Three Women in a Mirror

By Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Anna, Hanna, and Anny. Three young women, free spirits all, each one at odds with the age in which they live. Despite the centuries that divide them, their stories intersect—a surprising narrative technique that lends increasing tension and richness to this novel, which builds to a thrilling crescendo of unexpected revelations.

Anne lives in Flanders in the sixteenth century. She’s a mystic who talks with animals like Saint Francis; she finds God in nature and cannot understand the need for religious rituals. Yet her ideas run against the temper of the times. It is the age of the counterreformation and the Inquisition. Her serenity and the loose tongues of those who secretly envy her, result in her being branded a heretic, with tragic consequences. Hanna lives in Vienna at the start of the twentieth century. She is a young noblewoman, dissatisfied with bourgeois conventions, who undertakes a journey of self-discovery. After much sadness she will find a method for uncovering the roots of her malaise in a new cure developed by a Viennese doctor by the name of Sigmund Freud. Anny is a Hollywood star of the 2000s. Addicted to celebrity and to variety of illicit substances she is searching for meaning in world where the only apparent thing of any value is money. Both her curse and her solace, acting will give her the key to a open a new chapter in her life where she will find love, companionship, and the meaning she has been searching for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Jul 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781609451660

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Eric Emmanuel Schmitt's bestselling novels and plays have been translated into more than twenty languages and produced in thirty-five countries. Oscar and the Lady in Pink was published by Atlantic Books in 2005 and the stage adaptation, starring Rosemary Harris, ran in the West End and was directed by Associate RSC director John Caird (Les Misérables).

Reviews for Three Women in a Mirror

[smiler69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Three different women, three different time periods and destinies, but what if they are one and the same woman? This is what we are meant to reflect upon as we read the alternating narratives, which start with beautiful Anne, in Bruges, sometime in the 16th century. She is getting ready for her wedding day, and everyone envies Anne her gorgeous fiancé, especially her cousin Ida, who envies her beyond all common sense. But Anne is more interested in staring at butterflies and the way a ray of sun spreads across the room, and soon she is running away to freedom and nature to hide in the woods and commune with an ancient tree. Some think she has the makings of a saint. Others think she is in league with the devil. Hanna is living in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. She has just married into one of the wealthiest and most prestigious families of the upper classes. Her husband adores her and desires her constantly; every night she goes to concerts and performances of the highest caliber, when she's not invited to elegant dinner parties; she wears to most up-to-date fashions, and her private fortune can afford her every luxury, yet she is unhappy and deeply neurotic. A relative introduces her to a strange new fad called psychoanalysis. She can't be seen by Freud himself because he is a Jew and good families don't mix with those people, but things are arranged for her to meet with one of his disciples. Then there is Anny. She's the hottest commodity in Hollywood and her favourite pastime is drinking, taking drugs, and sleeping with every man she can get her hands on. Things quickly get out of control and an accident lands her in hospital where she meets Ethan, a male nurse who wants to help her get healthy, but will her publicist let her make the right choices? I have mixed feelings about this book. One the one hand, I was captivated with the stories of both Anne of Bruges and Hanna in 20th century Vienna. All three women have independent spirits and are at odds with what society expects of them. Or at least, Anna and Hanna are, but Anny seemed like too much of a cliché of the kind we see in tabloids every day, and I couldn't stop the image of Lindsay Lohan forming in my mind every time her turn came around. But Schmitt writes beautifully and since his Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran—the only other book I've read by him so far—he can do no wrong in my eyes. This is his latest venture and a hot commodity on the French market. It should make it's way to the English world before too long. I'd be surprised if it didn’t: it's got too much bestseller potential not to.