Apartment Choice

At the heart of the novel is a less sensational yet still unconventional story: that of two girls learning to make their way in the world, told with all the complication and unruliness of life, and also with an unspoken argument about what it means to tell a story like this. As children we experience the raw brute force of our feelings, but in the formative adolescent years , Messud told me, we learn how to be a person — ‘‘what it is to be a daughter, what it is to be a friend, what home means, what love means.’’ We learn these things by observing other people, but also from the stories that we hear: the books we read, the films we watch, the myths our culture teaches us. Yet the narratives for girls tend to be ‘‘dire,’’ she said, with violence at the forefront. With ‘‘The Burning Girl,’’ she hoped to write what she calls ‘‘a children’s book for grown-ups,’’ a book that acknowledges the inarticulable, even irrational power of emotion — an ‘‘animal thing’’ beyond understanding. It trea...

Though Ms. Hardeman and Mr. Selvadurai had seen each other only briefly through mutual friends since 2009, they officially met in January 2015, at a birthday party for Mr. Selvadurai, who was turning 33. “The old me would never have gone to that party,” Ms. Hardeman said, “but this was the new me.” Indeed, just a few weeks earlier, she created a New Year’s mantra to live by, called "hashtag always go." “It meant ‘Say yes to everything and take every opportunity,’ ” Ms. Hardeman said. So she went along, and danced with Mr. Selvadurai at a TriBeCa bar until well after midnight. The following day, Ms. Hardeman was asked by a mutual friend for her contact information on behalf of Mr. Selvadurai, who would ask her out on a date. The old Ms. Hardeman would have balked — “I didn’t view us as having had a romantic interest in each other,” she said — but the new Ms. Hardeman agreed to go. “I’m glad I did,” she said. “We had a great conversation.” Among the many things they talked abou...