Poured Over: Julie Myerson on Nonfiction (A Novel)

Jenna Seery

Julie Myerson’s newest novel Nonfiction is intricate and raw, featuring themes of motherhood, addiction and what it means to write. Myerson joins us to talk about her approaches to writing a novel, her interwoven and often personal themes, how she picks her titles and more with guest host, Jenna Seery.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Jenna Seery and mixed by Harry Liang.               

Featured Books (Episode):
Nonfiction by Julie Myerson
Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson
Cheri by Jo Ann Beard
Trust by Domenico Starnone
The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey
The Guest by Emma Cline

Full Episode Transcript
Jenna Seery
I’m Jenna Seery, a bookseller and associate producer of Poured Over and today I am so excited to be joined by Julie Myerson, who is the author of something like 11, novels nonfiction work. She’s a critic. She’s been all over in the literary world. And so I’m very excited to talk to her today. You may have remembered some of her previous books like one of my favorites, something might happen. But today, she’s with us to talk about her return to fiction with Nonfiction. And I can’t wait to talk about this great book. So thanks so much for joining us.

Julie Myerson
Thank you for having me, it’s great to be doing this.

JS
Usually, I like to start with the author setting up the book a little bit for our listeners, since they may not have had a chance to read it yet. And usually, you can do a better job of giving us sort of the elevator pitch than I can. So if you would want to start with setting up Nonfiction for us.

Now, I was worried you might ask me that. And actually, although I’ve seen other authors do that really well, I feel I’m very bad at this. It’s partly because when I write my books, I don’t know what they are. So I never ever sort of do that thing with myself and saying this is about X, Y, or Z. And even when they’re finished. Sometimes it takes the readers or the critics to say this is what it’s about. And I sort of think, oh, okay, it is. But I mean, the best I can do. Having said that, I suppose it’s about a middle-aged couple dealing with the tragedy of their daughter’s drug addiction. It has a few other strands. There’s a there’s a love affair in it or a love affair or not, perhaps so love, as you look at it. But I think really, and this is another reason perhaps why this one is particularly difficult to describe. I think it’s a book about writing. So all those strands, they’re not quite traditional plot in the sense that they might normally be because it’s really a book about can you trust the narrator of a novel? Or indeed the narrator of her life? Can you trust writers with anything, in fact, and so it’s quite a twisty book in that sense? I’m not sure I was filling away just to describe it as it’s not really just a book about addiction at all, although that is the driving force in it, or perhaps the driving emotional force. I didn’t do a very good job.

I think that makes perfect sense. Because like you said, there is so many interwoven pieces in this novel, and I think everyone will come to maybe a certain piece of it first. Some people may think that’s true. really connect with the piece about writing or the family, the marriage, the motherhood is such an important piece as well. Yes, I think everyone will find what they need to find from it, in the order that works best for them.

It’s interesting, you say motherhood, because many, many people readers have said to me, I love that this is a book about motherhood. And weirdly, that didn’t once occur to me while writing it. I mean, obviously, it’s true. But anyway, it just didn’t.

I think that that goes to to the way people read that, like, there’s always going to be another layer I hear that’s often from authors that, you know, there’s readers find these layers in books that the author didn’t even connect on their own.

It’s what’s wonderful about reading and writing.

It’s created such a better experience, I think, as a reader to be able to sort of wade through these layers on your own and come to the conclusions. It’s very fun. But I was wondering, as I was reading, since this is such a huge book in the terms of sort of the emotional expanse that it covers how you came to deciding that this was the story you wanted to tell.

You see, that’s the problem. I know, I sound very slippery. When I say this, I never decided to tell that story. I wrote this, but part of the reason why it did take me a long time because I think I was with all my books. It’s the same I don’t set out to write a certain book, I write and see what comes and then I edit ferociously and see where it’s taking me see if I’m excited by where it’s taking me see if where it’s taking me feels honest. I mean, literally all my books, including something that happened were written like this, which is why I don’t sort of know what I’m writing about. But with this one, I kept making full stops, and I it had so many incarnations, which I’d be too embarrassed to show anyone I mean, literally no one has seen. But actually looking back, it was my way of finding my way to this. And the moment I knew that I had written, funnily enough, I wrote at the beginning. Finally I wrote the beginning, which is the beginning of the book, which is about the parents locking their daughter in the house. And the moment I wrote those first opening paragraphs, although I did work on those parallels here. I mean, everything I wrote, I work on massively. I knew when I wrote those paragraphs about “There came a night we had to lock you in the house”, and I’m paraphrasing here that I thought, yes, that’s cooking, I can now go somewhere. But that still wasn’t sort of deciding what it was going to be about. It was clear that I was writing about a drug addicted child, which is something I do have some experience of, but I still didn’t know what the book was going to be. So I have to say, I know it’s a difficult That’s not a very good answer, but I just, I never decided. And then I saw where it took me. And that felt exciting. Actually, I never intended to write about writing either. In fact, that’s something I’ve always slightly resisted because I sort of feel proper jobs, more interesting writing and writing. And I usually give my characters actual jobs if I can. But it I just knew it had to be about writing as well. It became a book about writing.

I think that is a better answer than you may think. Because you can almost sort of feel that in the book this unfolding and unraveling as you go that oh, yeah, like that. When you start with those great opening paragraphs that sort of drop you into this world that you are, very quickly have to sort of put your feet under you and make sense of it. As you go through, it all opens up in front of you, which is kind of what it sounds like you’re saying is that? Yeah, it sort of mirrors that experience as you’re reading.

Unfolding, I really like unfolding, because it did feel like there were all these folds, which were dark, you know, not opened, even to me. And I do always feel when I wrote a book actually. Again, I don’t know how it comes over when I say this, but I always felt the book I’m writing does actually already exist a bit the way when a sculptor is sculpting away stone, there is a sculpture in there, you’ve got to find it. And it’s I never feel like I’m creating it from scratch, I feel what I’m doing my job is finding it. And that’s what it feels like the and I did like the way it does unfold this book, I would like to think it does. But those folds were not revealed to me even when I was writing it in some ways. If that makes sense.

I think maybe this will be another question that you’ll be like I don’t know how to answer. But I have to ask because the voice is so strong in this book, our narrator’s voice. That’s what leads us through this entire journey and whether we feel like we can trust what she says or that what she says, as you know, actually, as it happened, or the emotions that I’ll come with it, her voice is pretty stunning. When I open a book, that’s the first thing I’m looking for is can I fall into this voice of whoever is leading me on this journey? And I don’t have to, I guess like them, I don’t have to agree with all the choices they make. But I want to be able to say okay, I know you’re going to take me somewhere. How does that feel to develop that kind of voice as you write?

That’s exactly what I want as a reader. I don’t have to like the person, I don’t have to know what the books about, I don’t even have to understand what’s being said, I have to believe that there is absolute authority here. But there’s a narrator, who is going to take me somewhere, which may make me uncomfortable, but a place I’m happy to be taken to and I suppose so therefore, as a writer, that’s exactly what I tried to do, just because those are the books I love, and how to develop the voice. I mean, everything I write, try not to back the question or she this time, everything that right is sort of done instinctively. So I literally, I write a sentence, and I write another one. And if the second one feels like the right, next sentence, I go with it. If it doesn’t, if it feels fake, or phony or not where I want to go, I get rid of it. And because I’m a very good editor of myself, in that sense, actually. And in that sense, I’m never stuck with the writer because I can always write what I can’t. But I have to get rid of so much. But the way the voice develops, I suppose is simply that I listen. Even this morning, actually, I’m writing a new novel. And I noticed I was concentrating, which means listening so hard to how the words are coming over. And whether the effect is the one I want. And I suppose so that’s how I develop a voice. And I suppose I was which I think people sort of assume people have assumed partly because of the teeth of the title that this voice has to mean that this is me. And actually it isn’t. It’s sort of the furthest from myself that I’ve written I feel for a long time. I can see I mean, I do want readers to wonder if it’s me. But it actually isn’t in many ways. So yeah, but it just the voice comes that like everything I wrote, it’s actually about the words, the words are put down, right, the voice will develop. I don’t actually think about voice in that sense in a way.

I think that translates because you have these beautiful sentences that you create. And there’s this world that sort of opens as we go through as we sort of understand as we get these little details, what the narrator chooses to give us and what we, you know, can piece together of like, sort of the connective tissue that’s missing between a lot of these scenes, and that we have to fill in ourselves. And yet, I want to talk about writing complicated women, because it’s something that I think that you come back too often in your fiction is these women. And it’s true, they are. I don’t like the term likable or unlikable, I think when it comes to especially female characters, because I think it’s so often pointed in a way that is really unkind to women. Because I don’t have to like or agree or understand why someone makes their choices but like you said, I need to have that authority of why and I think so often And in your novels you have these women that make choices that I think a lot of people would say are outlandish, or, you know, that we wouldn’t agree with. And yet, we’re always right there with these women as they’re making those choices.

You’re right. They are complicated women, and I don’t like likable or unlikable, either. That’s the lazy term, actually, I think. And what these are, are people with strong passions from feelings. And I think I love writing about motherhood. I mean, although I say I didn’t know I was writing about it here. I think perhaps the reason I didn’t know that is because I always I so often, to some extent, write about motherhood. And when my, my first novel, was actually about motherhood, having children and being a mother is one of the strongest emotions and passions I’ve ever felt in my life. And I don’t think those come without complications ever. And I think I consider it a real challenge to write about those things as they really are. And similarly, you know, love and sex and sexual relationships between men and women. I find them fascinating. Again, I think the challenge is a writer. What I want to do is write about them without sentimentality, without glamorizing them. I don’t think that makes them unattractive. Or to me, it doesn’t. It makes them honest and true. But yes, do the people in my novels always do the kinds of things that people would approve of? Now? I don’t think they do. But that’s not the point. And it’s certainly again, not what I read. But novels for I think novels, when you read a good novel, it wants to be about you want to see real human beings being presented with choices, not even necessarily moral ones just choices about their lives, what do they want? What do they feel? Where would they like to go? You know, and that’s what I’m trying to write about. I’d love to write about men and I have tried to slightly in some of my novels write about men, it’s more difficult. But you know, I’m not actually just trying to write about women, I’m interested in men and women, actually, I’m certainly interested in them together, as well.

I definitely as I was reading, found myself just returning to the character of the narrator’s mother, who has just this incredibly complicated and often infuriating presence in the book. And yet there you give her so many moments of humanity, and so many moments of allowing us to understand this person who is maybe making a lot of choices that most of us would balk at a little bit, but at the same time you get you managed to still give her so many moments of like, Oh, I get that feeling.

I’m glad you said that. It’s funny, actually, this book, although it’s called Nonfiction, it is entirely fiction, except for one character. And the character of the mother is the only one who is based completely on my own mother, who actually sadly died while I was writing this book. So I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t died. I had a very difficult relationship with her as you can tell from the novel. And I was estranged from her actually, when she died, which is still something I’m processing in a way. And I think this book, I was already writing about her when she died, it became part of my processing of the loss of her because it probably comes over in the book. I hope he does, you know, I was she had a very, very strong influence on my life. But it was a very difficult relationship. And it is one I’m still slightly trying to recover from. But you know, I absolutely feel she had an incredibly difficult childhood. She really was sent away to boarding school when she was five years old on an airplane. I mean, unthinkable. She had very difficult, strange parents. And I think she was all her life. And I think I say this in the book. She was looking not just for love, but she was looking for recognition. She wanted to say to everyone, here I am. And that’s why she was she was very competitive with me in not good ways. But yeah, I was trying very hard. I’m glad you say humanity, because I was hope people have said when they read the book, or the mother’s a monster, that gives me the pain because actually, she’s my mom, and I didn’t really want her to come over a month as a monster. I think she does some quite monstrous things in the book. And, and indeed, she didn’t realize, but she isn’t she wasn’t a monster. And I loved her very much. And I and I do have very strong feelings about her. And I still feel her loss. And a bit, there’s a little bit about her grave. And so I wasn’t I was banned from going to her funeral, it was all pretty awful like in the book, but her grave when I visited it, I still do think about it. There’s a bit in the book where the narrator says she still wonders what the weather is where the grave is. And that was absolutely true. So all that writing about the mother actually isn’t real from me, that’s not true of everything else.

But that piece about the weather really stuck with me, because I’m the kind of person where, you know, I have friends who live all over the country, all over the world. And I’ll keep the weather in my phone for wherever they are just in case.

I do that with all my kids as well. And I think I remember actually remember writing that bit about the weather. And it’s funny, and it was very close to the time that she died. And it was literally something I’ve just been doing that morning checking the weather on my phone where her grave was, and I just put it straight in the book. And so it’s very much from the heart and very true that bit you know, where it’s actually a lot of the book isn’t might you know, the husband is not my husband. He’s nothing like my husband’s nothing like that. And so yeah, there’s a huge amount of fiction in the book, obviously.

I think something that goes along with those pieces like you were saying you are interested in writing these relationships is like your work and especially in Nonfiction really shows sort of these like magnetic influences that we have on the lives of all There’s so much about how one change in a relationship can cause sort of these huge shifts in everyone’s lives. And our narrator when she meets this person from the past or in Something Might Happen, Tess and Lacey, this these huge moments where it’s very like that something you meet one person, one shaped thing change, and it sets off this, you know, entire the different course of your life.

Yeah, I mean, I’m interested in the, you know, obviously, when you’re a mother, you become responsible for individuals who are growing up. And I think there’s a huge a huge expectation of mothers, more than fathers actually. And I’m not meaning to be sexist when I say that, but I think it is more than fathers to be the study thing for them, the person who puts them their needs first. And did you do when you have small children? It’s absolutely instinctive. It’s impossible to imagine anything else. But children grew up and use, you remain a woman. And I think I’m very interested in that sort of that tug that what you’re saying to yourself with Who am I still, and other things come along. And that’s what’s happening in this book, you know, she’s going through a very difficult time, they’re going through problems, you know, the child is young at the time, the fitting is actually in this book that be a fair, I mean, I hope this comes across, it doesn’t necessarily happen. It’s certainly something she’s writing about, in the way, it’s something I’ve written about. I’ve written about, as you say, with Tess and Lacey, I’ve written fictional affairs like that often, in this book, I want to encourage you to think it may be true. And indeed, I’m not sure whether it’s real or not. But yes, it’s sort of again, going around, and it’s very hard to describe, isn’t it, but going around in circles, inviting the reader to imagine that this is really happening, and then to imagine she’s written about it. But even so the impulse is the same. What do you do if you’re a mother, and you actually, someone speaks to you and sees you as you want to be seen? Even if it is a sort of married narcissist? Still, you know, how does that feel? We will try to forge out paths for ourselves. I’m interested. And actually, it’s not really I don’t know what I think about any of that. What I’m interested in is the dilemmas it throws up the drama it throws up, but I find that really interesting. And apparently, no, I love also parents are complicated. Not especially well behaved human beings, sometimes, I don’t think that makes them any lesser actually.

I think so many of your characters have that where it’s like, you show all sides of them, especially the sides of people that I think they try very hard to cover up or to maneuver out of the light. And you say, Nope, here it is. This is the full spectrum of humanity here.

Yes, yeah. But don’t judge them too hard for it in the novels, I don’t think I do. Although my husband has a joke that, my husband I’ve been with for a very long time, I should say right from before the first novel, as a joke that the man in the novel for a while, the husbands were always being murdered, hit over the head with a paperweight or something. He said, the husbands were having a really hard time. But that’s what actually the husband said, almost never be based on him. I think once or twice, I have used him a bit.

You’re like, don’t read too much into it and we’ll be fine. I think something that you know, is important also to talk about in this in, especially in this book is that the amount of detail you give us the amount of detail you don’t give us and what we’re meant to do with what’s in between, I mean, I found really striking in this that no characters have names, you’re you really are having to do a lot to sort of piece together relationships from these snippets, there’s so many details that are sort of left out, you’re playing with time in a really interesting way, you’re making us do a little bit of work on this one in a fun way.

Again, I like as a reader, I like to be made to do work with nothing, you know, I think as a reader, the gaps, the subtext, the gaps between what you’re told, Oh, what’s really fascinating. And I think in a weird way, I’m not saying that’s about my own work. But I think what marks out a really great piece of literature is it’s a book that you can read one day, and then come back to it in 20 years’ time. And it will feel like a slightly different book because you’re in a different place. That’s not true of sort of, you know, a detective novel necessarily, but it is true, a really real literary work, because it leaves that space for you. And I find those books very exciting. I remember at a certain point I again, I’m not exactly sure why, because I don’t always know why I do things, it became clear to me that I could only write this novel, if I didn’t name anybody. And indeed, there are no places named in it either. It’s everything is kept very abstract. And not particular, even though some of the places I mean, there’s a there’s a description of a foreign holiday that they go on together while their child is young. And actually, in my mind, that was Rome, because I have been there. But it was very important to me not to name it. It’s hard to explain why it’s to do with. It creates a texture and a tone to the writing that for some reason in this book. I wanted it in the same way that when I realized the book started to work, actually, and I can’t remember what point this was when I decided to address the daughter’s use that became a novel in the second person that became really important to I don’t know how I can’t remember how I decided to do that, or why but I just knew when I did it that it works. And by work I don’t necessarily mean it makes a great for coming, I was able to write it. I think this is probably true of a lot of writers. For me, some of the decisions I make, they’re made very almost selfishly in the sense that if they make me able to write the book, I’ll go with them doesn’t matter what they are, how bizarre. I don’t think them through and think Hold on now, will readers like this? Or will this book sell, if I do this, I never think those things I just write, I can write this. So that’s where that came from.

I enjoy that as a reader as well, I want to feel like I’m putting something in to get something back. And to feel that sort of reflection that goes on in that connection between a an author and that connection between the story, I think those are sort of the best works that like you said, that you can return back to I know, when I read nonfiction again, I will find details that I did not see the first time or make a connection that I didn’t have before. But I wonder Is it challenging ever to sort of pare down those details into what only really needs to be there? Because there are so many gaps in this book that I know there has to be some sort of thought about what happened in those in between times, even though we don’t see it on the page. There has to be more there. So how does that paring down occur?

Well, I don’t know. I mean, there isn’t, there isn’t? I know what you’re saying.

Is it more of a building up, rather than a paring down?

Well, it’s yes, definitely. It’s more like I was saying, like, you know, you’ve got this piece of stone, and you’re chipping bits away. And if the shape that’s coming out feels right, then you’re chipping away the right bits of stone. And if that’s a funny analogy, but it is, I want to feel that because the thing really does already exist, actually, the way I have occasionally said this before, actually, I think interviews but it’s also true, when I start a novel, it feels like you’re in a darkened room, and you can’t see anything. And then slowly as I get through the novel, like the lights are coming on slightly, and you can see hazy shapes. And then by the very end of the book, if I’m lucky, you really have got a lit room that you can see. But to me, and this is very important. That room was always there, it doesn’t only exist because the lights have come on, it was definitely there before. That’s why when I’m writing, I sometimes I can literally feel like my brow becomes completely foreign, because I’m concentrating so hard to see. But I really am looking for something that already exists. It’s how I’ve always written. And so if I leave gaps, or you know, if I don’t describe certain things, partly it will be because I have decided that is boring to describe that, you know, because the other thing is I do feel that, again, a good novel you want to read, it takes you straight through and keeps you reading, it doesn’t do boring bits or bits of description that you don’t need or anything that should be nothing that’s superfluous. And I have an instinct about when those things are superfluous. But obviously, if you’re building the book up properly, if you’re, if you believe in every little piece that you write every chunk and paragraph, it won’t matter that there aren’t things there in between. But can I be questioned about them? Not necessarily. But actually years ago, somebody wanted to make a film and something might happen. And I was thinking because you know that one, and there was talk of us doing my husband actually who’s a screenwriter, we were going to write the screenplay together, probably mostly him because he’s a much better screenwriter than I am. But I remember the meeting being questioned with them saying, but what really happened after that scene and satisfaction, and I haven’t got answers, because actually, I wanted to say to them, but I probably did say to them, all I know about these people is here in this book, I don’t know anything else. I’ve written down everything I have to say about them. And so no, it isn’t as if I’ve got this kind of chart somewhere with all the things that really happened. And I’ve just chosen to only put a few in, the things I’ve put in are all I know. So I just sent him as much in the dark as the reader. I don’t know how that makes me sound. But it’s true.

I think that that sounds very interesting. Because I am such a, like, list maker and chronicler of things that like in my brain, there has to be something but it actually is like, well, I’ll supply that, that’s fine, I can do that you’ve given me all I need already. And I can do the rest.

And it doesn’t have to be real. It has to feel real. And the feel, you know, it’s a kind of magic trick in a way, it has to feel real, that’s absolutely vital. But it don’t, you don’t have to be able to explain every single bit of it. And, you know, that’s a very important thing for me, actually. Because that trick is that it’s the magic trick the building of it. And making it feel real is the thing that most excites me about writing.

And I think a lot of that comes through in the sort of pieces of this book that are about writing and that when this narrator sort of goes on these moments of trying to understand what she writes or why she writes or there’s a part where her daughter is questioning her about writing and she’s like, I think I might be done and her daughter is like, that’s who you are. And those moments just hit of like, Oh, I love anything that sort of delves into you sort of get an insight, I guess into the author’s idea on the craft.

With the student, that is everything I know about writing everything I have put into those little parts which I really enjoyed writing by the way. They are everything I feel and know about writing. So, you know, I don’t think I have any more to say about writing, I’ve done very little teaching, but the tiny amount I have done, that’s kind of how I’ve taught. And yet when the daughter says that it’s funny, actually, because some I can’t remember some journalist who was interviewing me said, I assume that’s a real conversation you’ve had with your children. And I said, not at all. Actually, that never happened. But I do know, it’s what they feel or sense. It’s what they feel. I mean, they’re not really very interested, my writing, but I sense they’re not interested. But neither do they want you to stop being that person who is their mom who’s a writer, because that’s how that’s who I am for them. I mean, I’ve always written since they were tiny, so much, I’ve really enjoyed letting myself write about writing, because I haven’t allowed myself to do that before. But even so I hope I wanted to give a bit of ambiguity, because although she says this, about writing it even that I can’t remember exactly how but that gets questioned throughout the novel. Actually, I think you could also say it’s questioned and questionable something.

I think it’s questioned in sort of how she even returns to it herself. There are moments where she may be not fully believing 100% what she’s saying, but yeah, I think that’s true. Go along with her. Because you by this point in the book, I mean, as you move through, you’re like, I’ve invested in this person. And I think there are so many moments, like you said, where you’re like, Oh, I’m not 100% sure if this event happened, exactly as this is being described, is this part of the writing is this more, and yet, all of it sort of bubbles together? And you’re like, maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore, what is the actual thing? Because all of it feels authentic.

I think that’s true, I do feel that about every single novel I’ve written, regardless of subject matter, is so I don’t know. So properly, part of who I am, that you could say, in a way, this kind of endless picking apart of things that that actually it’s, it’s usually a journalist that readers like to do, I’m saying, but is that true, or that could be true. And so it almost doesn’t matter. In a way all my novels are true, every single book I’ve ever written, is an absolutely accurate reflection of my state of mind at that moment, at that time, when I wrote something might happen, I was full of anxiety when I wrote something might happen. So and the title is no accident. And every time I’ve written a novel, there’s been something like that that has filled me with, I don’t know, I’ve been filled with feeling. And so all the feelings and all my novels are absolutely true, what I was feeling at the time, and to pick apart the actual events, it’s almost beside the point, I sometimes feel, I mean, even I forget what’s true, and what isn’t. But and yet, at the same time, they’re all largely fiction. So, you know, what do you say?

There’s sort of this obsession I often see in like, reviews of, of autofiction, and deciding, you know, is this person writing from their own life? And are these experiences and yet I think all writing even if you’re writing something vastly different from yourself, you will find pieces of the author in that work? And yes, there are absolutely novels that are written by people who are talking about their own life experiences and fictionalizing them. And yet, I think every work, you will be able to pick out pieces of an author if they’ve really put their soul into it.

Yeah, exactly. That’s why there’s a bit where it’s so it’s a little while since. But there’s a bit when she tells the student to try putting it into the first person. And the students just to get that sort of immediacy. And the student’s first impulse is to say, but this isn’t about me, I don’t need to think that. And then later, the student comes back to her much, much later on. And again, I didn’t know I was going to do this. But when I wrote it, it became so much the obvious thing to have, the student has discovered that actually, it was much more about her than she ever realized. And to some extent, I’m also saying that’s true, this novel, possibly true of me and this novel, but only possibly, and I wanted that all to be there all that possibility. Because at the same time, although I’m saying that nonfiction isn’t novel, and it is, I do think when you write a novel, and when you write it in the first person, you can end up finding, you’ve written much more clearly about yourself than you ever thought you were going to. And again, I think that’s another of the really exciting things about writing. So I wanted to keep that in there as well, I think she mentioned a mother, this unit, as the student is, to some extent reflecting the author of this book, who may or may not be me, but I felt that was really important. It’s kind of I love playing with all that night. And indeed, I hope the book sort of is supposed to ask questions about all that stuff that even I don’t really know the answer to. I’m more interested in the questions.

I think it goes back to so often if when you pull back even further, that there is no one way to write about writing. There’s no one way to write about motherhood to write about addiction and its effects on a family. We have these wealth of stories that need to be told. And yet I think even if there are connections to a reader’s life, to even read about that happening in another way, it all sort of melds together and creates a sort of communal experience when you come to a really good novel.

In the same way that talking that conversations are so necessary to human beings. I mean, books are like that, aren’t they? They’re a conversation about something that may or may not have been experienced by you, but there’ll be something in there definitely that speaks to you.

I think especially when we’re talking about sort of these heavier topics, and often your books definitely do stray towards the heavier of topics of life, and yet they never feel oppressive or are too painful. There’s always sort of these strands of light that go through where you can connect really well to that character.

So I don’t know, I do end up writing about quite dark things. I know I do. But I do feel very strongly. First of all, I’m not, I am and I’m not. But I people sometimes say to me, You’re so different from your books, you’re much kind of funnier, and not like your books. But that’s nice. Good, I hope so. But also, you know, at the end of the day, I know this to be true. It’s from my very first novel, I’ve always really been writing about love all my books around love, because although I’m fascinated by loss, and I often write about loss, you know, loss is nothing without love. It doesn’t exist without love. And it’s what you stand to lose by being a human being and loving your children or your husband or whoever. That’s what I’m really interested in. And it’s a very basic thing. I’m not the first person to write about it, obviously. But it is the thing that really obsesses me. And I would love to feel that people in my books not thinking, Oh, that was a dark read. But thinking yes, that’s about love. I can relate to that. Because it’s moving, because it’s about love. That’s what I really want. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But it’s what I want people to feel.

That is a very prevalent theme in this book, that sense of love, you feel it on the page. So often, even when it is the most painful of things, because it often is in our lives, right? There are these moments where the love that the narrator has for her child for her husband, for her mother, it’s all you know, right there to at the forefront that sort of guides us through some of these heavier moments.

Also, I think, but when you get this is something I’m interested in, when you become a parent, you become absolutely powerless, in a sense, in a terrible sense. And I suppose the really terrible thing about addiction, although thankfully, it’s only I worried that actually writing addiction might be boring, because unless you’ve experienced it, it’s not very interesting in a way that the small club or thankfully fairly small club parents who’ve experienced that most people haven’t nothing emphasizes or illustrates that powerlessness. As much as having an addict for a child or an addiction in the family. It is the worst kind of powerless, because it you can’t do the things that you might do. Again, I think I’d say this in the book, you know, if someone’s ill, even seriously ill. And that’s a tragedy. And it’s very frightening. But there are, there’s certain steps you can take to make them more comfortable or to help or to find help. With addiction, you really aren’t the only way is to step away. And that is not that’s the last thing any parent wants to do with their child. It’s the most painful thing possible. So I wanted to write about that too. And I think so when I write about loss, which I often do, and love, I think that powerlessness is one of the worst aspects of love actually, in a way or the most to experience definitely.

I wonder, I mean, we’ve touched on this a little bit that, you know, even though there are more personal elements of you and your life and your sort of views in this, does it feel different to sort of publish this than some of your novels in the past, especially since it’s been a little bit of a larger gap between your last novel in this?

Yeah, it is, it is different. And I think the book I’m writing now is different in the same way I like it’s not like Nonfiction, but it’s more, it’s still different from my other books, I think what was different about it. And it’s partly why it took me so long. And indeed, when I finished it, I didn’t think it was any good. But probably want to know that I, I didn’t think it was going to work, even when I finished it. But I was it was amazing that people like it, you know, my other books, I do tend to write a plot I do as I go along, I find a plot, I don’t I don’t start at the beginning with the plot ever. But even with Something Might Happen, I could tell that this was going to happen. And that was going to happen that was going to trigger that. And certainly in my last novel, The Stopped Heart, which is a sort of double ghost story, there’s two ghost stories wrapped around each other. And this was the first time I’d sort of dead, don’t, it’s hard to say what to call it that relaxing the bits, the bits where the plot would go, I just kind of dared to put almost nothing there and see how it all linked up. Because it’s got an emotional plot, as it were. But I didn’t want to have a sort of physical. And it’s very hard for me, because I’ve written quite a few books with sort of plots, it’s hard to resist that a part of you wants to organize it in such a way that the reader will be in suspense. Because I also like I love the suspense of a sort of ghost story or a psychological story. And so I resisted that every time and began to feel that because of that it wasn’t working. But clearly in the end it did I think, yes, it did feel different to write, harder.

I think a lot of the suspense that I found or like that tension comes, I think from the way that you use time in this, that you were not in a linear sort of path through this novel, you bounce back and forth, and you make the reader sort of make the timeline in their head versus saying, You know, this is how this happened. And in this order, or even bouncing back and saying, Okay, this many years ago or this time, but you leave us clues with ages and things like that to sort of put pieces together. But I think that’s sort of how I found a lot of that tension was never knowing what sort of that next paragraph break was going to bring, and where we might be and when we would be?

No, that’s true. And I think I also the other thing that there was a bit where the narrator and her husband she was the narrator says she looks back and realizes when they try to think back on what happened when they lose all sense of chronology, because actually, that also, addiction does that to you. And also, to some extent, we all do that, don’t we? We we can’t believe that that only happened last year. But that thing happened eight years ago, I’m always amazed at how things happen much further away than I thought they did or much longer ago. So in collapsing again, a chronology we only have each other’s word for it in a way, don’t we? And I think the human brain deals very strangely with chronology. Actually. It’s even for me the last 1020 years, I’m not sure I can put them in order. But it’s something everyone experienced with the pandemic actually didn’t know that. Yeah, seem to lose a few years. But I think the other thing to say about time is I find time, a very, very moving thing, actually. And I suppose it’s about mortality, isn’t it, but the passing of time, the fact that things change, and you get older, and that our time together, all of us is finite. That’s something that, again, I think about a lot and it moves me and I’ve tried to write about it. I’ve touched on that in a lot of my novels, actually, in various different ways. Because I suppose mainly, it’s sort of the most blistering part of the human experience in a weird way. The fact that time we get older and you can’t believe that you’re ever going to get older when you’re a certain age, and then you do, well you’re still young, but you’ll find that you do.

I’m starting to realize it. I think especially post COVID I think everyone now so many people I talked to, it’s just like, time is different. Now, they will never think of time the same way as we did before. It’s very weird.

It’s the weirdest thing. It’s very good that we’ve all experienced it. But no one was saying to me the other day, this happened, and I can’t remember if it was before or after COVID. And or before and after lockdown. And I thought it’s true. You don’t We don’t remember when things were something happened to everybody’s grasp of time.

Yeah. And I think that that’s something that we’ll sort of see, I can’t wait to sort of see that being played with in, in literature and in art that like those times, when we really start to see what’s going to come out of all that time so many people, you know, they’re like, this is my COVID novel, or my lockdown novel or all those things.

And I think it’s too soon, I think, yeah, I think it’d be interesting to know, actually, whether it whether it changes things for some writers, or whether it just ended up being a blip, I have no interest in writing about it. But that doesn’t mean I never will. But somehow it’s not. It’s too big, too bizarre thing in a funny kind of way.

It almost feels like one of those like stranger than fiction, like we lived something more than we could ever fully grasp in art.

Yes, it’s interesting, actually what you can and can’t write about in fiction, because I have to be able to still be feeling quite cool about it in the sense that it’s either happened a long time ago, or I don’t have any particular passion in that moment about it. And then I find I can find the passion in the writing. But I couldn’t if something terrible happened to me today. I couldn’t write about it tomorrow, for instance, not like that some people can some people, even in a diary sort of way can. I couldn’t do that.

And that’s why this novel is taken six years to a fair, I have to ask one of my questions as I was reading this, how you settled on Nonfiction as a title, just seeing Nonfiction: A Novel is like, you know, a bit of a visual gag in itself. So I just wonder how you settled on Nonfiction for the title.

It’s really funny, I didn’t have a title for the book, and I must have been about at least halfway through it. And I mean, it’s a very, it’s a very banal reason, actually. But I think actually, this is interesting about writing, when I’m writing a novel. Once I’m writing one like I am at the moment, writing a novel, it always feels to me like this, this great big trawling net in front of you. So even when you’re not, if you’re off duty, doing something completely unrelated to writing or work, if something gets catches caught in that neck, that seems to relate to your book, you will keep it always so in other words, in some ways, if I walked down the street, everything, even though I’m not thinking about the novel, everything that relates to it will find its way to me. I was I didn’t have a title. And I was sitting reading the Sunday papers, I think I was in bed actually. And reading the book section. And it just said “nonfiction”, I think, nonfiction, and then the reviews underneath it. And I just turned to my husband and said has anyone called a novel Nonfiction. And he said, No, I don’t think so. I said, that’s my title. It was actually my agent who came up with the idea of calling Nonfiction a novel, because it is actually very confusing for booksellers, isn’t it? I mean, it’s, it’s a very confusing thing to do. And I still think if you Google it, it’s not ideal. So it does actually bring a whole set of problems with itself. But it to me, it just was so obvious that it was the right title. And I was already writing a book that clearly was called Nonfiction. I just didn’t know it. But it’s a very, very, very personal reason. I just literally saw the word there and knew it. She you know, something might happen the title from that I didn’t have a title. And I was reviewing, I did a bit of reviewing films in the cinema. And I was in a film screening of a not very good film, and I can’t even remember what it was called. And the girl which I probably wrote a not very good review of the girl said to a boy at a bar, and we can’t do that because something might happen. And in there in the dark, I wrote it down. So he first might say, you know, it was exact to get the right title. And that’s what I mean by have you got these antennae out there just sort of just even though you don’t know it, they’re searching for things to do with the novel is actually that’s a very exciting way to be. I do think once I’m in the middle of a novel that takes normally they take me a couple of years really, of writing that you are in a different place. It’s a very interesting place to be your normal in some ways, the people who you love and seeing everything, there’s another part of you that’s having a whole different experience of somewhere.

I love that. And it kind of leads me into sort of my favorite part of all of these interviews is asking you your literary influences who are the sort of people that either have, whether it’s for this book, or in general sort of put an influence. I know that one of the reasons that I was so excited when I got my copy here is that there’s a blurb from Sarah Waters, who if Sarah Waters, blurbs, anything, I will immediately pick it up, but I wonder sort of who are your influences?

Now Sarah Waters and Rachel Cusk both quoted for the book, and I do know them both, actually. But their writing means a lot to me, both of them, they’ve done things that are sort of very much what I’m interested in. But it’s very difficult when someone else that the truth is, it’s wherever I’m at the moment. And so I’m just looking at my desk. I mean, the most exciting writer I’ve read recently in a while is that I’ve only read one book of hers, and I’ve got a whole pile there is Jo Anna Beard’s book called Cheri. So fantastic. So that’s very, it’s not exactly influencing me, but I have to when I’m writing a novel, I have to read very clean prose, prose that sort of leaves those gaps and excites me so I love her work is fantastic. And I’m better it’s more. I loved it writer called Domenico Starnone, who’s translated by Jhumpa Lahiri, have you read him? Yeah, fantastic. I’ve read almost I think I’ve got one more Trust. Yeah. And Trick and Ties. Those, I’ve been reading those at the moment. And they’re sort of again, it’s not so much that they’re influencing me. But they they’re what I need in my head at the moment. They’ve got that cleanness. But I mean, God so many writers have influenced me in so many different ways. I used to remember in the early days when I was first writing, Peter Carey had a huge, he wrote a book called The Tax Inspector that I just thought was a bit of a writer’s book. Fantastic. But I think that’s true. For each book, when I was writing Nonfiction, I can’t remember who I was reading. Sometimes I can’t read anyone at all, because that voice that’s in my head is so strong. I can’t really some writers have this and some don’t I get I’m like, that I could read something was entirely different. But I can’t read these writers. Yeah, it depends.

I mean, I think that it all makes a lot of sense. I always want to know, it is very interesting to hear when writers can and can’t like, I mean, I’ve heard people say, I can’t even listen to music with lyrics. I can’t you know, I the only voice has to be my own. And I think it’s very interesting to sort of hear.

I need silence to write. I need silence and a blank wall. My husband could do it with a cricket commentary on and music with lyrics. I mean, I cannot imagine. I just wanted another book I read recently that I loved is The Guest by Emma Cline, yeah, that was fantastic. That, I’d be very proud to have written that book. I think it’s a perfect piece of writing. So controlled. So original, so yes, so apparently effortless and ordinary. And it isn’t. It’s brilliant. There isn’t a writer on the planet, I think, who doesn’t find reading really important. And I read all the time, and I’m, I’m really, I’m never happier than reading something new, you know, that I haven’t really heard of before. That’s what I tried to do. So yeah, there’s some lovely new, so many young writers coming up who are brilliant, like Emma Cline and a lot younger than me anyway.

So my last question is sometimes author’s favorite, sometimes their least favorite, but I always want to know, and you’ve hinted, obviously, that you’re writing something, or writing a novel now, but I just always ask what’s next?

It’s funny, I never ever, ever tell anyone, not my husband, not my agent, not nobody about the thing I’m writing. It’s completely secret and private unto myself. And for some reason it has to be and I think it’s because I was talking to a novelist about this the other day, actually, who was showing his work is half finished novel to his agent and friend, you do that? Because to me, it doesn’t exist in any way that I can really believe in until it’s completely finished. And even then it has to have absolutely convinced me that I will hand it over. And then okay, if someone doesn’t like it, I’m ready. You know, I can deal with that. But I couldn’t say yeah, it’s an all I can say is it’s a novel. It’s different from all my other novels and quite different from nonfiction to I think, but then probably people will read it. And so it’s the same old stuff. I don’t know. For me, it feels exciting and different. It’s doing a couple of things that I’ve never done before, actually. So

I will gladly wait. I will read anything you put out. So I will be patient.

Thank you very much.

I know that in the meantime, since there’s plenty of time before your new novel, you have an incredible backlist that all of our listeners can go through. But most importantly, I would love for them to pick up Nonfiction because I think it is something truly something special.

Thank you so much for joining us a lot to hear that actually. She fills me with confidence for my writing tomorrow. So thank you.

Thank you so much.

Poured Over