Q: Your story in this week’s issue, “You Are Happy?,” is told through the eyes of a boy who watches his mother become an alcoholic. Why tell the story from his perspective rather than hers?
A: There are several reasons. The most important is that, since the alcoholic mother is addled, I would have had to deal with her as an unreliable narrator. The lens of an unreliable narrator shifts the way that emotions are delivered, and I prefer my emotions to land like punches. Another is that having the story be told from the point of view of the boy allows something to come out of the suffering. If it were from the mother’s point of view, we would have suffering and then a murder, and the story might feel one-toned.
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