IN CONVERSATION . . .

A toss-up. When I first read the words introvert and extrovert when I was 10, I thought I was both.

I get the feeling you live your life in a state of extended exaltation.

That's what my husband says, and he's been married to me for 20 years. I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.

Are you ever tender?

Of course! Jeez! I loved my students, 'cause they're all mad at their parents, and yet they need tenderness. I gave them that.

The rhythm of sea waves permeates the book. Short sentences rolling in one after the other, such as the sea you describe as "a monster with a lace hem." Were you near the ocean when you wrote it?

Heavens, no. It's best for me to be as far away as possible in time and place.

How did you achieve that effect?

A whole hell of a lot of it rhymes, though I don't expect anyone will notice. You can add punch to a paragraph by ending with a true rhyme.

You write equally of what it's like to leave a lover and to be left by one -- betrayal from both sides.

What was cool about that was that Lou comes to realize her feelings [of rejection] were not caused externally; they were hers, she was responsible for them, and they were optional. She could change.

It's such a passionate ode to love of various kinds: marital love, parental love, love of stars, seals, even death. Your love has just kept going, hasn't it, through book after book?