Motherhood and loneliness

In her latest novel, "Every Last One" (Random House, $26), Anna Quindlen introduces us to Mary Beth Latham. But we already know her. She may even be in some of our mirrors.

Drawing on her familiarity with the laser focus of motherhood, the vagaries of women's friendships and the power of grief, Quindlen creates the story of a family blindsided by violence. Mary Beth wonders if she'll ever feel hopeful again.

Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will speak Friday at Wayzata Community Church. She's the latest speaker in the Literary Minds series sponsored by the church and the Bookcase, both in Wayzata.

The event is free and open to the public. She answered questions recently via e-mail:

Q How did you decide to portray Mary Beth as unhappy and lonely? Is she a normal middle-aged woman?

A I think I'm going to take exception to the premise. I don't think Mary Beth is unhappy. She's often quite content, sometimes even actively happy, quite worried about her children for both good reasons and dumb ones, and occasionally, in the first part of the novel, really blue. In other words, she's a person of many sentiments, many colors, which makes her a normal middle-aged woman.

As for the loneliness, that sense of being alone in the world, despite family, friends, love, support, is a universal part of the human condition that we prefer to ignore. It's almost indecent, to admit that you're lonely. And since I wanted to write a novel about hidden things, hidden feelings, that was something I wanted very much to illuminate.

A I always start with theme. For a while I've been thinking about illusions of security, safety and control. We take our vitamins, we buckle our seat belts, we have our mammograms. And then something bad comes out of nowhere and blindsides us. I think this is especially true in terms of our kids.

So much of our parenting is designed to make sure they never get hurt or have problems, even though we know from experience that challenges are what teach us to prevail. [But] the world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place.

Q How did you research Mary Beth's grief? Did your own feelings about losing your mother while you were a teen figure into this?

A I don't research my novels, only my columns. I think if you can imagine it, if you can live inside a person and feel them strong and vivid and true, you can imagine how they would feel in any given situation. I don't think I drew on much but my intimate knowledge of Mary Beth Latham for those parts of the book.

Q You've been sending messages to society for years through your columns in newspapers and magazines. Do your novels have the same purpose, to spur people to action about some issue?

That's what I find so miraculous about reading novels. In a world of isolation and economic and social apartheid, a great novel enlarges your sphere, takes you out of yourself, makes you bigger and better than the sum of your own parts.

Q There's a stunning sentence in the book: "Sometimes I feel as though the entire point of a woman's life is to fall in love with people who will leave her." Was this a thought that you've carried with you for some time, or did it emerge in the course of writing the book?

A I work every day in a house that is too big for two people, with three bedrooms that are shrines -- the books, the posters, the mementos. My sons live 90 blocks north of here, my daughter will graduate from college next month and find a place of her own somewhere in the city, too.

So let's just say that the point of my life has been to fall in love with three people who leave and then come back for Sunday night supper. You open the cage. The bird flies. If you're really lucky -- and maybe if you've done your mom job right -- the bird turns out to be a homing pigeon.