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

In this new work from Kristeva, the noted French philosopher, psychoanalyst, and critic who began writing fiction two decades ago, psychoanalyst Sylvia Leclercq is an atheist nevertheless intrigued by St. Teresa of Avila. Leclercq embarks on an exploration in which she tries to use her academic and professional skills to understand a woman of great contradictions. Teresa was both a mystic who experienced ecstasies in which she felt that she was one with God and a pragmatist who reformed the Carmelite Order. At times a flirt, she was also known for her self-mortifications. She was a writer, too, who enjoyed success and respect even as she was targeted by the Spanish Inquisition and censured as an outspoken woman. Most affecting when it is most straightforward and most ambitious when it experiments with form by pulling in everything from music to philosophy, this book is finally so long and often so academic that only the most patient readers will persevere. Ultimately, what is most provocative here is how all the narrator's intellectual efforts to understand Teresa are not enough; she succumbs to a love that is as inexplicable as Teresa's devotion to God.