Author’s Note

This book is an homage to a number of my best-loved books. A lot of my names, for example, come directly or indirectly from Daphne duMaurier’s Rebecca, one of the classic “orphan comes to a house of mystery” texts. DuMaurier’s strange, scary housekeeper is named Mrs. Danvers; my housekeeper and butler are Mr. and Mrs. Vanders. The dog in Rebecca is named Jasper; mine is too. An important boat in Rebecca is named Je Reviens, French for “I return"; my house is named Tu Reviens, French for “you return.” I also gave Ivy and Patrick the last name “Yellan,” which is the last name of the heroine of another wonderful duMaurier novel, Jamaica Inn.

In the first part of Jane, Unlimited, I describe a writing desk Jane finds in her morning room. This is essentially the writing desk from Rebecca’s morning room, right down to the labels Jane finds on the docketed drawers. There are other connections, deliberate and otherwise, but I’ll let you find them yourself. I’ve always considered Rebecca to be one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read. Writers breathe in books, mix them up with whatever else we’ve got going on in there, then breathe out.

I also had that other great “orphan comes to a house of mystery” text in mind, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë—the most obvious reference being Jane’s name, though Jane is really named after my childhood cat! I suppose Charlotte Thrash’s name is also a partial reference to Brontë, though I actually named my Charlotte after Charlotte Perkins Gilman, because of her creepy novella “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Also, my house has a “madwoman” in the attic, so to speak. As in Jane Eyre, my madwoman is the first wife of the man of the house. In my case, though, she’s not actually mad, she’s just a theoretical physicist.

Edith Wharton’s beautiful but depressing The House of Mirth also plays a part in this book. The House of Mirth stars a poor orphaned woman named Lily Bart who lives in turn-of-the-century New York, uses her looks to cling to her place in high society, and . . . well, as Jane remarks to Lucy St. George, there’s not much mirth. I suppose it was impossible for me to write about wealthy Kiran inviting her poor friend to her fancy house without thinking of Lily Bart and the age of lady companions.

I pulled the initial wording and dialogue of Jane’s expotition to the North Pole directly from “Chapter VIII: In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole” in Winnie-the-Pooh. Sorry, Pooh-Bear. Despite appearances, I really do love you and you have always been my #1 go-to comfort read. I guess that’s why my mind reached for you when I asked myself, “What would be horrifying?”

Of course, it isn’t just books that inspire books. Constantin Brâncuşi’s sculpture Fish is real. Brâncuşi, a Romanian artist and one of the pioneers of modernism, created several fish sculptures. The version in my story actually lives at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When I e-mailed the restoration department to ask them how the fish was attached to its pedestal and whether removing it would damage the sculpture, they e-mailed back that they weren’t going to answer that question. Probably a wise policy. Writers ask a lot of weirdly specific questions. It’s because we are up to no good.

Johannes Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid is also real. In 1974, this painting was stolen from a private house in Ireland by members of the IRA, then recovered soon after. In 1984 it was stolen again by a Dublin gangster, and this time it wasn’t recovered until 1993. After its recovery, a Danish conservator named Jørgen Wadum, anxiously examining it for damage, noticed a pinprick in the lady’s eye, which led to the discovery that Vermeer attached a string to the canvas to work out his perspective. The painting is now in the National Gallery of Ireland. I have two books to thank for my art theft knowledge: Museum of the Missing by Simon Houpt and The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart.

Speaking of art theft . . . I’ve essentially lifted Tu Reviens’s Venetian courtyard from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, especially the nasturtiums, which are famously displayed in the courtyard every spring. It’s not identical—the courtyard at the Gardner does not have interior steps that climb all the way to the top, for example. But it’s pretty similar, and Gardner visitors probably recognize it (especially if they’ve seen the nasturtiums). The Gardner has a greenhouse where all the courtyard flowers are cultivated; similarly, Tu Reviens has the winter garden where its flowers are cultivated. The Rembrandt self-portrait that lives in Tu Reviens actually lives at the Gardner (Self-portrait, Aged 23). And in 1990, the largest art heist in history took place at the Gardner; thieves stole thirteen works of art valued at $500 million, including Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and Vermeer’s The Concert. The works have never been recovered and no arrests have ever been made. When you visit the museum today, the frames of the stolen pictures hang empty on the walls. It’s heartbreaking.

I used these two books to ensure that Aunt Magnolia was photographing realistic things in the correct locations: Ocean Soul by Brian Skerry and Oceanic Wilderness by Roger Steene. Both books are full of gorgeous underwater photography. Skerry has a photo of a southern right whale and a diver facing each other on the ocean floor that directly inspired Jane’s underwater photo of Aunt Magnolia touching the nose of a southern right whale. I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t remember whether I ever saw a photo somewhere of a yellow goby peeking out of the mouth of a big gray fish, or made that up. I’ve been scrambling to find this image, so that I can credit it to the correct photographer, but so far I’ve got nothing. In Ocean Soul, Brian Skerry has a stunning photo of a yellow goby peeking out of the opening of a soda can, and a stunning photo of a bluefin tuna opening its mouth to capture a smaller fish. Maybe I combined the two in my imagination?

British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I play around with this quote in some of my dialogue, but never cite Clarke—so I’m doing so here.

A lot of research goes into the writing of fiction. Two sources I’ve not yet mentioned are Bioterrorism: Guidelines for Medical and Public Health Management, edited by Donald A. Henderson, Thomas V. Inglesby, and Tara O’Toole; and the article “Parallel Universes,” by Max Tegmark, in the May 2003 issue of Scientific American.