You might think it would be a snap to conjure a fine novel out of the elements that were handed to Padma Viswanathan, on a platter as it were, by her Indian grandmother. Padma's grandmother's grandmother was married as a child and widowed at 18 and, due to rigid caste rules, had to spend the rest of her life in extreme deprivation. Still, writing well is rarely that simple, and Padma spent a decade on The Toss of a Lemon. In our interview, she told me how entering flow helped make her novel more compelling.   Read More