Was your first novel, Animal, a book you had always thought about writing?
The character was someone I’d always wanted to write, a woman with nothing left to lose; someone who told every truth in her, and didn’t care how she would be seen.
Did Animal come out of the experiences and stories you encountered while researching for Three Women?
Yes, partly, and largely, also, from my own experiences.
Los Angeles and its characteristic wildness is painted with very vivid hues in Animal, particularly as opposed to the urban spaces of New York. Was Topanga an objective correlative to Joan’s interior landscape?
Yes, exactly! The heat, the oppression, the demonic glare of the past.
There are a lot of writers who have recently taken to portraying the complicated relationship women have with the expression of their sexuality. To what would you attribute this sudden awareness?
I think writers are always doing it, to be honest, but I think that more readers are reading the texts that are usually under the radar, thereby making those under the radar works the new mainstream.
Do you feel that this is also an act of revisionism, a response to patriarchal narratives on female sexuality that had failed to speak about these ugly realities with any nuance?
{{/usCountry}}Do you feel that this is also an act of revisionism, a response to patriarchal narratives on female sexuality that had failed to speak about these ugly realities with any nuance?
{{/usCountry}}Yes, I think nuance is the antidote to patriarchal narratives. I think showing every cell of the truth so that other women can feel more comfortable laying out their own... I think that is the path forward.
What was the most challenging aspect of treading the line between fiction and journalistic reportage for Three Women?
Being careful not to make the women I wrote about feel betrayed when they saw the truths they told me writ large.
What are some of the most chauvinistic responses that you have encountered in interviews or reviews of your books?
The most damaging thing is when readers call the women I wrote about “victims.” I think calling someone a victim is the most victimizing thing one can do.
Who are some of the authors you look to for inspiration or any who have influenced your own writing style?
Lucia Berlin, Elena Ferrante, Natalia Ginzburg, Barry Hannah, Grace Paley, Joy Williams, James Salter
Motherhood has been a topic of some debate in the history of feminist thought and writing. Was there a conscious effort involved in portraying motherhood in a particular way through Animal?
Yes, I wanted to show the way the shadow of the past, of a woman being a child and then becoming a mother — the way the past of the child sits on the shoulders of the child as mother.
What are you working on next?
My next book will be a collection of short stories, coming out in the US next summer, called Ghost Lover, and after that, I’m working on a book about grief. It is reported similarly to Three Women, with some of my own experience as well.
Simar Bhasin is an independent journalist.