Dear Readers,
The writing of The Matchbox Girl began with a simple question: who was the real Dr Asperger? Back in 2017, when I first began to read about Dr Asperger, it was clear that his work at the Vienna Children’s Hospital in the 1930s and 40s had been key to the first autism diagnosis. In the early years of this century, he had been hailed as the ‘father of neurodiversity.’ But in Vienna rumours persisted that he was also a Nazi collaborator.
Samuel Beckett tells us that, ‘Fiction begins with the failures of history’. The more I read about Dr Asperger, the more I was reminded just how fragmentary and unstable the past can be. Tides of new research kept sweeping in and washing my fictional sandcastles away. Until a day in 2019 when it was conclusively established that the worst suspicions about Dr Asperger were true. Did I want to write a novel about a man who is now widely reviled?
The decision was difficult but I have always agreed with Thomas Hardy that, ‘if way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.’ Also, on a more prosaic level, I had become fascinated not so much by Dr Asperger himself but by his colleagues at the Vienna Children’s Hospital. I wanted to return them to their rightful place in history and to use my work of fiction to write / right some historic wrongs.
In particular, I wanted to resurrect Sister Viktorine and Anni Weiss, two women whose lives have been entirely forgotten but whose work was key to the autism diagnosis. I also wanted the Jewish community to receive proper recognition – Anni Weiss and Georg Frankl were driven from Vienna and their work has never been fully acknowledged. Last, but certainly not least, I wanted to celebrate Josef Feldner and his brilliantly reckless approach to opposing the Nazis.
Then lockdown hit and I could no longer travel to Vienna. Help arrived in the form of a grant from The Society of Authors, which meant that I could pay for a researcher at the University of Vienna to help me. Happily, he turned out to share my tendency to become infected by ‘research fever’. His tireless searching led to information about Sister Viktorine which shocked both of us. Sandcastles had to be rebuilt again.
Eventually I came to the moment when I thought I had understood the story I wanted to tell – but still I couldn’t find the way to tell it. I did not want to write a book laden with hand wringing gloom. My feeling is that the good novelist discusses deep issues but does so with a lightness of touch. But how could I achieve that? I needed a character who could help me bring alive the surreal experience of living in Vienna during the rise of fascism.
I needed to find the back door into my story. But where and how? Just as was struggling with that question, I found a reference to the fact that Dr Asperger treated a child patient who wanted to collect one thousand matchbox covers. There was my back door – and Adelheid Brunner was born. Once she started talking, I could not shut her up. Outwardly silent but inwardly mouthy, she turned out to be both hyper-knowledgeable and dangerously unaware.
Her unusual and unstable voice introduced a strange tonal dissonance into the narrative. This felt risky but also right. I had always wanted my book to include some echo of those absurdist elements which are often so important to the literature of Central Europe. Adelheid was the way to make that happen. She also enabled me to lay aside hindsight and write about the 1930s as though I had no idea what would happen next.
As I continued to write, the world around me was changing at terrifying speed. What had once seemed to be dry and dusty history became more relevant with each passing day. Fascism was on the rise again. Also, the questions which Dr Asperger had asked about the boundary between disease and difference, and about the possible downsides of diagnosis, were suddenly part of mainstream discourse once again.
In a polarised world, the novel serves as a bulwark against simplistic certainties and hasty judgements. If current events are teaching us anything, it might be that we should perhaps be a little more forgiving towards the failures of past generations. Literature asks us to consider how the darkness on the page might also exist within our own hearts. I hope that you enjoy this book – and that it leaves you feeling deeply uncomfortable.
With many thanks and best wishes,
Alice Jolly
