Authors in Conversation Charles Yu: I’m re-reading Idiopathy and I’m dumbstruck by how good it is—sentence by sentence you illustrate these characters with prose that is economical and precise and delicate and acidic, and you have this impeccable sense of rhythm and pacing and sound. This is your first novel, and so my first question is this: I hate you. Okay that's not a question. How about: I hate you? Okay just kidding. How about instead of envy-hating you I give an example of why I loved this book so much. Relatively early on, Katherine and Nathan have an exchange which ends with the line: “We’re all miserable. Trick is to find a way of doing it without it being such a bloody cliché.”