Gabrielle Zevin Loves Edith Wharton, but Not ‘Ethan Frome’

What books are on your night stand?

This is a terribly personal question! As an author, I’ve brazenly talked about books for years, but I still feel like reading should be a little private. But, OK. For my night stand, I prefer a paperback, though at the moment I’m reading something as heavy as a textbook, a terrifically smart graphic novel called “Acting Class,” by Nick Drnaso. I also have two hardcovers in my stack: “Enter Ghost,” by Isabella Hammad and “The Fraud,” by Zadie Smith.

How do you organize your books?

Old stuff pushed to the back when the new stuff comes in. When it gets too crowded, I donate to the Little Free Library near my house. My partner and I like to track how many days it takes someone to accept our offerings.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

I’m 8. No one wants anything from me, and I have nothing to do except read. Maybe I’m reading “Anne of Green Gables.” Time stretches out forever.

What moves you most in a work of literature?

Character. When a writer reveals a person in all their complexity. I am moved by what time does to characters, and the ways in which characters, like humans, misunderstand themselves and their motivations.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t?

I adore Edith Wharton, and “The Age of Innocence” and “The House of Mirth” are both favorites. I had never read “Ethan Frome” until a couple of months ago. With all due respect to the ghost of Edith Wharton, “Ethan Frome” is pretty dreadful. It doesn’t make me esteem Wharton less. If anything, I take comfort in it, as a novelist.

Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

I frequently don’t finish books. I like to dip in and out of things. It isn’t necessarily the book’s fault. That said, I will never criticize publicly a book that I didn’t finish. It’s part of my moral code.

What book has had the greatest impact on you?

I read “Song of Solomon” and “Invisible Man” in succession when I was a high school junior. Judith Beiner, my English teacher, had great taste. Both of those novels opened me up to the possibilities of what a novel might do, when and if I ever undertook to write one myself.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?

I was caught reading my parent’s copy of “Hollywood Wives” at school, and my teacher said he thought it was below me. The next week, I read “Portnoy’s Complaint,” and the teacher objected to that one, too. He mentioned my reading selections to my parents at a parent-teacher conference, and my parents said they didn’t censor what I read. I am grateful these are my parents, because if they hadn’t been, I might not have become a novelist.

What’s the most novelistic video game you’ve ever played?

I like games because they are games. I don’t want them to be novels. Not too long ago, though, I was playing a series of casual simulation games called “Hungry Hearts Diner.” The gameplay and graphics are quite simple. It’s about an older woman who runs a diner in Japan, and I did have the thought that it reminded me a bit of Yasunari Kawabata’s “Thousand Cranes.”

When did you realize that “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” was a hit of a different magnitude for you?

Maybe when “Tomorrow” was on “Jeopardy!”? It was the $1,000 question, so not an easy one. The contestant didn’t get it right, though she came close. She missed an “and” in the title.

On the other hand, sometimes strangers will now insist that I said, did, or believe things that I didn’t say, do, or believe. With a certain level of success, one has a stronger awareness that the internet is full of nonsense.

What kind of reader were you as a child?

When I came across a novel I really liked, I would read it repeatedly, obsessively. I liked trying to figure it out. I still do that now when I have the time. I don’t think you can truly know a book until you’ve read it at least twice.

Do you distinguish between “commercial” and “literary” fiction? Where’s that line, for you?

For me, it’s not so much the book’s quality as the author’s goals. A book is born! Does it follow the conventions of a particular genre? Congratulations, you have a commercial novel! Does it seem to exist outside of or between genres, or does it subvert genre expectations? Is the language purely communicative, or is it deployed in more complicated ways? Depending on how you answered these questions, your book may very well be literary, and its life will be harder.

What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?

“The Appeal," by Janice Hallett is great fun if you’re into community theater and sociopaths. I flew through “Good Material,” by Dolly Alderton. Obviously, “Grief is for People” is about grief, but Sloane Crosley can’t help being very funny.

The last book that made you cry?

I wept for Maeve and Danny and everyone else in “The Dutch House.” It’s a brilliant novel in every way.

The last book that made you furious?

Isn’t “furious” the defining emotion of our time? Plenty of things make me furious, but books are rarely one of them. I think of the virtuosic chapter in Nathan Hill’s “Wellness” that’s about the way the internet fosters outrage and division.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I assume the dead ones are being reanimated for this dinner party. It’s not, I hope, a “Weekend at Bernie’s” situation. It’s not living Celeste Ng and living Emma Straub and living Tayari Jones, and the exhumed body of Edith Wharton. “Guess what, friends? We’ll be dining with a very literary corpse tonight.” . No one tell Edith what I said about “Ethan Frome.”