Robinne Lee, author of The Idea of You, positions herself in front of a wall of Vincent van Gogh paintings at the Musée d’Orsay. There’s a heat wave in Paris, so we’ve sought refuge from the oppressive humidity in the museum’s galleries. Van Gogh. Not one of her favorites, she declares — she’s a woman with strong opinions — but he does have some personal significance to Lee. “I am fascinated by artists who are a little crazy. Like, why are crazy people drawn to do art? Or does making art make you crazy?” she asks.
The Idea of You was born in a fit of madness, she explains, somewhat dramatically, as we regard a somber self-portrait of the painter. Once she had the idea for a steamy affair between a sexy, confident, divorced 39-year-old mom named Solène and a 20-year-old Harry Styles–esque British pop star named Hayes, she had to tell it as quickly as possible. “It was obsessive. I was walking around having conversations with them in my head,” she says. “I wondered if I was hearing voices or if it was schizophrenia. I thought maybe I’d see a therapist, but then I was afraid if I did see a therapist, I would lose the voices.” She accepted it as her writing process and, for 15 months, wrote around the clock. She cried every night she was writing the ending, she recalls, devastated she wouldn’t have these characters for company 24 hours a day anymore.
To her, it wasn’t just a love story. The book became a vessel for all the questions she was asking herself about her identity as a mother and a woman, a confrontation of her own sexuality.
