How ruthless do you have to be? Do you have to have a killer instinct to really make it? [The book] is also a fantasy. Things happen. Your career takes off. Yeah, you may be sitting at your cubicle, but you're dreaming of great glory!
A mother whose newborn baby has just died struggles to find her emotional footing with her precocious, and often annoying, five-year-old stepson, in Ayelet Waldman's novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. Waldman's story is really set in motion by the baby's death, even though it occurs before the book even opens.
How ruthless do you have to be? Do you have to have a killer instinct to really make it? [The book] is also a fantasy. Things happen. Your career takes off. Yeah, you may be sitting at your cubicle, but you're dreaming of great glory! 
