The Larger Life of the Novel

What I learned from reading so many novels, is that the novel, as it goes on, has to expand. It has to give you a sense of a larger life, not just the story you're dealing with, no matter how well it's told. There must be a sense of resonance, a sense that in that story is the knowledge of a whole larger story whose presence is felt.

(From "An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni" The Writer's Chronicle September 2002)