Jenny Diski became a writer in her late 30s. Suddenly, words poured out: 16 books, fiction and non-fiction, in just over 20 years. She is as wide-ranging as she is prolific. Novels about Abraham and Sarah, a Jewish girl living in medieval Poland, and an anthropologist in Borneo. What is common to these otherwise very different books is their darkness: characters locked in an abusive relationship, eccentrics, madwomen and alcoholics.
Diski's latest novel, her 10th, begins with two people dying. One, in 1645, is an old woman, watched only by her maid. The attic room is bare except for a "chaotic jumble of papers and books... unorganized stacks of printed and inked words". The other, in 1592, is the great French essayist and man of letters, Michel de Montaigne. What follows is the story of the relationships between the old woman, the man and the maid - and those piles of manuscripts and books.
At first glance, the story seems straightforward enough. A young girl, Marie de Gournay, grows up in provincial France. Her mother is desperate to bring her up as a marriageable young woman, but Marie is interested only in reading. She sits all day in her father's library, devouring books. Then one day her uncle brings her two new books from Paris, books of essays by Montaigne. These will change her life.
Marie becomes obsessed with this extraordinary author and devotes her life to him and his work. Her only ambition is to become a woman of letters, leaving the country and meeting fellow writers at literary salons in Paris. She is an intellectual Madame Bovary; young, passionate and longing for recognition.
