Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila

by Julia Kristeva, Lorna Scott Fox (Translator)

Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal fantasy, Teresa, My Love turns a past world into a modern marvel, following Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst, academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life. Traveling to Spain, Leclercq, Julia Kristeva's probing alter ego, visits the sites and embodiments of the famous mystic and awakens to her own desire for faith, connection, and rebellion.

One of Kristeva's most passionate and transporting works, Teresa, My Love interchanges biography, autobiography, analysis, dramatic dialogue, musical scores, and images of paintings and sculpture to engage the reader in Leclercq's—and Kristeva's—journey. Born in 1515, Teresa of Avila outwitted the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her consciousness, a state Kristeva explores in relation to present-day political failures, religious fundamentalism, and cultural malaise. Incorporating notes from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary society and the individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her own character.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Philosophy, Literary Fiction

648 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2008

About the author

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her Columbia University Press books include Hatred and Forgiveness (2012); The Severed Head: Capital Visions (2014); and, with Philippe Sollers, Marriage as a Fine Art (2016).

Reviews

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am willing to accept that this is a work of profound and erudite scholarship, but I fear I was out of my depth with it. It’s a rather rambling and very personal narrative following an academic and psychoanalyst (whom I assume is actually an alter ego of Julie Kristeva herself) as she becomes caught up in the life and writings of Saint Teresa of Avila. A mixture of fiction, biography, autobiography, history and psychoanalysis, it’s a meditation on and examination of religion, women, faith and mysticism. Kristeva obviously identifies with Saint Teresa, and certainly I enjoyed learning about the real Teresa and her world, but in general much of the book went over my head as much as I tried to engage with it. It’s certainly an impressive work of scholarship but not one for me.

[Mihael Ruja · Rating 5 out of 5]

“My allusion…falls flat as expected… but that’s also a part of my role: to plant a seed for later, or never”

And that she did…in her captivating labyrinth, the genealogical topology, of Teresa’s Life as, perhaps, lived through the many unions between i and other whose fictions cascade into our existence and unfold into an baroque kaleidoscope of so many thinkers condensed and debouched through histories interminable retelling.

I feel that this is a book that one comes across, and can only come across, at the most propitious time of their life and only then can they scrupulously plum through this book…but the gift of this endeavor can be truly sweet.

[Dianna]

Took me forever. Someone else may like it but I had a hard time with this book. Well written but got lost too many times. Maybe because the transfer between present and Saint Teresa life. Found it tedious.

[Maijabeep]

What the heck is this even? I'm SO EXCITED.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating fictional take on an academic who becomes enamoured by the work of Saint Teresa of Avila.

[Bsheffler · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a horrible book! I rarely begin a book and deliberately decide not to finish it. I gave this one a serious try. I kept pressing on far past the point where I should have realized this book was not worth my time. I kept thinking it just had a slow start and would get better. After 78 pages (of a 598 page book) there appears to be no discernible plot. It rambles on and on, frequently in incomplete sentences, in tedious and largely irrelevant detail. The author appears to be trying to psychoanalyze Saint Teresa of Avila along Freudian lines. In the process, she completely misses the depth and richness of Teresa’s extraordinary life and writings (from which I have personally greatly benefited). Teresa’s writings are themselves quite challenging to read. But delving into the original material would be a far better use of time and mental bandwidth.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excessively weird (and bizarrely structured) fictional Freudian biography of Teresa with the aimless Freudian adventures of a psychoanalyst thrown in. But damn so much of the prose is gorgeous that I couldn’t help but love it.

That being said I do hate when authors have themselves be cited by their fictional creations. Even when the author is Julia Kristeva.

[Lana Putintsev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is this fiction? Is this biography? Is this autobiography? It is definately psychoanalysis a la Kristeva.

[Mills College Library]

Fiction K9293t 2014