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So, instead of returning straight to my hotel in the Old Town, I did in fact go to the bar in Kronenhalle, where the door always did exactly the opposite of what one expected. If you wanted to pull it, it could be opened only with a push, and vice versa. I took my seat there in the back, down at th…

My mother’s situation—and now I’ll get to the point—often forced me to visit Zurich, this city of posers and braggarts and debasement, and had completely paralyzed me for years. It had become vile, altogether heinous, it had become more than I was able to bear, than one should have to bear. My moth…

So I had to go to Zurich again for a few days. My mother wished to see me. And because of my nerves about it, I’d felt so unwell over the whole long weekend that I suffered from severe constipation. On top of this, I should say that I’d written a novel a quarter century ago which I’d titled, for so…

INTERVIEWER

The ending of the novel—­that list of paragraphs all beginning with “And … ”—­is strikingly beautiful.

GARNER

I suppose it’s the book thinking about itself—­about what is going to happen in the world after it stops being a book. I didn’t want the book to fade out. I wanted it t…

I’d always wanted to be around clever people, to be playful with other clever people. My first husband had been involved with a radical theater group that was quite important in Melbourne, and I’d been involved in the feminist arm of it, although I was always a bit of a tourist in that world. But t…