A couple of years ago when I started telling people that my next book was a novel, the responses were… mixed. It was not what they were expecting. There was a little suspicion or perhaps a touch of doubt. Who does she think she is?

When my debut memoir, Eggshell Skull, came out in 2018 it announced me to the world as a non-fiction author. I followed it up with Beauty and Who Gets to Be Smart, both of which are hard-hitting, issues-based investigations and personal, argumentative works. People were expecting more of that kind of thing. It had become my ‘lane’. By writing a novel—a sexy one about love and art—I was stepping out of that lane.