SOURCE: “Mona Simpson: Return of the Prodigal Father,” in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 243, No. 45, November 4, 1996, pp. 50-51.

In the following essay, based on an interview with Simpson, Bing provides an overview of Simpson's life and writing, and shares Simpson's comments about her work.

Mona Simpson's three novels are unsparing portraits of daughters neglected by incompetent parents. At 39, the tables have turned and the novelist is a parent herself, sharing her capacious Upper West Side apartment with her son, Gabriel, who is almost three, and her husband, Richard Appel. Three years ago, in a coincidence as improbable as it is apt, Appel abandoned his job as a federal prosecutor to write full time for the TV series The Simpsons—a family that would make even the most dysfunctional household seem normal by comparison. “It's great for me” quips Simpson. “I get the stationery, put a caret in the title and...