Love and the Law in “That’s Not a Thing.”
Meredith Altman has a serious choice to make—does she return to her first love, and confront the heartbreak she caused him? Or does she keep a safe distance in order to protect the new relationship she’s built? These are the questions that animate Jacqueline Friedland’s That’s Not a Thing (Spark Press) and the author talks to Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about the ways in which Meredith’s journey mirrors—and departs from—her own.
YZM: The theme of guilt is threaded through the novel—do you feel it’s a particularly Jewish kind of guilt?