Martha Anne Toll Muses on Debut Novel

Author of book reviews, essays, and short fiction, Martha Anne Toll, visits us to talk about her debut novel, Three Muses. Three Muses is the esteemed winner of the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and tells the story of John, a Holocaust survivor, and Katya, a prima ballerina, and the fateful events that led them to one other. “The story is that there’s a young boy with his mother and brother in line to go to the gas chamber. His mother saves his life by telling the SS officer that her son can sing. At that time, he’s called Janko, later in the book he’s called John. So Janko survives the war by singing for the kommandant who murdered his family. Eventually he makes it to New York and becomes a psychiatrist and he falls in love with a ballerina who has her fairly traumatic history and unbeknownst to John, is in an abusive relationship with her choreographer.”

The idea for Toll’s story came from a lesser known tradition in Greek mythology that she discovered during her research. Instead of the more commonly known nine muses, this one had three: Song, Discipline, and Memory. Toll remarked, “…that was like being struck by lightning for me because I have a pretty strong music background, so I loved the idea of song, and I’m pretty obsessed with discipline…the importance of discipline and work in any art form… and memory is something that really struck a nerve in so many levels…memory is incredibly important for writers because it’s often the wellspring from where we get our ideas.” It’s these three ideas that help frame the novel.

Initially, Toll didn’t start off writing to make money right away. “…the thing is, I think this is so true for all writers, writers want to get published because it’s like a tree falling in the forest, otherwise you’re writing but you have nobody to read what you’re writing. It’s really a partnership. Writing is a partnership between writer and reader and I will admit to having years and years of pretty intense despair about not being able to get fiction published. So the reviews had a great psychological impact for me. I had the joy of sharing books that I love, but I also have to say, it was great to have a byline. It made me feel great, and it still does!”