Read Devi Laskar’s interview of Barbara on “Debutante Ball”

Devi: Talk about one book that made an impact on you. 

Barbara: Only one? Wow—that’s hard. I guess a prime candidate would be The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. I read it in my twenties, and at the time I thought it had changed my life. It empowered me to think about what I really wanted to do and where I was going, to leave a relationship that was stifling, and to understand the connections between the personal and political. The odd thing is that when I re-read it thirty-five years later, I had a completely different response; it seemed dull and tedious in places, and full of curiously stereotypical, traditional female behavior in relationships with men who were jerks. I think this just goes to show how subjective literature is; not only will different readers respond in such varied ways, but this may change for an individual reader over time. Other novels that I admire so much are White Teeth by Zadie Smith, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. I can’t presume to say I was trying to emulate these works in my novel, but I do love the blending of a great story with a fascinating political and historical context. I also love to sink into big novels, which these all are—door-stoppers, you could call them. Long novels are supposedly very out of fashion these days, no one has the attention span apparently, and my publisher insisted that I cut almost 30,000 words from WHEN IT’S OVER, but personally, I love a big book.