Excerpt from The American Lover by Rose Tremain, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She got into a taxi and arrived at Thaddeus's apartment towards the end of morning. She'd long ago asked to have her own key, but Thaddeus had said, 'Oh no. I never do this.' He had a way of making his utterances absolute and incontrovertible, like the authority of the CIA was behind them.

She got out of the taxi and rang the bell. Arriving at this door always made her heart lift, as though she was coming home to the only place that sheltered her. She set the suitcases down beside her, like two arthritic dogs who found movement difficult.

A stranger answered the door. Or rather somebody who was not quite a stranger, a French architect whom they had met once for lunch in Paris at the Dôme in Montparnasse. His name was Pierre.

Pierre said in his accented English: 'Thad said you would come. The flat belongs to me now.'

'What?' said Beth.

'Yes. I 'ave taken it on. Thad has gone back to California. I am sorry. May I offer you some tea?'


Beth says to Rosalita, 'I died there. Right there, between the two suitcases. That's when the real Beth died.'

Rosalita is sympathetic and yet sceptical. She says, 'I have seen many deaths, including Antonio's, and you have seen none. Death is not like that.'

'You don't understand, Rosalita,' says Beth. 'There was the girl who was loved by Thaddeus and when he left for California, that girl ceased to be.'

'But you are here. You are alive.'

'This "I" is not that "I". It's the person who took over from her. It's the person who wrote the bestselling book called The American Lover.'

2.

The book was begun the day after the abortion.

The first scene was set in the abortionist's house (or 'clinic', as the surgeon called it) in Stanmore. It had a panelled hall and a view of a semi-rural recreation area.

Beth (or 'Jean', as she named her protagonist) was given an injection that she was told would make her forget everything that was going to happen. But the one thing she could remember was her inability to stop crying, and a nurse came and slapped her face, to make her stop, and afterwards there was a mark on her cheek where the slap had landed. The mark became a bruise and the bruise took a long time to fade.

Then, Beth's unborn baby was gone. She was a new self, who had no baby and no lover. Her bones felt as brittle and empty as cuttlefish shells and her head as heavy as a heap of wet earth and stones. It was difficult to make this wet earth function as a brain. It needed some skilled potter's hand to do it, but no such person was nearby.

Beth had a friend called Edwina, whom she'd known since schooldays, and thanks to Edwina – a girl with very clear skin, untouched by life – who drove her to Stanmore and collected her again, she was able to hide the abortion from the parents. They thought she and Edwina had gone on a boating picnic that day with some friends in Henley. She told them she'd got the bruise on her face by being accidentally hit by an oar.

On the way back from Stanmore, Edwina asked Beth what she was going to do now. Beth felt sleepy and sick and didn't want to have to answer questions. She stared out at the night folding in on the long and terrible day. She said: 'I'm going to become Jean.'

'Who's Jean?' asked Edwina.

'A kind of heroine, except there's nothing heroic about her. I'm going to write her story and then try to sell it to a publisher.'

'Do you know anybody in the publishing world?' asked Edwina.

'No,' said Beth.


The abortion 'scene' began the story, but wasn't its beginning. It wasn't even its ending, because Beth had no idea what the ending would be, or even if there would be a proper ending, or whether the narrative wouldn't just collapse in upon itself without resolution.

Excerpted from The American Lover by Rose Tremain. Copyright © 2015 by Rose Tremain. Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.