Topography of a Novel: The Suicide of Claire Bishop

Claire Banasky knows the pain – sometimes literal – of revision: she takes us through the six-year writing process that led to her book The Suicide of Claire Bishop

By Carmiel Banasky for Topography of a Novel by Blunderbuss Magazine, part of the Guardian Books Network

Every book has its own texture, materiality, and topography. This is not only metaphorical; the process of creating a novel produces all sorts of flotsam–notes, sketches, research, drafts – and sifting through this detritus can provide insight both into the architecture of a work and into the practice of writing. Blunderbuss is excited to run this series, in which we ask writers to select and assemble the artifacts of a book in a way that they find meaningful and revealing. In this installment, Carmiel Banasky explores the very literal pain involved in the writing of The Suicide of Claire Bishop, released in September (US) and December (UK) by Dzanc Books.

In 1959, Claire Bishop sits for a portrait only to discover that the artist has painted her suicide. In 2004, a young man with schizophrenia becomes obsessed with a mysterious painting of a woman killing herself. What happens, then, when these two characters collide? Hailed as “daring, precise, and linguistically acrobatic” (Colum McCann) and a “magnificent, astute debut that portends greatness” (Claire Vaye Watkins), The Suicide of Claire Bishop stands as one of the most celebrated novels of the past year.

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