Helen, the mononymous narrator of Marissa Higgins’s new novel, A Good Blissful Woman, isn’t something that by-the-book feminine protagonists are “supposed” to be. She’s not perky, excellent, “adorkable,” or straight—and it’s that real complexity that makes her probably the most thrilling literary characters in current reminiscence. A lawyer-slash-foot mannequin, Helen struggles in solitude with the outsized weight of against the law dedicated by her mother and father, at the same time as she strives desperately for connection (most notably with Catherine and Katrina, a pair of married ladies she meets on-line and begins relationship). Her need saturates the novel utterly, making for an all-consuming learn that by no means permits you to neglect concerning the important, not-always-palatable humanity of its characters.

This week, Vogue spoke to Higgins concerning the technique of crafting a three-person relationship in fiction, the hustle required to get her guide into individuals’s palms, the modern writers who encourage her most, and extra.

Vogue: First off, how does it really feel to see your guide out on this planet?

Marissa Higgins: Truthfully, I by no means imagined it could occur. I’m not likely a visualizer, however seeing photos of the guide now in bookstores in Ohio or Texas…it nonetheless doesn’t even really feel actual. I’m simply so grateful, and I really feel like if all of it disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn’t even have something to be sad about, as a result of I achieved one thing that I by no means conceived would occur.

I’m so within the idea of a poly or three-person relationship as a story system. Are you able to discuss just a little about writing the connection between Helen, Katrina and Catherine?

Early within the draft, the Catherine and Katrina characters felt like sort of a unit, and fewer like particular person characters. One factor my my agent helped pull out of me was, did I wish to lean into that? Or did I wish to make them and their relationships just a little extra distinct? I ended up making an attempt to construct them out just a little extra, however actually, and this feels bizarre to say, I fell so deeply into Helen’s voice from the start—the fashion of her voice and the motion of it. I struggled to see whether or not it was a lone individual Helen was relationship or two, as a result of I had a tough time imagining Helen as something apart from that: barely hanging on to actuality. I really feel like if it had simply been one individual she was seeing, it in all probability wouldn’t have learn the identical manner, when it comes to what she was searching for in caretaking and a sort of household. Nonetheless, I don’t know that they might have gotten any extra room on the web page than what Helen permits, as a result of I think about Helen telling somebody the story of her life actually close-up—like, speaking actually near you.