Susan Choi

I certainly don't retain any recollection of it at all.

But it seems like I got along, you know, that it just sort of became possible for me to like, I definitely, I had friends.

I think that's what really I remember is having playmates.

That's so lovely.

I mean, I think that it is.

If you can imagine kind of a process where you start out with certain very familiar conditions, like my family, this trip, and then you start adding unfamiliar things that really ratchet up the pressure.

So I started, of course, with this novel, adding all sorts of circumstances that didn't actually occur in our lives.

as you do that and you start thinking like, oh, how are we gonna respond to these extreme circumstances, slowly we turn into these characters.

So the characters start developing and changing and becoming themselves and becoming different from who we were as the situation gets more and more elaborate and complex.

So I would say that, you know, it started out as a book that had these familiar ingredients in it and then ended as a completely

different story about pretty different people.

Yeah, I think to be crass, I think it's pure physical attraction.

I think there was chemistry.

You know, sometimes chemistry can exist in extremely high amounts between people who are extremely poorly suited.

I'm not saying it's a necessity, I hope not, but they certainly seem to have like an almost, you know, like an almost chemical reaction.

But I think even beyond that,

Cirque has had a very, very difficult life.

He's very angry already.

He is this very, very smart, very, very fierce, very, very determined guy, grew up in poverty, has managed by hook or by crook to get himself to the United States.

And I think he really wants to slam the door on the past.