Novels: Imagined Worlds or Reflections of Our Own?

In an interview with Anne Tyler, Writer's Digest asked the author to share what she hopes readers hear most clearly when they look back on her body of work. Her response:

It's not so much what they hear as what they remember experiencing that I have hopes for. I would love it if readers said, "Oh, yes, I was once an accidental tourist," or, "I once owned the Homesick Restaurant," and then recalled that in fact, that hadn't really happened; they had just intensely imagined its happening.

The...