Your Story, My Story

Connie Palmen was born in Sint Odiliënberg, the Netherlands, and studied literature and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of The Laws, voted the European Novel of the Year and short-listed for the 1996 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Friendship, winner of the AKO Literature Prize; Lucifer; and the autobiographical novel I.M. Ms. Palmen currently lives in Amsterdam. For more information, please visit www.conniepalmen.nl.Eileen Stevens earned her MA in linguistics with a specialization in translation from the University of Amsterdam. Her Dutch-to-English translations include Karin Schacknat’s In and Out of Fashion and Vera Mertens’s The Concentration Camp. She is a co-translator of Ineke van Doorn’s Singing from the Inside Out. A New Jersey native, Eileen worked as a professional violinist for twenty-five years before devoting herself to literary translation. She lives in Amsterdam. For more information, visit www.keyboardtranslations.com.Anna Asbury studied classics and linguistics at Cambridge University before moving to the Netherlands for a PhD at Utrecht University. Her translations include Paul De Grauwe’s The Limits of the Market and Bastiaan Rijpkema’s Militant Democracy: The Limits of Democratic Tolerance. She is a co-translator of Koen Vossen’s The Power of Populism and Fréderike Geerdink’s The Boys Are Dead. She lives in Cambridge, UK. For more information, please visit www.annaasbury.com.

“Connie Palmen’s Your Story, My Story is a lacerating portrait of passion and genius, both of which are gifts that can arrive with mortality hidden in their folds. It does what only a novel can do—probes beneath the ‘official’ story to get to the dark and mysterious heart of the matter. It’s a remarkable book.” —Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours“Enthralling…Palmen’s prose is beautiful and neither condemns nor exculpates Hughes. Palmen took on a tall order with this one, and does an admirable job of delivering.” —Publishers Weekly“Brilliantly gives voice to Ted Hughes…Palmen brings incredible emotion and life to these two renowned poets and embodies Hughes fully. This confessional will challenge readers to see Ted Hughes and his story in a different light.” —Booklist“The careful, vivid language of Your Story, My Story makes it rewarding reading.” —Los Angeles Review of Books“Dutch author Connie Palmen’s latest novel, Your Story, My Story, translated by Eileen J. Stevens and Anna Asbury, uses Plath and Hughes’s ill-fated marriage as a vehicle for larger questions about lust, loyalty, and grief…Palmen, Stevens, and Asbury have achieved remarkable success in bringing Hughes’s literary voice to the page; reading Your Story, My Story feels like reading straight from Hughes’s diary. The prose is lovely, the emotions raw…engrossing…Palmen, Stevens, and Asbury replicate Hughes’s writing style with startling authenticity, and Palmen deftly draws out internal conflict in her characters…the craftsmanship is undeniable.” —Asymptote Journal“Palmen cleverly asserts her talent, as she delves into a poetic narrative akin to Hughes’s own voice as he tries to keep up with the quickly changing moods of his wife, who is every extreme of fury, wit, and passionate goddess all in one. Palmen takes us into Hughes’s mind to see things from his perspective, playing devil’s advocate, hoping to shed some light on his own personal truth and to show that there are always two sides to a story.” —Paperback Paris“With the outcome known from the start, it’s the path we follow to get there that makes this beautifully written ode to Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath so engrossing and emotional: a love story of euphoric joy and acute sorrow. Filled with literary references and written like a daily journal, its private intimacy is like being inside Hughes’s head, with all notion of a story, written and translated by strangers, forgotten.” —Historical Novels Review“Speaking as Hughes, in his distinctive style (life is mainly nature wondering what to attack next), Dutch novelist Palmen provides a version of events from his side…In running through the events of their tumultuous pairing, with Plath’s mental illness relentless in its demands, Palmen asks if their relationship was doomed all along.” —Strong Words Magazine