Herself, Of Course

This is a quiet, intricate novel about a writer’s life as seen through three moments separated by twenty years: 1980, 2000, and 2020. Its central character is Victoria Gannon, who first publishes as V. Gannon, later becomes “Vicky” among family, and finally is mostly “V.” in the old age of her career. The novel is less a plot-driven story than a long meditation on art, memory, literary reputation, sex, aging, women’s lives, and the unstable boundary between a writer’s biography and her work.

The first part, “Portrait,” takes place in 1980. Victoria is twenty-seven, living in New York, and on the brink of literary success. Her first novel is about to be published, and she has been sent to the SoHo loft of William Noone, a famous literary photographer, to have her author portrait taken for a major review. William is elegant, theatrical, vain, flirtatious, and precise. He tells her when to answer his questions and when to keep her mouth closed so she does not ruin the photograph. She is both intimidated and thrilled. A year earlier she had been a low-paid office worker; now she is being treated as a writer.

During the shoot William asks which living writers she loves. Victoria answers Mary Alfyorov, an obscure “writer’s writer” she discovered as a teenager in a literary journal. Mary’s story “Haven,” about an émigré couple and childbirth in a cold urban kitchen, made Victoria want to write. Mary’s work entered Victoria’s mind so deeply that it felt like memory rather than fiction. Victoria has used Mary’s name before as a cultural password: people who know the name are impressed, and people who do not are intimidated.