Beth Golay

It felt very meta to me because you're an author, you've been on book tour.

You're also embarking on a book tour for this book about a fictional account.

How does it feel?

I mean, you're in a similar position that Christine is in.

How does that feel as an author?

So one of the themes of discipline is the imbalance of power between Christine and her painting professor.

In the novel, Christine says she started thinking about the novel during a season.

And this is a quote during a season in which it seemed like every woman on the Internet was coming forward with a story of sexist mistreatment at the hands of a wealthy and powerful man.

So Christine's encounter really changed the entire trajectory of her life, didn't it?

I mean, what what did you want to explore here?

Another prominent theme is the role of secrets.

Can you talk about Christine's decision to keep her experience with her professor a secret and then, you know, later come forward with it through a fictionalized account of her experience?

How does this affect her?

How do these secrets affect her?

You just mentioned that she was able to reinvent herself.

And one of the passages in the book focuses on outside perceptions of the narrator of Christine.

And it reads,

Once they knew how I looked and dressed and that, coupled with the content of my book, made them treat me with a kind of intrigue that sometimes bordered on sexual.

It was as though, having met me and knowing what they thought they knew about me vis-a-vis my book, they expected me to be a specific kind of person, a specific kind of woman, and were delighted when I behaved in a way that met their expectations."

Can you talk to me about these expectations that the outside perspective put on Christine?