Brought to you by Penguin.

Hello and welcome to the Penguin podcast where we talk to writers about writing.

I'm Izzy Souti and today I'm going to be talking

to Maxine Mayfung Chung, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and writer who lectures on gender

and sexuality, trauma and attachment theory. Her 2020 novel The Eighth Girl was optioned for Netflix

by Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan,

and her first nonfiction book, What Women Want, is out now.

It's a deeply compassionate book which explores the inner lives and desires of seven women

Maxine has worked with as a therapist and which meticulously examines the question of what women want.

Maxine, it's great to have you on the Penguin podcast today.

Thanks, Izzy. It's great to be here.

Now, you tell the stories of these seven women with such precision and compassion.

I've just finished the book and I really felt like I knew each of them and you through reading it.

And there's so much

covered. And there's disordered eating, abuse, desire for a baby, infidelity on both the patient's

side and that of partners and parents, bereavement, dishonesty with themselves, others and with you,

which you cover as well, the relationship and the dynamic between you and each of them.

And you really followed them from the moment these women entered your life to the moment throughout

the journeys that you went on with them and then to the moment they left you and carried on

their journey. And they're all so different from each other. Was it hard to choose which women's

stories to tell? Because I imagine you, you know, you've encountered so many. It really was.

There was actually 17 in total that we had to edit down and that was kind of heartbreaking in

...