The crux of this story lies in the symbiotic, life-sustaining relationship between Antonia and Sofia. Why is this relationship unique, and why do you think female friendships like theirs are having a literary moment?

I’m interested in the idea of something being unique in fiction. I think the things that resonate widely in fiction are often not unique, but rather universal. Love—how Sofia and Antonia are born into it, how they build it, and how they alternately choose it and avoid it—is as universal as it gets. And friendship is a special kind of love. Sofia and Antonia love each other differently than sisters and differently than lovers. The bounds and boundlessness of their relationship was endlessly fascinating for me. I think anyone who has had a best friend and anyone who has wanted one will find something to connect with in Sofia and Antonia’s friendship.

My suspicion is that female friendship is having a moment in fiction for two reasons. First, women are having a moment in fiction! Women are being published at very high rates; women are writing about things that interest them, and it’s changing what gets focused on in the general fiction landscape. I work as a bookseller, and our fiction shelves are full of multiple generations of women navigating challenges together; of women who are forging into the unknown alone; of teenage girls being the heroines of their own stories rather than the props in other people’s stories. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come; hopefully someday soon, the fiction that is published will reflect the stunning diversity of the world we live in.

Second, I think love is more freely defined, and perhaps more important, in today’s world than it ever has been. Relationships can be, and have to be, intentional, and individually constructed, because there are fewer restrictions on who can relate and how (not, of course, none—and the ways Sofia and Antonia both feel constrained by the outside limits placed on them will probably be relatable to many readers, too). In this contemporary moment, love is revealed in complex glory. And friendship, which is its own kind of love but which can contain the best and the worst of both romantic love and family love, is such fertile ground for exploration.

The Family is a novel defined by duality—not just in the context of Sofia and Antonia’s relationship, but also in the tenuous lines separating good from evil, old world from new world, and love from violence. What did you wish to accomplish by exposing these dichotomies?