Three Women in a Mirror

Book excerpt: “A miraculous book in praise of women, in praise of both their shortcomings and their strengths” from the internationally bestselling author (l’Express). Anne, 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 and 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 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. Both her curse and her solace, acting will give her the key to an open a new chapter in her life where she will find love, companionship, and the meaning she has been searching for. “Schmitt writes movingly about three women, divided by time and distance, whose lives connect when they attempt to break free of expectations imposed by society . . . Schmitt’s three complex stories are beautifully translated and masterfully written.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)