Breaking Her Silence

摘要

I could start with an anecdote, a revealing vignette, say, set in a Japanese teahouse in Manhattan where I met Donna tartt for an in terview (it tickles her that in this teahouse you can get green tea, the beverage at the heart ofjapan's ritualistic tea ceremony, in a go cup). Or I could talk about the frenzy of chatter filling up the shrinelike Web sites where her fans speculate endlessly about what she's been up to since her acclaimed, best-selling debut novel, "The Secret History," appeared 10 years ago ("My favorite rumor," she says with a giggle, "was that I'd bought an entire island, like Dr. No"). Or I could talk about the reception her new novel, "The Little Friend," received when it was published in the Netherlands last month (most salient fact: itsold 150,000 copies in one week).