Christine Henneberg’s “I Trust Her Completely” won 3rd Place in our Novel Excerpt Contest. Read the winning pages or read the novel, which came out May 6th! Then check out this interview with Henneberg in which she discusses the intersection of writing and her life as a mother and physician, the role of the reflective narrator, and the question of doing it all.
What originally sparked this book, or these characters?
I Trust Her Completely is of those projects that I allowed myself to work on for so long, and in such a free and exploratory way, that I can truly hardly remember how it began. If I think back to the earliest drafts, I know it had to do with wanting to tell a story about some of the hard questions I faced during my medical training, when I was still wondering when I would become a mother, and what it would be like. What sacrifices would it require, particularly of my ambitions as a doctor and a writer? How would it impact my friendships? (At that time many of my friends were bounding into motherhood ahead of me, as I plodded along through a grueling medical residency.) I wasn’t so interested in the question of whether I could “do it all,” but did I want to do it all? The novel really circles around that question, how different women answer it, and how some women may try to persuade others to come to the same answers that they do.
Where do these pages fit into your larger novel? And, how did the idea of an excerpt, of these pages being a self-contained piece, influence your thought process as you were editing these pages? Did you have to do anything to make them work as a standalone?
This excerpt comes from the very beginning of the novel. I didn’t change a word; I simply lifted these pages from the manuscript.
Later, in a very final draft, I added a short passage to open the book—a reminiscence from Josie about when she first knew Radhika, seventeen years earlier. Otherwise, these pages are exactly the same as the first pages of the final novel, which came out in May.
I’m always a huge fan of the reflective narrator: For me, they create a trust in the plot while allowing me to play around with what future the narrator is talking from and why exactly they’re telling us about these specific moments from wherever they are in the future. And this reflective narrator is not shy to speak from her future perch: She promises us so much to come in the book—I’m thinking most specifically of Mercy, who we don’t even fully meet in these pages, though there are plenty of other examples. With that in mind, could you talk a little about how you came to the decision to use that reflective voice? Was this something that was always central to the book, or did it evolve as plot machinations complicated themselves, or…?
I write every day in a diary, so I have a lot of practice writing from a reflective perch. Josie’s reflective narrative voice was always the anchor of the storytelling. Although she’s very smart, she can be a bit self-deceiving. (For this I tried to emulate some of my favorite smart but self-deceiving narrators, including those of Anita Brookner, Anne Enright, Julian Barnes, and Patricia Lockwood). As Josie learns something about herself and the people around her, she doesn’t exactly get smarter, but she becomes more clear-eyed about what she wants. So you get to see a contrast between how she behaves and the choices she makes in the story, and the more clear-eyed, perhaps savvier version of Josie who is looking back on those choices and making meaning of them.
Seemingly similar to yourself, Radhika practices both medicine and literature (although our narrator dismisses the “formulaic simplicity” of her stories and considers her more of an editor). I wonder if you could talk a bit about those two identities, of doctor and writer, and how you view them interacting with each other.
My identities as a doctor and a writer are hard—though not impossible—to separate. I’ve done some of my most public writing on topics within my realm of medical expertise: women’s reproductive healthcare and abortion care. As a woman who has borne two children, those topics overlap with my personal life and other issues I care about, and they inform the stories I want to tell.
When I teach writing to medical students, one thing I try to impress upon them is that unless they write while they’re in the midst of their training, they will find it very hard to remember what it was like not being a doctor. You can never “un-learn” all that specialized knowledge of the body; you can never forget the things you’ll see or do as a doctor in training; you can’t cross back over to that prior version of yourself. I was a writer first, and I would’ve been a writer even if I’d never become a doctor—but at this point, it’s hard to imagine that version of myself.
I’m that annoying guy at the reading that always wants to ask the two super-cliché questions, so apologies in advance. First, can you tell us a bit about your writing routine? (mornings with coffee pecking at the keys; ten hours in front of a keyboard every day; chunks when inspiration strikes, et cetera?)
I’m a morning person. And I have two young kids—they were really young when I was writing early drafts of this novel. So: writing happens at 5am, in my backyard “office” (a converted garden shed with a space heater). I write by hand in my diary before I do anything else, then I type up whatever feels “usable” (if anything). When the kids wake up about 6:30, I get them ready and walk them to school. If I’m seeing patients that day, I leave for clinic—my writing is done. If not, I might spend the rest of the day writing or revising, with breaks to exercise, change the laundry, wash breakfast dishes. It’s a writing life that’s very much integrated into my other roles as a doctor and a mother.
Second, beyond writing routine, what about your writing process? Are you a seventeen drafts before your first reader sees it kind of writer, or does it all flow brilliantly to fountain pen on first thought (someone someday will reply yes to that, I’m sure), or do you write a single sentence a million times until it’s perfect, or…?
I’m a bit of a mixed bag with my process. With both books, I revised several drafts entirely on my own, until I didn’t know how to revise any further, before showing a complete draft to one or two trusted readers.
Sometimes when I’m writing shorter pieces, I’ll feel very excited and inspired about a first draft and shoot it off to a friend or a mentor—then cringe afterward and wish I’d waited a bit longer. I actually love the process of revision, sometimes more than the writing itself. But I’m not very patient. I always want to believe I’m close to being “finished”—and then of course, several drafts later, I’m thankful to have had a good editor to tell me I wasn’t there yet.
This excerpt is so much fun to read, and certainly does great work in whetting my appetite for the full work; obviously avoiding spoilers, what can you tell us about the novel?
The novel is out! I submitted this excerpt to The Masters Review when the manuscript was already very, very close to being done. As of May 6, the book has come out into the world.
Without any spoilers: It’s clearly a novel about a friendship. But it’s also about ambition, ambivalence, motherhood, loneliness, and impossible choices. A good friend and colleague said to me that beyond telling a good story, I Trust Her Completely works as a thought exercise for anyone who thinks they know where they stand on questions of women’s bodily autonomy. The events that unfold, and the decisions the characters make, will challenge even the most self-assured reader to confront the far-reaching and uncomfortable implications of their deeply held beliefs.
Interviewed by Brandon Williams