The author of Schooling returns with further instruction.

Your first novel was entitled Schooling and concerned a teenage girl's abrupt coming-of-age. In Duchess of Nothing (Reviews, Feb. 6), a young woman takes charge of a seven-year-old boy's entire world and proceeds to offer him some very adult opinions. Is this another novel about the pitfalls of pedagogy?

I wouldn't say that. Schooling definitely is. But with Duchess of Nothing I was more interested in the relationship between a child and an adult, and how the power shifts take place in a really close relationship, like the one in the book. I don't think the [unnamed] narrator is really teaching the boy as much as she is trying to use him as a sounding board for her ideas. But it is under the guise of teaching.

She's kind of mean to him...

I know. I'm sure I'll be castigated as I was with Schooling—"this poor innocent child" etc.—but she defers to him, and needs his approval. She's constantly looking at him to see his responses to the things that she says.

She really does almost all of the talking.

It's true. But he has his ways. He rolls his eyes when she says she wants to bake a pie. The idea that this child might not think she's capable of baking a pie is very upsetting to her. He knows that.

He does get to her, but he doesn't really get in any zingers.

I'm not sure I agree. It's just a different kind of zinger. He can keep making cat noises when she's talking about her traumatic childhood.

Was your schooling traditional?

I went to nine different schools in four different countries growing up, and one school I lived at for three years.

Any effect?

I suppose I'm always interested in what the real education is under the supposed schooling one receives.

Did you make the setting for Duchess intentionally vague? Rome offers some pretty interesting possibilities that you eschew completely.

I chose Rome deliberately. I wanted a city I'd never visited so I wouldn't be tempted to describe it. I wanted to keep as close to her as possible, and narrowing the scope helped make her perspective... limited.

Her origins, too—they're very stock.

I think it's very much that she will let you know what you need to know, and nothing else is interesting or important.

The Nothing of the title?

Oh, no. That's for the reader to decide.