Desire, Consequences, and the Art of Listening: Babette Fraser Hale on Narcissi

What happens when a man’s greatest gift is making women feel truly seen—even when being seen isn't the same as being safe?

In this episode, host Terry Shepherd sits down with author Babette Fraser Hale to discuss her interconnected novel in stories, Narcissi. Set across the sprawling Texas landscape during the pivotal early 1980s, the book follows Cole Burnett—a dangerously magnetic writer whose lanky Western charm, restless movement, and rare ability to listen draw women into an orbit fraught with unintended harm, self-love, and midlife vulnerability.

Babette opens up about:

• The Architecture of Narcissi: Why telling Cole’s trajectory through interconnected short stories allowed her to explore the perspective of the women in his wake.
• Listening as Seduction: Whether Cole’s attentive ear is sincere, manipulative, or a novelist's natural compulsion.
• The 1980s Backdrop: How a transitional era of sexual freedom, evolving feminism, and midlife reckonings shaped the characters' choices and relationships.
• Crafting Texas Dialogue & Landscape: Eavesdropping as a writer’s tool, overcoming early creative blocks, and how the vast Texas backroads mirror the freedom and escapes of "Slow Travel."
• The Core Takeaway: Why the book ultimately asks readers for tolerance and empathy toward deeply flawed, self-involved human beings.

About the Guest:

Babette Fraser Hale is a fiction writer, former journalist, and author of Narcissi and This Familiar Heart. To learn more about her work and pick up your copy of Narcissi, visit Winedale Books.

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