And the truth was that I probably could have gotten a column out of most of my phone calls, determined as we all were to explore, analyze, and understand our own lives through conversation. Perhaps my editor understood intuitively what I came to believe when I considered the abiding interest that so many women have had in reading fiction (and writing it, too): perhaps, as a group, women are more interested in deconstructing the emotional underpinnings of other people’s problems, of parsing relationships, connections, and emotions, of living emphatically. Kafka
