“I wonder if by not asking for sympathy, some people have mistaken that as permission to step over certain boundaries.”

Jowita Bydlowska’s first novel, Drunk Mom, was published this past spring to much controversy in Canada; it’s the fascinating memoir of her own time as an alcoholic mother of a young son, living with her child and her partner in downtown Toronto. She was interviewed by the novelist Susan Swan, over email. The book can be ordered from Canada, or you can wait for Summer 2014, when it will be published in the U.S. by Penguin.

THE BELIEVER: Your memoir, Drunk Mom, was given the biggest coverage of any book that debuted in Canada this past spring. How did you come to write it?

JOWITA BYDLOWSKA: I pitched this as work of fiction to my agent, because I thought it would be an interesting character to write about—a mother who drinks, a sort of an ordinary villain. We usually expect big things from our villains—explosions, large-scale betrayals—but there are many not-so-obvious villains out there, too. Seeing my own story as fiction made the danger less real, perhaps until—what an apt cliché—reality caught up with me.

BLVR: Ah, an ordinary villain. And a female one, too! Women journalists have been snide or punitive in the coverage of your memoir. Why were their reactions so nasty? Any theories?

JB: Cliché #2: In terms of any reaction, positive and negative, I think the reaction says more about the person who reacts than what she reacts too.

BLVR: Were the negative articles hard on your family?

JB: Yes. When the first negative coverage came out, my partner said he’d rather live in the world full of flawed people like me than a world full of people mewing about flawed people. That’s always been our attitude about each other, so it was nice to see that it stood this trial. We’ve had a lot of support from our friends and people, especially writers, we admire.

BLVR: Some journalists said your book would hurt your young son, later on. They didn’t seem to understand that the author of a memoir has an overview of the experience by the time the book is done. How do you feel about this?

JB: First: I was very, very naïve in hoping that the media would respect my efforts to not have my son’s name mentioned (or my partner’s name) in the book coverage. In the book, they are referred to as “Frankie” and “the boyfriend,” and there’s an explanation for why I did that in the acknowledgments. No one read that part. But the book is not about my son or my partner. At the same time, I understand the attraction of gossip. Second: This...