Claire Messud to Publishers Weekly: "What kind of question is that?" Do you like Jonathan Franzen's characters? David Foster Wallace's? Roth? Then stop asking Claire Messud about hers

In Salon this week, Laura Miller raved that Claire Messud's new novel, "The Woman Upstairs," is "claustrophobically hypnotic" and "a ferocious portrait of creative and spiritual frustration."

The author's feeling some of that frustration as well, with reductive media questions about the likability of her main character -- a question that might not be posed to a male author in quite this way -- as this new interview with Publishers Weekly shows:

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