Straight Lines and Sharp Teeth

Mallon grew up in London, though her family is Scottish. After getting her M.F.A. at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she arrived in Provincetown five months ago as a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center. Here, as she did at five, Mallon is writing a novel in her head. Copious notes are part of that process, she says: on her computer, in journals, on large pieces of paper stuck on the walls.

“I know what the characters look like,” says Mallon. “I can see the setting.” It’s going to be a “very American” book, she says, set in a lush green Midwestern landscape.

The book, written from the point of view of more than one character, will depart from Mallon’s usual practice of writing from a first-person male perspective. One narrator is female. “She’s on the road with her lover shortly after her boyfriend is killed,” says Mallon. (They are two different characters.)