Michael: Typically, I need to see a place in order to inhabit it and then inhabit it with language. I knew I wanted to start the book in Florence, somewhere I had lived in my twenties and which has been a very central place in my imagination and in my heart ever since, as has the whole country of Italy for various reasons. Quite honestly, I had an image of a woman walking away. Her walking away, in a sense, pervades the whole book because she's often somewhat difficult to understand by the people around her. She's difficult to understand even to herself. That idea that you don't always read someone because they have their back turned toward you, whether it's actual or figurative, is another missing element that compelled me. I wanted to discover who she was and why she would do some of the things she does in this book. I don't know if I succeeded, but I tried. That's the role of the novelist, is not to have answers, but to pose questions and to do his or her best to try to find stories that will answer them.