SOURCE: Quindlen, Anna, and Kim Campbell. “Speaking Freely about Her Latest Novel.” Christian Science Monitor 90, no. 53 (11 February 1995): 15.

In the following interview, Quindlen discusses her new novel Black and Blue and how her writing has improved.

In person, former columnist Anna Quindlen is much like she is in print: forthright, thoughtful, and often funny.

She is game to discuss most anything—the president's problems, the reading habits of her children, the movie version of her book One True Thing.

But what she talks most freely about these days is her third novel, Black and Blue, and what it's been like writing fiction full time since leaving The New York Times three years ago.

“I think I've gotten good at it,” she says over breakfast during a promotional swing through Boston. “I think this is a good novel. And I think it's a better novel than One True Thing, and...