Besides one awful short story, A Partial History was my first real attempt to explore that experience in fiction, and it definitely wasn’t trying to give a definitive answer to anything—it’s really just a 400-page articulation of a question. But I do think that whatever consolation or resolution Aleksandr and Irina can be said to reach comes pretty directly from watching my mother’s care of my father. She took care of him for 12 years, and in addition to all the enormous, basic things she had to do, she also never stopped attending to the really minor details of his care. These were things that could not turn the tide of his illness, and that he probably couldn’t notice and certainly wouldn’t remember, and that nobody else would see or give her credit for, but that she did anyway, because she quietly believed in their worth. I think there’s extraordinary bravery in finding meaning in such things, and it’s that bravery I ultimately hoped my characters might find—and that I hope I might one day find, myself.

RY: Elizabeta was one of my favorite characters in this book. She bookends the novel and disappears almost entirely in the middle. What did you see her role as being, formally or plot-wise?

JD: I liked giving Aleksandr someone to pine for—I’m very big on pining in literature, because who really wants to read about requited love? Keeping Elizabeta out of the book’s middle meant she could resurface in a pretty dark moment for Aleksandr and make the book’s ending a little bit happier. In a way, reconnecting with her is part of Aleksandr’s reconnecting with his younger, more idealistic self. But like Aleksandr’s oppositional politics, his connection with Elizabeta is more mature the second time around; it follows years of complicity and compromise, and so is a lot more consciously chosen. I suppose Elizabeta’s most unique function in the book is the way she illuminates the characters’ very limited understanding of other people and themselves. It’s Elizabeta’s note back to Irina’s father that sets Irina on her quest in the first place, but none of the characters ever fully know each other’s role in that chain of events. I think one of the most heartbreaking things a novel can do is to remind us of all the forces in our lives that we never see.