Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today we are happy to have as our guest Katherine Hein author of this her first novel Standard Deviation, published in May by Knopf.

We talked to Katherine last time about her short story collection Single, Carefree Mellow. Which was delightful, both the book and the conversation.

Katherine writes for the New Yorker and the Atlantic as well as well as other periodicals.

Standard Deviation. I have often wondered about what that really meant. What’s standard about deviation? And what is the standard off of which they calibrate this morbid abandonment by degrees.

I have yet to meet anyone who allows me to calibrate my wondering trek through life that took me out here and if I did I would probably be bored to tears.

But it is the title of this book. And what I think it means is that we have four people, Graham, Audra, Matthew and Elspeth. They’re all different and they’re all wonderful and unique in their own ways, not that they don’t have their problems. But it is their intereaction, that’s what it is, that allows us to see the standard deviation that they veer away from each other at tangent.

So I guess unless you have a relationship with someone who is different than you, unless you interact with those who don’t share your mindset your life view, your personality then you wouldn’t get to see and experience the wonderful thing that a standard deviation can actually be.