This week, bestselling author Megan Nolan joins us to discuss her latest book, Ordinary Human Failings, which explores a family who become tabloid scapegoats after a toddler goes missing from a London estate.
We talk about the exploitative tabloid culture and issues of addiction that lie at the heart of the book, as well as the true crime genre, what drives people to commit violence, and the problem with using trauma to excuse all bad behaviour.
Catch Love Lives on Independent TV and YouTube, as well as all major social and podcast platforms.
We talk about the exploitative tabloid culture and issues of addiction that lie at the heart of the book, as well as the true crime genre, what drives people to commit violence, and the problem with using trauma to excuse all bad behaviour.
Catch Love Lives on Independent TV and YouTube, as well as all major social and podcast platforms.
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00:00 - Yeah, the last like bad date I went on,
00:02 I just immediately wrote a short story about it
00:04 and then sold that for money.
00:05 So I was like, all right,
00:06 maybe I'll just do that every time.
00:07 (upbeat music)
00:09 - Hello and welcome to Love Lives,
00:15 a podcast from The Independent
00:16 where I, Olivia Petter, will be speaking to different guests
00:19 about the loves of their lives.
00:21 Today, I am so excited to be joined
00:23 by one of my favorite writers, the brilliant Megan Nolan.
00:26 Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation,
00:28 was published to widespread critical acclaim.
00:31 Now she's back with an excellent new novel,
00:33 Ordinary Human Failings,
00:35 and I am so excited to talk to her all about it
00:38 as well as hearing about the loves of her life.
00:40 So, welcome Megan, how are you?
00:41 - Thank you, I'm very well, thanks.
00:42 Thanks for having me.
00:43 - Thanks so much for coming.
00:44 I'm honestly, like I said, I'm such a huge fan of your work
00:47 and it was such a treat to read such a different book
00:51 from you after absolutely falling in love with your first,
00:54 but it's still equally as compelling
00:55 and just completely different and so absorbing.
00:58 So could you start us off by just describing
01:01 what Ordinary Human Failings is about?
01:03 - So, the present of the novel is 1990 in London
01:07 and there's a child who's found dead on a cancel estate
01:11 and there's a reporter who's following this story
01:13 is the sort of the top line where you enter the book.
01:16 And then there's an Irish family who are immigrants
01:19 who've arrived in England about 10 years before this.
01:23 The child of whom is suspected of having something to do
01:27 with this crime.
01:29 And then the tabloid reporter is following the story
01:33 and then kind of goes back into the three family members
01:36 lives in Ireland through previous decades,
01:39 which is sort of an attempt to give wider context
01:42 to the troubles in the family that exist in the present
01:44 and sort of how they've come to this point.
01:47 And yeah, I suppose the tabloid journalist
01:49 is sort of the center point
01:52 that they're sort of brought together by.
01:54 - Yeah, he's a great character and you can really,
01:56 there are so many people just reading in my mind
01:58 obviously as a journalist,
01:59 like knowing so many people that he's like a proper hack
02:02 in every single way.
02:03 And I know that the plot from this book
02:06 came from a single line in a book
02:08 that you were reading about a serial killer.
02:10 Tell us about that and how that kind of inspired the story.
02:14 - I've been reading as a Scottish,
02:16 he writes novels as well,
02:17 but he writes an amazing non-fiction called "Gordon Burn".
02:21 And he wrote this book called
02:23 "Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son",
02:25 which is about Peter Sutcliffe,
02:26 the Yorkshire Ripper.
02:28 It's really incredible book.
02:29 Like, I don't know, he's written,
02:31 I read quite a lot of true crime,
02:34 quite a lot of it obviously is,
02:36 even if it's compelling, it's quite trashy
02:38 or like not substantial,
02:40 whereas "Gordon Burn's" true crime
02:42 is like really substantial
02:44 and he goes and spends his time in these places.
02:46 And anyway, so yeah, it's a really brilliant book
02:49 and there's quite a throwaway line in it.
02:52 He doesn't go into the details of what happened,
02:54 but he mentions at one point that a journalist,
02:58 or sorry, rather a newspaper,
02:59 I don't know whether it was like a team of journalists
03:02 or a single journalist,
03:04 had approached family members of Peter Sutcliffe's,
03:07 who would have been by and large
03:09 quite working class alcoholic people,
03:11 and approached them and basically offered them a situation
03:16 in exchange for information from them,
03:18 which was that they would be put up in a hotel
03:21 and kind of given free reign in terms of alcohol,
03:24 given some pocket money in exchange,
03:27 they agreed to be kind of sequestered,
03:29 so they're not allowed to give any info to other journalists
03:33 and you just mentioned that that was a setup
03:36 and I don't know how long it went on in reality
03:38 or anything like that,
03:39 but it was just a very striking image, this hotel.
03:42 And so that was the kind of basis
03:44 of "Ordinary Human Failings"
03:45 was that was the kind of first single image
03:48 was a hotel with this family being kept.
03:51 And yeah, again, I don't know in reality
03:53 how long that situation lasted.
03:55 And obviously in my book,
03:57 that contemporary part is only actually,
03:59 I think three days or something,
04:00 but that kind of pressure cooker atmosphere of the hotel
04:03 and them all being cooped up was very striking to me.
04:06 So I kind of took that and ran with it.
04:07 - It's a really interesting concept.
04:09 It's so unique and it's interesting what you said,
04:11 how in the book it was sort of just glazed over
04:13 as like an insignificant detail,
04:14 but then when, of course, when you unpack it,
04:16 there's so much that could happen within that context.
04:19 And it's interesting what you said about true crime as well,
04:22 'cause I'm not into true crime whatsoever.
04:25 Like I know I have friends who are obsessed with it
04:27 and it's all they read, it's all they watch,
04:30 and all they wanna do is listen to murderer stories
04:33 and all that kind of thing.
04:34 But what you've done with this novel is,
04:37 as the title suggests,
04:38 it's a story about the human condition,
04:40 but it's just within the framework
04:42 of this kind of true crime story.
04:44 And was that kind of also an intentional thing for you?
04:47 Like you didn't wanna kind of,
04:49 I guess, stick to the typical version of the genre
04:53 and I guess the more mainstream version
04:56 that we're so used to digesting.
04:58 - Yeah, absolutely.
04:59 Because yeah, I've always,
05:00 like I remember being 14 or something
05:03 and getting my first Ted Bundy book.
05:05 And like, it's not my main thing
05:07 that I enjoy reading at all,
05:08 but it's definitely something that I've read
05:10 fairly consistently over the years.
05:11 So I'm pretty familiar with both true crime and fiction.
05:14 And yeah, obviously the older I got
05:17 and the more interested in journalism,
05:19 I became the more complex that whole thing
05:23 began to seem to me.
05:25 And then I think it was probably in 2017,
05:27 I started writing a column for the New Statesman
05:29 and my first ever column for them
05:31 was about this book that I'd read
05:33 called "The Sleep of Reason",
05:34 a nonfiction book about the James Bolger trial
05:38 and media response afterwards.
05:40 And that was sort of a big shock to read.
05:44 I hadn't, 'cause I'm Irish,
05:45 I hadn't been as familiar as probably a lot of people
05:47 just kind of culturally would be here with that case.
05:50 And so all of the media response
05:52 was actually really shocking to me
05:55 and that they were named at all.
05:56 And it's a really brilliant, subtle book
05:58 about all those nuances that happened after the fact.
06:01 And then also there was this Channel 4,
06:04 I think it was probably into that as an age
06:07 or something like that.
06:08 There was a program called Boy A,
06:09 which was adapted from a play
06:10 by an Irish playwright called Marco Rowe.
06:12 And that was a kind of fictionalized imagining
06:15 of it wasn't actually the James Bolger case,
06:18 but it was an imagining of a case similar to that
06:21 of the perpetrator once they're being released as an adult.
06:26 So there's a couple of things like that
06:27 that I over the years had absorbed
06:29 and kind of become interested
06:31 in how much more complex these things are
06:33 than you tend to see them in headlines.
06:35 And so, yeah, I think that a couple of key
06:39 kind of things like that came up over the years.
06:41 And then also I had,
06:42 I was never a staffer in a newspaper,
06:44 but I spent time usually just like covering a desk
06:47 for a couple of weeks at a time,
06:49 but it meant that I did spend time
06:50 in quite a lot of different newspapers.
06:52 And that was intriguing.
06:55 And like, for instance, like did training days with,
07:00 I never worked for a tabloid,
07:02 but I did training days with people
07:04 who were working for tabloids
07:05 when I was in a certain building.
07:07 And I remember being very struck
07:08 by like what we're talking about, Tom.
07:11 Like I met this kid, you know, he really was a kid.
07:13 He was like 20 on a placement or whatever.
07:15 And he's like so green and enthusiastic and really sweet.
07:19 And I was just going like,
07:20 "Oh, I hope he's not gonna go bad."
07:23 - I know, 'cause it is a weird mentality, isn't it?
07:26 To like, you know, hear about the murder of a child
07:29 and be thrilled by it.
07:31 - Yeah, and be really excited.
07:32 - Yeah, because your first thought is,
07:34 "Oh my God, I've got a scoop."
07:35 And it's like, that's a very weird psychology to explore.
07:38 - Totally, yeah.
07:39 - I know that you said in an interview
07:41 that you kind of wanted to explore
07:43 how ordinary people can become capable
07:45 of doing extraordinary things in this book,
07:48 which is such an interesting phrase,
07:50 because I think within this context,
07:52 'cause normally we apply that to huge success
07:54 and positive outcomes and, you know,
07:58 kind of rags to riches stories, I guess.
08:00 But within the framework of the book,
08:03 it's about, you know, that extraordinary thing
08:06 is an extraordinary act of violence.
08:08 And what was it that led you to kind of want to,
08:12 I guess, explore that?
08:14 And how did you also go about, I guess,
08:18 getting into the mindset of that?
08:19 Because that's also a very dark place to go to.
08:23 - Having read the book,
08:24 we'll know there's like a close third
08:26 on three of the family members
08:27 where you really get to see things from their perspective,
08:30 from Carmel and Richie and John's perspectives.
08:33 And, you know, initially I was like,
08:34 "Should I try and do that with the child as well?"
08:37 But it just didn't feel right.
08:39 And I think it's really, really hard to pull off
08:42 portraying a child's perspective in fiction.
08:44 Like, I just think it can go so badly wrong
08:46 if you get it even a little bit like sentimental
08:48 or like corny or whatever.
08:50 So I knew I didn't want to go really dark
08:54 and like actually be in the moment with her
08:55 when this act of violence is happening.
08:57 It just felt like crude or something.
08:59 And also because a lot of the book is about
09:01 the unknowability of these moments that she has
09:03 in that time with the other child.
09:05 You know, there's a lot of commonality
09:09 between most children who are capable
09:11 of committing violent acts.
09:13 There's like quite a lot of crossover
09:15 in how their childhoods began.
09:17 And I'd read, there's a really great couple of books
09:19 by a writer called Jita Srini,
09:21 who again was a very good nonfiction writer about,
09:24 there's a girl who in the '60s was a child,
09:28 she was a child who killed two kids called Mary Bell.
09:31 And Jita Srini covered that situation
09:34 when it was happening, but then also when she was an adult.
09:37 And it's really striking how much you,
09:40 how repetitive the childhood circumstances are
09:43 with children who do these things.
09:45 And so I read quite a lot about,
09:48 not just children who've killed,
09:49 but about children who behave in, you know,
09:52 aggressive confrontational ways.
09:54 And so, yeah, I spent a couple of months
09:56 reading tabloid journalist memoirs
09:59 and then reading about the kind of psychology
10:02 behind how children can do this.
10:05 So yeah, there was, and you don't wanna get too prescriptive
10:09 or like prosaic about that and say,
10:11 okay, this has to happen for a child to do this.
10:13 Obviously it differs in every situation,
10:16 but there are, you know, fairly basic core things
10:20 that a child needs that a lot of children don't get,
10:24 unfortunately.
10:25 And then some of those children
10:27 for a variety of circumstances tend to be violent.
10:30 And so yeah, I was kind of interested in trying to,
10:33 you know, without condemning the mother,
10:36 show how like some of the early childhoods,
10:39 not even abuse, but just neglect or benign neglect almost,
10:43 like, you know, removal from the situation
10:46 can contribute to the ability to hurt others.
10:48 - Yeah.
10:49 And that comes across really well.
10:50 'Cause like you said, you don't blame the mother
10:52 and you don't blame any of the family members.
10:54 And I think that's because you see everything
10:56 from their perspective as well.
10:57 But this goes back to another question
11:01 that I wanted to ask you about something that you said
11:03 about how we're very quick to explain away bad behavior
11:07 with one reason or one kind of moment
11:10 from someone's childhood or someone's past.
11:12 And I think it's not just in terms of bad behavior
11:16 in terms of crimes, but also just bad behavior
11:19 within romantic relationships.
11:20 I think that is so common now
11:23 when we talk about attachment theory
11:25 and, you know, all of this like so-called therapy speak
11:28 that we're very quick to use
11:30 when we talk about contemporary relationships.
11:32 And it's like, oh, he's a narcissist
11:33 and he's emotionally abusive.
11:35 They're gaslighting me.
11:36 And these terms are very useful when used correctly.
11:39 But I think there's this kind of tick-tock-ification
11:42 of these terms where they're being so loosely applied
11:46 and we're just so quick to jump to something.
11:49 'Cause I think it's really validating
11:50 to feel like we have a singular explanation
11:53 when there's something that we can't make sense of
11:56 within the context of a romantic relationship.
11:57 Do you think that that is kind of similar
12:01 to what you set out to do with this book
12:04 in terms of trying not to, I guess,
12:08 have that kind of reductive approach?
12:10 And do you agree that that is something
12:12 that we're doing in romantic relationships?
12:14 And how do we move away from that?
12:16 'Cause I don't think it's that helpful.
12:18 - No, I totally agree, yeah.
12:20 And I've been like so guilty of that in the past.
12:23 And I feel like there's, you know,
12:25 obviously so much has changed
12:26 in how we talk about relationships
12:27 in the last five years even.
12:29 And I think there was a point
12:31 in this weird culture war era,
12:34 like maybe five or six years ago,
12:35 where I was a lot more guilty of that sort of reductive
12:40 way of speaking. - Oh God, me too, me too.
12:41 It's very seductive not to get caught into that.
12:43 - And I feel like, yeah,
12:44 I feel like things have moved on in the culture a bit,
12:46 or are starting to move on right now anyway.
12:49 And yeah, I don't know,
12:50 it's very easy to dehumanize people by speaking that way.
12:54 - Yeah, definitely with the book,
12:56 'cause I think it would be,
12:58 so I think there was an article in the New Yorker
13:00 not that long ago about like trauma narratives,
13:02 about like criticizing in fiction mostly,
13:05 but also I think in just in writing
13:07 about like taking one trauma
13:09 and using it to explain everything a person experiences.
13:12 And I think it would have been,
13:15 I would have hated to just go,
13:18 okay, Lucy, the child had a bad childhood,
13:20 that's why she did X, Y, Z,
13:21 which is why I wanted the whole family story.
13:25 And also then, yeah, as we said a moment ago,
13:28 to not go, Lucy's mom was evil
13:31 and that's why she's evil, you know?
13:33 And that there's obviously so much cruelty in a way,
13:38 but a lot of it is like,
13:40 I don't know if you call it unintentional
13:42 in terms of the family's background,
13:43 but a lot of pain,
13:45 which has just been kind of wrapped in silence for them all
13:48 and ends up hurting a lot of people
13:50 without active cruelty.
13:52 And yeah, so I think it was important
13:54 to not have like one explaining factor, as you say.
13:58 And I think that would be,
14:00 also it's dangerous to explain anyone's like bad
14:04 or troubling behavior because yeah,
14:08 that it's, well, you know,
14:09 A, it's kind of an ability to excuse it in a way
14:12 or for the person to excuse it.
14:13 And also, yeah, it's just a bit dehumanizing
14:17 'cause it's, I don't know, people are so complex.
14:20 Like every single person is so, has so much.
14:23 And like to a degree, it's quite scary
14:25 if you actually think about it.
14:26 And like, that's why we're not really,
14:28 like why the internet isn't actually,
14:30 like our brains are not ready for it
14:32 because it's impossible to like really grasp
14:34 how like subtle and complex every single person is.
14:38 And if you're revealed to that many people,
14:39 it's sort of impossible.
14:41 - Yeah, well, I was about to say like,
14:42 that is all I agree with you,
14:44 but you can't put that in like a 20 second TikTok video
14:47 that people are gonna share with their friends.
14:49 Let's talk about "Acts of Desperation."
14:51 For those who haven't read your first novel,
14:54 can you introduce it to us?
14:55 - So "Acts of Desperation" is a novel
14:57 that came out in 2021, which is about,
15:01 it's a story told in the first person
15:03 by an unnamed narrator who's a young woman in Dublin,
15:05 mostly in Dublin, kind of flits a little bit
15:07 between locations then.
15:09 And she, when we come to know her,
15:12 she's I think 22 at the beginning
15:13 and she's very much adrift in her life.
15:16 She's dropped out of university,
15:17 working kind of menial jobs,
15:18 doesn't really have any center to her life.
15:21 She's drinking a lot, going out a lot,
15:24 sort of flailing around her life
15:26 and looking for some meaning.
15:29 And she finds it in this relationship.
15:31 She falls sort of obsessively in love
15:33 with this man called Ciarán,
15:35 who she meets at a gallery opening
15:36 and then becomes embroiled in this obsessive relationship
15:41 where she is very much the desire,
15:45 the one pursuing him and he's interested,
15:49 but very cold and won't give her any of the validation
15:53 and kind of reciprocity, that's the word, right?
15:57 That she's seeking.
15:58 This kind of goes on like that for a while.
16:00 And then there's a kind of shift in dynamics
16:03 in the book then about maybe halfway through
16:05 where some things change and the dynamic is,
16:08 if not flipped, is then gradually changed
16:10 in a way that I think begins to reveal to her
16:14 that this romantic love that she sort of based
16:16 her entire worth and point of life around
16:20 is not going to be the thing that saves her
16:21 and that this man is not going to be the thing
16:24 that gives her meaning.
16:25 - Yeah, I mean, it's a really like astonishing book to read.
16:28 And I'm actually, I'm so pleased that something like that
16:31 has been so well-received and has been so widely read
16:35 because I think it's not the first thing you think of
16:38 when you think of a sort of commercially successful book,
16:41 'cause it's a story about a woman in an abusive relationship
16:45 and I'm really pleased that that story
16:47 has been so widely kind of shared.
16:49 Were you surprised at its success?
16:51 - Yeah, I was hugely surprised, yeah.
16:53 'Cause I guess my background was,
16:58 I obviously have a journalistic background,
17:00 but my creative work was kind of separate from that
17:02 and was always in fairly niche literary journals.
17:06 A lot of the time I was doing like performances
17:08 in art contexts and so always in,
17:12 like I was happy to do those things,
17:14 but all of which is to say that when I,
17:16 we were trying to sell the book,
17:17 I kind of thought to myself, okay, great,
17:20 we'll get it with like a really small press
17:21 or like even an art gallery,
17:22 we might produce like a text or something like that.
17:25 So I was not expecting it to be sold in a commercial way.
17:29 So yeah, it was completely a shock to me.
17:31 - Yeah, and because it was so successful,
17:33 I mean, you were interviewed loads about it
17:35 and what I find so interesting,
17:38 we know that it's no secret that,
17:39 female novelists are continually asked
17:41 if their work is autobiographical
17:43 because people don't seem to understand
17:44 that women have an imagination.
17:46 But I know one thing that you said that was interesting
17:49 is that the narrator's feelings and emotions
17:52 were partially based on you,
17:53 but the events in the book are fictional,
17:55 which I think is a very common experience
17:57 for a lot of debut novelists.
17:59 But I wonder what it was like for you
18:02 talking about the book in that framework
18:05 and being asked how much of it
18:08 was based on your own experiences,
18:10 because it's a very dark book.
18:12 And I think what people maybe don't realize
18:14 what they are essentially asking you
18:16 by asking you that question is,
18:17 have you been in an abusive relationship?
18:19 Which is a very messed up thing to ask someone.
18:22 So what did you make of that?
18:24 How much did that happen?
18:26 How did you handle that?
18:27 - Yeah, it's funny when,
18:28 because quite a lot of people kind of preempted it
18:32 by saying that they weren't going to do that,
18:34 but then sort of doing it anyway.
18:35 They're kind of like,
18:36 "So I bet you're getting a lot of that."
18:38 So yeah, I've always obviously been quite upfront about,
18:43 it would be insane if I was to try and conceal
18:45 that obviously the book is personal to me
18:48 and also the biographical details of the character
18:51 mirror mine very closely in terms of age
18:53 and where she lives and things like that.
18:56 And partially that was to do with me
18:58 not really feeling the confidence to write,
19:01 I don't mean this in a self-derogatory way,
19:03 but like a proper novel,
19:04 like as in I didn't have a background in writing fiction.
19:08 So I think it felt a bit safer to like base some logistics
19:12 on things that I felt authority over such as location.
19:15 And even like, again, with a new novel,
19:16 I think I'd find it really hard to set a novel
19:19 in a city I didn't once live in or spend time in,
19:21 things like that.
19:22 So that was partially why.
19:24 And then also just like,
19:25 I was interested in writing about these subjects
19:27 that I had experienced myself.
19:28 And you know, the events, while largely fictional,
19:31 of course there's like some things in the book
19:33 that actually happened to me or like,
19:35 and by that I don't even mean
19:37 like the really interesting stuff.
19:38 I mean, you know, like observations about people in Dublin
19:40 or whatever.
19:41 But then, yeah, when people would ask me about it,
19:44 I was like, there's no real satisfying way
19:46 to answer that question because literally,
19:48 unless I'd take you to the book and go,
19:49 that happened, that didn't happen.
19:51 There's no real way to answer it.
19:53 You know, I'm not going to break it down
19:55 to that extreme degree
19:56 because that just makes the book so boring as well.
19:58 - Yeah, but I just wonder where that question
20:00 even comes from.
20:01 Because is it a lack of understanding
20:03 about a novelist's process as a writer
20:07 and in terms of how they're able to fictionalise things
20:09 or whatever, or within the particular story of this book,
20:13 is it a lack of understanding around like female trauma
20:17 in a way that they feel like
20:20 that they can ask things like that?
20:21 'Cause I think it's true with lots of female novelists
20:25 when they write about difficult subjects
20:27 and then are kind of expected just to answer,
20:31 answer questions about it.
20:32 And another example is "My Dark Vanessa."
20:34 I don't know if you read that.
20:35 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:36 - And I remember the author of that book.
20:37 - Yes, that was awful, yeah.
20:38 - She had to issue a statement on her website saying,
20:40 please stop asking me whether the story is based on me
20:43 'cause it was a story about grooming.
20:44 - Yeah.
20:45 - It was, you know, it was very strange.
20:47 - That was awful, yeah.
20:48 - Yeah, and I found it really upsetting
20:49 that she felt that she had to write, do that statement.
20:52 - Yeah, and in a way it's like, well, you know,
20:53 I wrote a book to not have to say these things
20:58 or to like specify certain things
20:59 or use certain terms, you know?
21:02 Like a lot of the time also people want you to,
21:05 well, you know, again, like, yeah,
21:06 use specific terminology that's,
21:08 while it might be accurate,
21:10 like factually accurate to call something
21:12 that happened in the book X, Y, and Z,
21:14 like there's a reason why I wrote the book
21:15 rather than an article.
21:16 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:17 - And want to explore those things
21:18 in a less like determined way.
21:21 But yeah, it was mostly fine.
21:23 Like I would say more people than I expected to
21:24 were respectful of that.
21:26 And yeah, occasionally people were really blunt
21:29 about asking like, have you been sexually assaulted?
21:33 And like quite literally, like someone asked me that
21:36 while on like live on a recording.
21:39 And I was just like-
21:40 - Why do you think people aren't like-
21:42 - I don't know.
21:42 And she didn't seem to think she was being rude at all.
21:44 - That's what I mean.
21:45 Clearly she doesn't.
21:46 I thought she wouldn't ask you.
21:47 And I'm like, why is it that we live in a world
21:48 where people think they can ask you that?
21:50 Particularly live.
21:51 I mean, my God.
21:52 - Yeah.
21:53 - Oh, that sends shivers down my spine.
21:56 I said I wanted to ask you this
21:57 'cause I'm writing my own novel now.
21:59 And I'm like, oh God,
22:00 are people gonna expect me to talk about that?
22:02 Both of your books also explore alcoholism.
22:08 And I know that you've said that in a small community
22:11 where you grew up,
22:12 you kind of really saw the effects
22:13 of alcoholism and addiction.
22:15 What was it about that that made you want to put that
22:19 into your fiction?
22:20 Because I think also alcoholism is another subject
22:23 that is so widely misunderstood.
22:26 I think when we picture an alcoholic,
22:29 we picture someone waking up and downing a bottle of vodka
22:32 that is so far from the reality.
22:34 And that's a problem
22:35 because it stops people from recognizing
22:37 their own alcoholic tendencies, I think.
22:40 - Definitely.
22:40 - 'Cause they think that's so far removed.
22:42 So is that something that kind of made you want
22:44 to write about it and explore the more kind of nuanced
22:47 version of that?
22:48 - Yeah, I think it's really hard to...
22:51 I've often talked and written a lot about this,
22:54 that unless, if you're still drinking,
22:58 if you're currently drinking,
22:59 it's basically impossible to talk about having a problem
23:01 with alcohol.
23:02 People really need you to have become sober
23:05 to allow you to talk about it.
23:07 Which I understand because it's so uncomfortable.
23:10 But I do think is a really dangerous thing
23:13 that people feel that they have to be sober and dry
23:16 before they can even refer to the fact
23:20 that they struggle with these things sometimes.
23:22 And yeah, I felt like when I dropped out of college,
23:27 I had a really bad period of like...
23:28 And again, it wasn't waking up in the morning and drinking,
23:31 but just like going out every night
23:32 and because I didn't have any structure to my life then,
23:35 if you have a job or you go to school or whatever,
23:37 you kind of have a natural inbuilt limit.
23:40 And when I didn't have that structure,
23:43 I got quite scared by how easy it was
23:45 to get carried away with drinking.
23:47 And yeah, as well, if you're young,
23:49 it's like kind of feels like everyone's doing it,
23:52 even though they're not maybe doing it
23:53 to the same degree that you are,
23:54 it's kind of easy to cover it over.
23:56 So I have experienced of being really frightened by that
23:58 and like feeling like it might go really badly wrong
24:02 or you might not know where to stop.
24:06 And I still struggle with like periods
24:09 of not feeling completely in control of not just drinking,
24:12 but with like lots of things in my life
24:15 that I don't have a very good inbuilt stop button
24:18 with lots of things.
24:20 And like sometimes that's work and that's not a bad thing,
24:23 but sometimes it's things that are bad.
24:26 So yeah, I just have a lot of sympathy for and time
24:29 for people who suffer from reliance on substances.
24:32 And I think, yeah, like the character of Richie
24:36 in the new book, again, like starts with him
24:40 just being a bit lost in his life.
24:41 And I guess it's also easy to forget
24:45 that like the reason people start to drink
24:47 is because it is fun and like is a connector of people.
24:51 I kind of wanted to portray that a little bit with like him
24:55 before he kind of has this disastrous thing that happens
24:57 because of his drinking.
24:59 The night begins in a really nice, lovely way.
25:03 And then, for a lot of people that would have been fine
25:05 and they would have had that good time
25:06 and been able to stop at a certain point.
25:08 And then obviously a lot of people are not able to stop
25:10 at that certain point.
25:12 But yeah, it's something I care a lot about
25:14 and like feel very personally about.
25:16 And yeah, there's obviously people
25:19 that I've known in my life
25:19 who suffered really horrendously with that.
25:22 And yeah, I just would like people to have a little bit,
25:26 you know, I find it really gross
25:28 when you'll see quite a lot on Twitter
25:30 if someone's like, I don't know,
25:32 trying to insult another person
25:33 who they know to have a drinking problem
25:35 but they're very easy to like use it as an insult
25:37 and like really be like disgusted by people
25:40 who have these problems in a way that I find like really
25:43 anti the generally progressive like vibe
25:46 that they're trying to portray.
25:47 - People are very strange about drinking, I think.
25:50 They often, I think it's one of those things
25:52 that is very hard for people not to project
25:54 their own issues onto others with.
25:57 So like, you know, I think it's one of the reasons why
26:00 when someone, you know, goes out for the night
26:02 and doesn't wanna drink
26:03 because it makes them feel a certain way.
26:05 And they say, and you know, they're like,
26:06 oh, why aren't you drinking tonight?
26:07 And then it's a big deal.
26:09 - Totally.
26:09 - Because the other person is suddenly
26:11 made to feel like threatened and feels like,
26:13 oh, well, do you think like I'm an alcoholic?
26:15 - Yeah, yeah.
26:16 - It's a really weird thing.
26:17 (upbeat music)
26:20 Okay, so the first love you chose
26:28 is quite an obvious choice for a writer
26:29 but actually we haven't had this yet
26:31 from any of the authors we've had on the show.
26:33 So tell us why you've chosen reading fiction.
26:35 - So yeah, I think about my walk here that like,
26:38 I was, okay, so last night I was,
26:41 sometimes when I get into a stressy work mode,
26:44 which I kind of have been the last couple of weeks,
26:46 I can't concentrate on reading it very well at all
26:48 except for like the most functional
26:51 or, you know, usually like a magazine article.
26:53 But last night I read this book called "Big Swiss"
26:55 if you come across that.
26:56 It's really good.
26:57 But yeah, just like a really juicy novel
26:59 and like read almost all of it in the bath
27:01 in one sitting kind of thing.
27:03 And I was just thinking about like,
27:04 when I was a kid, I was quite nervous.
27:08 Not, I wasn't like quite antisocial, like I had friends,
27:10 but I was quite socially anxious
27:12 even when I was a really little kid
27:13 and like didn't know how to behave in certain situations.
27:16 And I just, yeah, I just found like being in the world
27:18 quite tough and reading was like back then, you know,
27:21 as an adult, you develop all these coping mechanisms,
27:24 some of which are healthy and some of which are not,
27:25 including drinking and all that stuff.
27:27 And, but at the time,
27:28 like my only coping mechanism was reading.
27:30 So I just have this very like comfort,
27:33 comfort food relationship with reading fiction
27:35 where if I felt really freaked out as a kid,
27:38 I would just sort of hide
27:39 and that was the only thing
27:40 that could completely take me out of it.
27:42 And yeah, then as an adult, obviously,
27:44 like I kind of quite compulsively read fiction.
27:48 And if I'm stressed,
27:50 if I can like bring myself to try and concentrate,
27:52 then reading fiction is the only like really wholesome
27:56 stress buster that I have.
27:58 But yeah, I think I was saying that like,
28:00 I really love those like big kind of sprawling,
28:03 like birth to death novels,
28:05 like Somerset Maugham or like Dickens,
28:08 because they, yeah, I don't know.
28:09 It's like very satisfying to feel
28:11 as like you do not actually feel in real life
28:14 that you can kind of have an overarching view of life
28:19 and have like some sense of narrative purpose,
28:22 which really does not exist in life.
28:23 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, order and control.
28:25 - Yeah.
28:26 - Yeah, I liked what you said when,
28:28 and it's kind of touching what you said earlier
28:30 about not having an internal stop button,
28:31 which I think is something
28:32 that a lot of people can relate to.
28:33 But you said that it's, you know,
28:35 probably one of the only healthy coping mechanisms
28:37 that you have, but it does do some
28:40 of what the unhealthy ones do
28:42 by kind of letting you forget yourself,
28:45 but without the danger or guilt attached.
28:47 So I wanna ask you why you think it's so important
28:51 that we have that moment of respite
28:53 where we can kind of like forget ourselves
28:55 and step outside of ourselves,
28:58 and why the majority of the things
29:01 that help us do that are so unhealthy,
29:04 aside from reading fiction.
29:06 - Yeah.
29:07 - What else is there, like exercise or?
29:09 - Yeah, like, I mean, again, okay,
29:12 so partly what "Act of Desperation" is about
29:14 is like doing that with romance.
29:16 - Yeah.
29:17 - And obviously in "Act of Desperation"
29:18 that's like portrayed as being a negative thing,
29:20 but obviously it's not only a negative thing.
29:23 And I, yeah, I find like, obviously,
29:25 if you're falling in love or are in love,
29:26 then that's like the ultimate feeling
29:29 of being able to escape yourself
29:30 in a healthy, like joyous way.
29:32 But on my own, yeah, I feel like reading
29:35 and being with my friends, honestly,
29:36 is like the only thing that if I feel really overwhelmed,
29:40 I just need to be with another person,
29:42 whether that's through fiction
29:43 or being with my friend or my partner or whatever it is.
29:46 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:47 It's just about getting out of your own head.
29:48 - Yeah, and I'm not very good,
29:49 okay, well, I'm incredibly bad rather
29:52 at like any sort of meditation
29:54 or just sitting with yourself, like really bad.
29:57 And I'm trying to get a little bit better, but.
29:59 - No, I'm so bad at it.
30:00 I've started doing acupuncture recently.
30:02 - Right.
30:03 - One of the worst things about it
30:04 is that you have to literally lie there for 30 minutes
30:06 in silence with needles in you.
30:07 - Yes.
30:08 - And just lie there.
30:09 And my mind is just going like into overdrive
30:13 'cause I'm like, I should be relaxing.
30:14 I should be relaxing.
30:15 - Yeah.
30:16 - Needles in me, oh my God, there's one moving.
30:18 I can't, and you have to do that for 30 minutes
30:19 and it's torture.
30:20 - Yeah, exactly.
30:21 And just like last night trying to go to sleep,
30:23 you know, just lying there for two hours being like,
30:24 I can't stop thinking, you know.
30:26 - Yeah.
30:27 - So yeah, I really struggle with that.
30:28 And I just find like,
30:30 it's not something I'm happy about necessarily,
30:32 but yeah, basically being with a person
30:33 is the only way that I can really guarantee
30:35 to escape that feeling.
30:36 - Yeah.
30:38 - But yeah, I think I obviously,
30:40 such like a sensorily overwhelming world
30:42 to live in at the moment.
30:43 And because we're not so great at being alone
30:47 because, you know, our attention spans are shot
30:49 from living the way we do.
30:51 It's really hard to find, yeah,
30:53 to like not need a bit of like time out
30:57 from being overwhelmed by the world,
30:59 but also not being able to like meditate necessarily.
31:02 Yeah.
31:03 - I wish I was one of those kind of wholesome,
31:05 mellow people.
31:06 - Me too, yeah.
31:07 - Like I'm just gonna go meditate,
31:08 I'm really stressed right now,
31:09 and then come back from there and like,
31:09 okay, I'm floating like a butterfly.
31:11 That's just not who I am.
31:12 - No.
31:13 - To be honest, I don't know many writers
31:15 that are like that.
31:15 - No.
31:16 - I was just thinking, I was like,
31:17 that's why I'm good at my job.
31:18 - Yeah.
31:19 - That's why we're good at what we do.
31:21 Okay, your second love is a family member.
31:23 Tell us why you've chosen your dad.
31:25 - So my dad and I are very close.
31:27 I'm close with all my family,
31:28 but my dad and I kind of have a special bond
31:29 because I've got two older brothers
31:32 who belong to my mom,
31:33 but they've got a different dad to me.
31:35 So I'm my dad's only kid,
31:36 which just means that we spent a lot of time
31:38 one-on-one when I was growing up.
31:39 And even though I love all my family equally,
31:42 we just have a kind of special bond
31:44 that has to do with those kind of formative years
31:46 spent just the two of us.
31:48 'Cause my mom and dad split up when I was quite young.
31:51 So yeah, me and my dad probably see each other
31:54 maybe like four times a year,
31:57 but it's like definitely the highlight of my year,
31:59 getting to spend actual substantial time with him.
32:02 A lot of the time it's just for a day or two,
32:04 but at Christmas time, for instance,
32:05 I always make sure to have like a full week
32:07 where I can just like do nothing
32:08 and walk around with him for a couple of days.
32:11 We're really, really close and like painfully close
32:15 where it's like a big source of sadness in my life,
32:18 just like worrying about him
32:20 and like anticipating something bad happening to him.
32:23 - Yeah, I have that with,
32:25 oh God, this is gonna sound ridiculous.
32:27 I have that with my cat.
32:28 (laughing)
32:29 - I do.
32:30 - I thought of my cat as well.
32:30 - It's like an unhealthy attachment.
32:33 - Yeah, exactly.
32:34 - But you do, you like kind of catastrophize.
32:36 - Yeah, like preemptively working through these things.
32:38 - Yeah.
32:39 - Yeah, which is like obviously ridiculous
32:40 'cause it's gonna be awful no matter what happens,
32:42 like no matter how much you anticipate it,
32:45 which I try to remember,
32:45 it's like you're just wasting your time
32:47 because it's gonna be as bad no matter what, you know?
32:49 - Yeah.
32:50 - But yeah, so like it's painful as well,
32:51 but he's definitely like,
32:57 I guess like a problem in my life has often been
32:59 that I feel very like weightless
33:00 and like insubstantial in the world,
33:02 or like I don't know where to,
33:04 I don't feel like attached to things
33:06 in a way that I should maybe.
33:08 And he's sort of the main foundational part of my life
33:12 that I feel like if I'm really,
33:14 and as well, 'cause I've like moved around a lot
33:16 in my adult life and I continue to move around a lot.
33:18 And you know, I'm not a very settled person in that way,
33:22 which is obviously by choice more or less,
33:24 but that comes with a lot of downsides as well as positives.
33:28 And I feel like my relationship with him
33:30 is like really crucial to me
33:31 not feeling completely lost in the world
33:34 when I am sort of adrift in these ways.
33:37 - And you said that he's also a writer.
33:39 - Yeah, he writes plays and directs plays.
33:42 So yeah.
33:43 - Is that one of the main things
33:43 that you think kind of bonds you together
33:45 just from a kind of, I guess, intellectual point of view?
33:47 Do you talk about writing?
33:48 - Yeah, we talk about our work.
33:50 Mostly, like sometimes about functional things,
33:53 as in like if one of us has a problem
33:54 with a certain scene or whatever,
33:56 we'll discuss it a little bit.
33:57 But a lot of the time it's more about like,
34:00 you know, he's very sensitive like me
34:03 and like suffers a lot with his work as I do.
34:06 And I don't mean that in like a tortured artist way.
34:09 I just mean like, I think it's awful
34:11 and like struggle to be able to show it to anyone
34:13 and that kind of thing.
34:14 And you know, we both like suffer with confidence quite a lot
34:17 so it's sort of, yeah,
34:19 like trying to bolster each other in that way
34:20 more so than anything functional.
34:23 But yeah, he's like, I mean,
34:26 he was always very supportive of what I wanted to do,
34:28 but also was like, you know,
34:29 you're never gonna make any money though.
34:31 So he was like trying to make me aware
34:33 of the functional downsides,
34:34 but also he was like very supportive as well.
34:37 - Yeah. - Yeah.
34:38 - In terms of the confidence with your writing,
34:40 how was that different between the first book
34:42 and the second book?
34:43 Did you feel like that was an improvement
34:44 with the second book?
34:45 - Yes and no.
34:48 So with the first one,
34:49 because there were kind of no stakes
34:50 because there was no book deal or whatever.
34:53 I just wrote it in my spare time
34:54 and then we didn't show it to any editors
34:56 until I'd finished it.
34:57 - Oh, I didn't know that.
34:58 - Yeah.
34:59 So there was like a bit of freedom in that
35:01 because nobody was waiting for it.
35:02 So I could take,
35:03 I took like three years and just did it in my spare time.
35:06 So that was like, it was scary still writing it.
35:09 And like, I didn't feel like,
35:10 oh, this is brilliant when I was writing it,
35:12 but it also kind of didn't really feel
35:13 like it mattered usually.
35:15 Not that it didn't matter,
35:15 but like if it went,
35:17 if we handed it in and it was bad,
35:19 it's like, all right, well,
35:20 I'll just keep on working then.
35:22 Whereas this one was contracted.
35:25 So it was a bit scarier in that way
35:28 because I had a deadline and also, yeah,
35:30 I'd never written full-time before in that way.
35:33 And I still don't know this,
35:36 like for the next one, for instance,
35:38 like is it, you don't know if it's going to be possible
35:40 to write a good novel in the time that you have allocated.
35:43 And there's no way to promise somebody
35:45 that you will have, you know.
35:46 - And your third love,
35:47 I'm so pleased you've chosen this
35:49 because as you said in your email,
35:50 I think this is something
35:51 that is getting pretty bad press at the moment.
35:54 Tell me why you've chosen dating.
35:56 - I've always been a huge dating fan.
35:59 I mean, I came to it quite late.
36:00 I didn't like, I never did any online dating
36:02 or anything like that until I came to London in 2015,
36:06 16, something like that.
36:07 And I just found, I love meeting new people
36:11 and it's like, I get a lot of pleasure and energy
36:13 from random encounters.
36:15 So this was like, oh, wow,
36:16 it's like very, very easy for me to experience that feeling
36:19 which in the past was like,
36:20 I think that only happened to me rarely.
36:22 I can now meet new people, you know,
36:24 sometimes in hopes of finding a partner,
36:27 but quite often just 'cause it's like fun to meet new people
36:30 and yeah, obviously it does get quite a bad rap at the moment
36:33 and I do, to give a pre-show,
36:35 I do understand that like,
36:36 if you're very, very seriously looking for a partner,
36:39 I can imagine it would be a lot more demoralizing
36:42 than I've tended to experience it.
36:44 But usually, well, like I met my last serious partner
36:48 on an app, so, you know, it has happened for me in that way,
36:51 but quite often it's like more of a,
36:54 not that I'm opposed to meeting somebody seriously,
36:56 but it's a little bit more haphazard than that
36:59 and it's a little bit more like frivolous than that for me.
37:03 And yeah, I don't know, I think as well when I went in,
37:05 I spent quite a lot of time in New York
37:07 over the last couple of years
37:08 and it's like a really fun way to see the city basically
37:12 and like meet people there
37:13 and people there are like really casual about dating
37:16 in a way that I really like.
37:16 - I was about to say, I imagine it's a very different environment.
37:19 - Yeah, it's just like really spontaneous
37:21 and a little bit more fun
37:22 and I just find it really,
37:25 I mean, there have been times when I've like,
37:28 when I've regretted going into situations,
37:31 like say if you leave a serious relationship
37:34 and then go straight into dating,
37:36 I found that quite painful
37:37 because you have to like go into these like online situations
37:41 with the basic understanding that most people don't,
37:45 you're basically being not being seen as a full person,
37:47 you're going into it with both of you
37:49 not really perceiving the other
37:51 as a full rounded human being.
37:53 So if you're leaving like a loving relationship
37:55 and going into that whole scenario,
37:56 it can be a bit jarring to be like,
37:58 wait, why aren't you being really, really nice to me?
38:01 - Yeah, I think that it's so interesting
38:02 'cause it's that gap, isn't it?
38:04 Between when you come out of a serious relationship
38:06 and you come out of any kind of meaningful partnership
38:08 and then you think, right, I'm just gonna go meet someone,
38:11 I'm gonna get on an app and you,
38:12 it's not that like, you know what you're doing,
38:14 you know you're on a dating app
38:15 and you know that it's sort of like a game and whatever.
38:18 But I think then the reality of like you said,
38:20 sitting down to meet someone and it's so flippant
38:22 and it's so casual and then you might never hear
38:24 from them again and they might block you.
38:26 It's really hard and it's like the kind of the fall
38:30 from grace so to speak is so dramatic.
38:33 How do you, if you have like a bad or disappointing date now
38:38 how do you handle that?
38:39 Do you kind of just write it off as a funny story
38:42 or do you just try and move on as quickly as you can
38:44 and like compartmentalize it?
38:46 - Yeah, the last like bad date I went on
38:48 I just immediately wrote a short story about it
38:50 and then sold that for money.
38:51 So I was like, all right, maybe I'll just do that every time.
38:54 - Why, it's great being a writer.
38:56 - Like this is my life in New York, this is how it's gonna go.
38:58 I'll just go on a lot of bad dates
38:59 and then write short stories about them.
39:01 - Okay, genius, I'm gonna do that as well.
39:04 Okay, that's great.
39:05 For people that aren't writers,
39:08 how do you handle it?
39:09 'Cause how do you not, I guess,
39:11 because it is such a demoralizing experience
39:13 where you've had so many disappointing dates
39:16 or you can talk to someone on an app
39:18 and have such great chemistry, such great conversation
39:21 and then you meet them in real life and it's just zero.
39:24 It's just, there's no spark, there's nothing.
39:27 How do you pick yourself back up from that
39:29 or like just motivate yourself to keep trying
39:33 whether it's on an app or not,
39:34 but just how do you stop yourself from spiraling into that?
39:38 - I think it's a really good question.
39:40 I think it's a really good question.
39:40 I think it's a really good question.
39:41 I think it's a really good question.
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40:39 I think it's a really good question.
40:40 I think it's a really good question.
40:41 I think it's a really good question.
40:42 I think it's a really good question.
40:42 I think it's a really good question.
40:43 I think it's a really good question.
40:44 I think it's a really good question.
40:45 I think it's a really good question.
40:46 I think it's a really good question.
40:47 I think it's a really good question.
40:47 I think it's a really good question.
40:48 I think it's a really good question.
40:49 I think it's a really good question.
40:50 - I know that sounds like very, very trite
40:51 and like your friends are all you need,
40:53 which is like not actually how I feel about.
40:53 - No, but that's also not what you're saying,
40:56 but that's a really good point, I think, just generally.
40:59 - Yeah, like if you're in need of a bit of care,
41:00 that's certainly fair.
41:01 And like, you should access that in a different way
41:03 and like save the dating for just like some frivolous fun
41:05 when you're ready for that, you know?
41:06 - Yeah, I think you just have to accept
41:08 that if you're looking for kind of instant care
41:11 and love and like warmth,
41:13 you're just not gonna get that on hinge.
41:15 - No, it's not gonna be very attractive
41:17 if you are either.
41:18 (laughing)
41:19 - That's it for today.
41:20 Thank you so much for listening.
41:22 You can listen to all episodes of Love Lives
41:25 on all podcast platforms.
41:26 You can also watch us on independent TV
41:29 and all social media platforms and all connected devices.
41:33 I will see you soon.
41:34 Bye.
41:35 (upbeat music)
41:37 (upbeat music)
41:40 (upbeat music)
41:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]