Why My Second Book Took 20 Years to Complete

2013

I am sitting in Massachusetts General Hospital. My sister has just emerged from surgery for a very rare vulvar sarcoma. I’m due to stay overnight as support. A text arrives from my husband informing me he’s just seen the preview for a movie based on the same subject as my novel-in-progress. The movie, Augustine, is a French film about the young hysteric Augustine Gleizes and her relationship with renowned French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. I’d been praying that no one would tell this incredible but little-known story before I did. I immediately enter a tailspin, exacerbated by the bad timing: my sister’s undergone a successful operation, and here I am, having a meltdown. I can’t pull myself out of the spiral: I’m too late—I’ve missed my chance to produce the first work of art about Augustine and Charcot. My debut collection, Hangings: Three Novellas, was published eight years earlier. Why has it taken me so long to complete this novel? I post on Facebook; friends try to calm me; my sister is incredibly gracious; and I feel guilty for requiring comfort rather than giving it.

It will be another nine years until the novel is finished.

1998

In my undergraduate Women’s History class, I read by . The book contains the first pictures I’ve ever seen of Augustine and the first reference to the brilliant source text, or , by . I’m instantly fascinated by the chiaroscuro images of the young woman in the throes of an attack. In one photograph that dates to 1878, she raises her hands in the classic attitude of prayer, but the caption suggests a much more lurid interpretation: “Supplication amoureuse,” . In “Éxtase,” she sits up in bed, crosses one leg over the other, and holds up both hands as if praising a figure whom only she can see manifested in the