Intriguing, suspenseful You Should Have Known is Jean Hanff Korelitz's fifth novel, following A Jury of Her Peers, The Sabbathday River, The White Rose and Admission, which was made into a feature film starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. She is also the author of a poetry collection, The Properties of Breath, and the children's book Interference Powder, and has contributed essays to Modern Love and other anthologies. Korelitz lives in New York City with her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, and their children.
On your nightstand now:
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright; Longbourn by Jo Baker; The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer.
Book you've faked reading:
Ulysses. (Though to be honest I faked listening to it by sort of not paying attention while it was playing. But seriously, does anyone actually NOT fake reading it?)
Book you're an evangelist for:
Underfoot in Show Business by my distant cousin, Helene Hanff. Utterly charming, howlingly funny tale of a failed playwright knocking around mid-century New York. (We know, as the author does not, that she will soon find wild acclaim as the author of 84, Charing Cross Road.)
Book that changed your life:
D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. The book that made me an atheist at the age of eight, while filling me with a passion for stories and art.
Favorite line from a book:
"(A)nd here my story ends. My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my old friends under the apple-trees." --Black Beauty
Also: That passage in Gatsby, about the train heading west from Chicago across the Plains--always makes me cry. And I'm not even from the Midwest.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I am very jealous of people who've never read Austen, because they can read Austen for the first time. I am also excited to recommend Thomas Perry's Jane Whitefield novels to people who don't know them, because they are so breathtakingly paced and so smart.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Anything involving a horse.
Your top five authors:
I'd prefer to do books, actually:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Edie by Jean Stein and George Plimpton
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth