

I screamed when I tried to get up.

I wanted my mother to hear me.

She was watching TV.

She thought I was asleep.

How would she guess where I was?

I knew I had done something very bad to my leg.

Fortunately, Nene Seidenbaum, for whom I'd been showing off, screamed for her own mother.

In the frozen air between our buildings, I heard her wail that I was dead.