I have always been skeptical of the writerly claim that literature is essential, even life-saving. I know that, coming from a writer, this is potentially blasphemous. Like most writers, I grew up a voracious reader, my definition of hedonism a Saturday afternoon sprawled on the grass reading The Age of Innocence. But literature has always existed for me one or two levels above that raw core where we grieve, suffer, struggle to survive.
Until I got pregnant.
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