In 'Anima Rising,' Gustav Klimt encounters a young woman under strange circumstances
07:50 Share

Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today's book, Anima Rising by Christopher Moore, is a historical fiction novel based on Gustav Klimt. Now, I'll be honest, before listening to today's interview, I'd never heard of Gustav Klimt. He was apparently a famous Austrian painter. He has this piece called The Kiss, which is probably his most recognizable work. But the beauty of historical fiction is that when it's done right, you can't really tell

you don't really need to know who Gustav Klimt was ahead of time. As Moore tells NPR's Scott Simon, the history is just a shape, something to hang a story on. And in this book, he definitely hangs quite the story. That's ahead.

Support for NPR's Climate Solutions Week Rethinking Home comes from the Nature Conservancy. People from all walks of life depend on nature for the food they eat, the water they drink, and the air they breathe, for strengthening their communities, powering their livelihoods, and safeguarding their health. Nature is common ground for everyone, and uniting to protect nature can help solve today's challenges and create a thriving tomorrow for future generations. Discover why at nature.org slash NPR.

This message is from Synchrony Bank, who wants to remind you to stay flexible. Not the yoga-bending, circus-performing kind of flexible. Financially flexible, like with their high-yield savings account. Stay flexible at synchrony.com slash NPR. Member FDIC. A man walks home one night after an evening of debauchery in 1911, Vienna. Looks down from the Rossauer Bridge and spies the figure of a woman against the concrete stairs at the water's edge.

She is nude. She is still. She is also beautiful, framed by tendrils of yellow hair. Maybe it would be more conscientious to call police or a doctor, but the man who was found, the woman is Gustav Klimt, the most acclaimed painter in Vienna. And in Christopher Moore's new novel, Animal Rising, the artist just takes out his sketchbook. Christopher Moore, the best-selling novelist, joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me.

He does do a little bit more than that eventually, but why is his first reaction to Sketch Her? Well, because she resembles so many of the paintings that he's done of women sort of floating ethereally in a dream very often. And it's so distinct for him that he can't resist actually trying to record what he's seeing in real life for the first time. He brings the young woman back to his studio and discovers that, of course, he's

She is not dead, but she is also not quite of this world, is she? No. When he first finds her, she's sort of covered with these fine white scars, and her skin is almost a lavender color, he assumes from the cold. But in an hour or so, that goes away. But when she regains consciousness, she doesn't have any memory of who she is. At first, she can't speak. She's very feral.

And we will find out in the course of the book that she is something quite not of this world. But at that point, Gustav Klimt is just sort of confused and wants to figure out how to deal with this young woman and the strange circumstances he found her under. And waiting for him outside of his studio is a woman that I think a lot of us might find to be the most compelling character in the novel, and that's Wally.

Right. Wally Knutsel, one of Klimt's models, based on a real person, obviously. I don't know Wally's personality other than what you read and see in photographs. But Wally is waiting for him because she's been evicted and has no place to go. And Klimt's studio was a freestanding house with a garden. And she's been on his doorstep all night waiting for him, hoping she can get some work. Women model for Gustav Klimt. Are they just objects to him?

Obviously, I've fictionalized him, but what we don't know about him is how he thought about many things. He did not write about his art. He didn't talk about his art. And when questioned about it, he said, I am not interested in talking about my art or explaining it. What I am interested in is people and specifically women. And he drew and painted almost exclusively female figures and had very close relationships socially with some women, particularly

One of the things that was a shock to me when I was researching the book was that every book I read about Gustav Klimt said that it was understood that if you posed for the master, you shared his bed. And so his relationship with women was mysterious, but close, I guess? Close is one way of putting it, but yes. And he gives the young woman the name of his most highly regarded painting, doesn't he?

Right. The mysterious woman from the river he calls Judith. And we'll find out later why he does that. But, you know, probably one of his most compelling paintings is Judith and Holofernes, the Assyrian general and the biblical hero Judith, who saves her village by going to seduce the general and then ends up beheading him. Vienna had so many famous names during that time.

Klimt seeks out a lot of the very famed names in Vienna, doing groundbreaking work in Vienna at that time to try and discover what's going on in this young woman's life, doesn't he? Freud, Jung. Right, exactly. Since the young woman can't remember, since Judith can't remember who she is or where she came from, he goes to Freud, who...

haunts the same coffee shops that he does as they did in real life. And he asks him, can you regress her? Can you help her? And Freud says, well, I haven't used hypnosis for many years, but I'll try it.

The story that ultimately unfolds is, I don't know if I can begin to recreate it, but maybe you at least want to give us a hint. Well, I don't think it's a secret because it happens in the early chapters. But Judith, it turns out, is over 100 years old. And her story begins on a ship mired in the ice in 1799. And...

She's in a box being pulled by a lone man on the ice with one sled dog. And she's in a box frozen basically in 1799 when Captain Watson on the ship Prometheus looks out on the ice and sees these figures and pulls them aboard to help them and then eventually finds Judith in this box. And we have to figure out how this woman who appears to be 19 or 20 years old is over 100 years old and dead.

has ended up in the Danube in 1911. There's a failed art student who makes a brief appearance, seen in a cafe, as I recall. Right. He had to. There's somebody who didn't get into the Vienna Academy of Fine Art, a young fellow named Adolf Hitler. The social circumstances of Vienna at the time is that there were a lot of young, white, German men who were disenfranchised, largely by Germans.

mechanization and they couldn't make a living and they lived in poor houses for men and the mayor of vienna at the time a fellow named frank luger blamed the wealthy jewish businessmen and bankers that were part of the the viennese society for everything wrong and uh young adolf hitler picked up on that as as well as many of the other young disenfranchised men and of course that

out to be something quite, quite destructive as time goes on. As a novelist, what care do you take to when you play with history? Or is the point to play with history? Oh,

I use history as a setting and I approach it more in what's cool, what's interesting, what did you not know, rather than to try and, as a historian, might be pointillistic in detail about it. So I try to really use it as just a shape to hang a story on and work within it. Christopher Moore's new novel, Animal Rising, Klimt, Freud, and Jung meet the Bride of Frankenstein. Boy, that's a cast.

Thanks so much. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks a lot, Scott. I appreciate it. This message comes from Thrive Market. The food industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, but not everything on the shelf is made with your health in mind.

At Thrive Market, they go beyond the standards, curating the highest quality products for you and your family while focusing on organic first and restricting more than 1,000 harmful ingredients. All shipped to your door. Shop at a grocery store that actually cares for your health at thrivemarket.com slash podcast for 30% off your first order plus a $60 free gift.

Support for NPR and the following message come from Rosetta Stone, the perfect app to achieve your language learning goals no matter how busy your schedule gets. It's designed to maximize study time with immersive 10-minute lessons and audio practice for your commute. Plus, tailor your learning plan for specific objectives like travel. Get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off and unlimited access to 25 language courses. Learn more at rosettastone.com slash NPR.