Well, because so many of us, when we were first seeking out lesbian storylines, were doing it like desperate junkies, searching for something to relieve our needs! So it wouldn’t have occurred to us that this was a cultural product that other people would like to read. I remember reading a lesbian memoir for the first time and realizing, “Oh! People will read about lesbians’ lives!” It hadn’t occurred to me until I was reading it. You might say I was naive not to have realized this!īut that’s a revelation I completely identify with. With this one, I’ve been looking forward to it for years. Sometimes I’ve written short stories that could be novels, but I can’t bear to spend a few years in such a big world. I wanted to spend years on end in this world. The world of was so rich with San Francisco, burlesque, and the immigrants from France, that it would’ve been a waste of the material to make it a short story. I would say now that I have a slightly better sense of what has to be a novel.

With that novel I was foolish enough to think it was going to be a short story, but as soon as I tried explaining to the reader why a sixteen-year-old girl would pick up a hatchet, a meat clever in fact, and kill somebody with it, I realized, okay, this one’s going to take a novel. I’ve been doing this sort of fact-based fiction since my novel Slammerkin, which came out in 2000. Was there a point at which you realized that, with Jenny’s life and Blanche’s life, you had a novel on your hands and not just a short story? Your previous story collection, Astray, also draws upon historical records.

Emma donoghue music