Book Club Meets: Career pivots, true crime, and 70s nostalgia, with Jennie Godfrey

0:00The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. If you're a smoker or vapor ready to make a change, You really only need one good reason. But with Zinn Nicotine Pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

0:39Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program. There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction. But there's only one Zinn. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zinn at a store near you. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

1:03It would be easy to say that it all started with the murders, but actually it began when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. A woman in charge of the country just isn't right. They're not made for it. Hello and welcome to Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. I wanted to point out that, like Margaret Thatcher, Auntie Jean was also a woman. But Auntie Jean hated being interrupted mid-flow, and it was just the two of us, meaning there was no escape from her opinions, of which there were many. Today, the list of suspicious things by Jenny Godfrey. Three, these bloody murders every five minutes, that's what Yorkshire's famous for now, dead girls.

1:48She put the wooden spoon away and opened the door of our ancient fridge with its rusted corners, which creaked in protest. Immediately tutting about the lack of substance inside it, she pulled out the battered spiral-bound notebook she carried everywhere with her, removed the equally battered pencil, shoved it in the top and licked the nub. Butter, milk, cheese. I could see her mouthing the words as she wrote them down, neatly listing them in the copperplate handwriting she was so proud of. Auntie Jean liked to tidy up the messiness of life, putting everything into order I sometimes wondered if that was what she was trying to do to our family She finished her list closed the fridge and looked at me Oh, and not just dead girls those types of women I was bursting to ask about what types of women she meant and whether they were the same type as Margaret Thatcher I was always intrigued about the women Auntie Jean disapproved of.

2:54There were many, but I knew from experience that no comment was expected or desired. So I chose to say nothing and simply settled back into my chair, while Auntie Jean settled back into her opinions. I didn't need to ask which merger she was talking about, though. Everyone in Yorkshire knew. We had our very own bogeyman. One with a hammer and a hatred of women.

3:23Maggie Thatcher is Prime Minister. Drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family down south because of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. There's absolutely no way Miv's leaving Yorkshire and her best mate Sharon. So perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all. That's why Miv and Sharon start making their list, a list of all the suspicious people and things on their street. This is the debut novel of author Jenny Godfrey, and you have been loving it. I just wanted to say I'm loving reading about such a serious subject from the perspective of a young girl in the thick of it all.

4:06It's such a clever way to capture the intensity of this period in history. It feels so real and like we're back there again, and somehow more poignant from this viewpoint. I love the style and I'm completely immersed in the lives of this community. Thank you, Jenny, for such a great read. Oh, thanks, lovely Debbie. And this is Carolyn. This book was so good. I felt like I was living in Yorkshire at the time of The Ripper. I told my sister she shouldn't be walking home on her own after a night out because it wasn't safe. We live in Guernsey where everyone is safe all the time. So I was fully immersed in it and it was fantastic.

4:41Oh cheers Carolyn I absolutely agree such a brilliant book Alison read it in two days she couldn't put it down she says I could really relate to Miv as she reminded me of me at that age in the 70s I could clearly see everything in my mind as described and it was so like my childhood back then when children were generally seen but not heard it broke my heart when tragedy struck the story visited some real themes of the time with care and compassion I loved it Lorraine shared a similar experience on Instagram. If you want to join us, we're at Happy Place Book Club. As a child of the 70s, I do remember the Yorkshire Ripper being in the news and not really understanding what was happening.

5:24This book has allowed me to enjoy a wave of nostalgia. Myth's voice is so authentic and it really brings that end of childhood customer puberty time to life. I'm about halfway through the book and I found it such a page turner. Thanks, wonderful Lorraine. So Jenny and I chatted a couple of weeks ago about her own family connection to Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, but also about the psychological power of not having a plan B for your career and how the best ideas often land in your head when you weren't even trying to be creative. Oh, and before we got into the book, I had my own recommendation for Jenny, a film I'd just been watching.

6:28But do you know what I did, which I urge you both to do at some point this week, is watch past lives if you haven't it is the best film that I have seen in years and years and years I cried but like not crying where you feel drained afterwards just like you feel alive it is simply heaven you have to watch it you have to watch it on the list right lovely Jenny how are you I'm Really, really well, thank you. All a bit spaced out from the success of The List of Suspicious Things so far, but great. It's just phenomenal. How many weeks have you been in the Sunday Times top sellers list now? Four weeks.

7:14What a dream. What a dream. I know. It's so brilliant. First of all, congratulations on the huge success of this wonderful, wonderful book. How does it feel? I mean, obviously, there's an element of it being surreal, I'm sure, with your debut fiction. But, you know, how much feedback have you taken on? Because I've spoken to some authors who are like, I don't want to know. I'll look at the Sunday Times, but bar that, I don't want to get any feedback. How do you feel about that? So I definitely don't read Goodreads or any of the online review spaces. They are for other people, not me. but when people post on Instagram or Twitter and tell me they love the book or tell me they cried I'm all over it I love that so much it's actually one of the real benefits of social media as a writer is you get to interact with readers I love it it's a beautiful thing and that's exactly what our happy place book club is all about we just want to nerd off about books and talk about how much we love them and get stuck into these stories together and I love reading along with other people and I've heard you say that you would like this book to be described as a book club book because it is a book you can really chat about.

8:31Yes I always imagined you know you have this kind of imagined future I always imagined people having the book and saying you've got to read this book a bit like we've just had a conversation about a film. It's this book you've got to read and then we need to talk about it. And that is my hashtag author goals to have people do that. Well, there's so many things to talk about. I mean, let's start with the characters because you've just got a rich display of characters in this book. Starting off with the main character, who's a 13 year old girl called Miv, who for various reasons is on the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, which sounds ever so ghastly and horrendous, but actually the book is so jolly and manages to really straddle that sort of very dark subject matter, but keeping things really light and warm.

9:26It's very warm. It's a beautiful, cosy book to read. Why did you pick a 13 year old for the sort of main lens of the book? So I am a massive consumer of true crime. And I think lots of people are these days. And that comes from a very knowing, very adult lens. There's a kind of particular view on crime that has become very popular. what I wanted to do with a list of suspicious things was shine a different kind of light on a real life crime that of that kind of really amazing mix of innocence and knowingness that comes with going from childhood to teen years hence I chose a 13 year old girl yeah it's it's a brilliant brilliant take on it because as you say you get that innocence and and with that comes humour and also the sort of self-discovery element that we can all relate to and think back to I love the bit where Miv's trying out her first rollable lip gloss for the first time and that being such a moment I remember my first lip gloss yeah it's such a moment yeah it really is those rollable lip glosses are having a renaissance as a result I'll tell you I know well we're at the age now where we're experiencing throwback stuff coming around which is terrifying but this is set in the 70s and I know that you kind of created this whole 70s room to write in with different sort of swirly patterns on the wall and pictures how much did that help you really dive into that decade or dive back to it?

11:05It really helped I wrote the book during lockdown so there wasn't an awful lot else to do so I really immersed myself in the 1970s I only listened to 70s music And as you say, absolutely. The walls were sort of full of 1970s patterns. And it's actually really funny. When I first started going to bookshops to give out early versions of the book, I really remember this wonderful young bookseller who picked it up from me and said, oh, my goodness, this is historical fiction then. And I was so horrified because to me, the 70s were yesterday. It can't be classed as history. That's too depressing. I know.

11:49Oh, my God. It's brilliant. But it's a great setting for the book because you really can immerse yourself in that amazing, colourful, vibrant decade, as well as the darkness of that decade, too, which, again, I think you just straddle absolutely perfectly in this book. Now, I know this book isn't autobiographical, but there are elements of your childhood that hugely inspired this book. Tell us a bit more about that. Yes, I mean I grew up in West Yorkshire in the 1970s and the kind of shadow if you like of of the murders and the murderer known as the Yorkshire Ripper was really pervasive so from 1975 to 1980 he was like this phantom that haunted our childhoods and it was made all the more poignant for me, I guess, because on the day that Peter Sutcliffe was caught, it turned out that my dad knew him and had worked with him for some time.

12:51And I just remember my dad walking around the house going, but I know him, but I know him. And he couldn't comprehend that this man, very quiet and shy, introverted man that he'd met, could do these terrible things. And I was maybe nine or ten at the time, you don't forget that. No, I mean, that makes an impact on your whole life and your outlook on the world. And I mean, it's no surprise that you've gone on to write this really brilliantly in-depth book about that subject matter, because as you say, it stays with you. You can't lose that. And I love the fact that Miv, the 13 year old that we've talked about already, she's going around with some sort of understanding of that, that this could be a very normal person, someone very unsuspected.

13:37So she is really looking in all corners, looking at every single person out there that seems to have any suspicious element about them. And that leads to all sorts of other discoveries as well, which is a wonderful part of the book. It's incredible. I love the whole idea. And also, I'm really interested in your story, Jenny, because there are many people out there who will hopefully be listening to this podcast now and certainly who follow the Happy Place Book Club, who love to write for fun, who write for a hobby or as an outlet, but maybe haven't made that leap to actually trying to get a book published.

14:13And that's something that you've absolutely lived and breathed because you were working in the corporate arena for quite some time and then made the leap to getting this book published. Tell us how that happened. And I guess I'm really interested in that moment of pivots where you go, I'm going to go for it. This is actually happening now. Yes. Interestingly, Happy Place podcast has been kind of a partner alongside some of those changes, which I'm sure which I am honoured to hear. Love it. I love Happy Place. I mean, I definitely went through certainly in my in my early 40s. I'd been doing a corporate job for 25 years, had always thought the next big job and the next promotion.

15:05And I call it now my midlife moment where I woke up one morning and thought, I don't want to do this anymore. It isn't who I am. And I want to do something that expresses my creativity more. But also I was suffering really badly with anxiety and bouts of depression. Now I understand that some of that was hormonal. But actually, some of it was also not to get too woo woo. But the universe telling me I needed to do something different with my life. and I did need to do something different with my life. And I did the thing that everyone tells you not to do, which is I gave up my job without anything to go to.

15:51And being really honest with you, Fern, it felt like I was jumping off a cliff. I was absolutely petrified to leave this thing that had given me so much of my identity. But at the same time, I preferred uncertainty to unhappiness. else and so I gave it up and I decided that I'd spend some time working out what I was going to do next and while I did that I would write a book so it was kind of a I wasn't all in to start with but very very quickly once I'd started writing I realized that this was the thing I was supposed used to do. That's the only way I can describe it. I just knew I was home. And interestingly, I mean, I will tell the story of the particular Happy Place episode.

16:45Yeah, I want to hear. I want to self-indulgently hear it all. Oh, I love, I mean, I listened to it last night to remind me and I still got the same really big emotional reaction to it. So during lockdown, I was alone and I live very rarely. So I'm quite far from other people. And podcasts were my friends. Sounds sad, but it was true. Yeah. The conversational elements and Happy Place, How to Fail and Adam Buxton were on rotation in my life. And I was having a wobble about what have I done, giving up my job, starting to write a book. I know that getting published is really challenging what am I doing and you recorded an episode with Daisy May Cooper who I utterly adore obsessed I adore her I adore everything she's written and accident and so I was really looking forward to this episode and on it Daisy talked about one of the reasons she felt that this country had eventually happened was because they had no plan B so her and Charlie had no other plan of what they were going to do with their lives just this so it meant that they hung on and just picked themselves up every time they were knocked back and kept going.

18:15And I sat there listening to it, like proper weeping, going, she's right. I need to not have a plan B. I need to just keep going. And I'm so glad that I did because yes, as it turned out. So am I. I'm over the moon. Not only am I deeply honoured because, you know, we can only hope that these podcast episodes have an impact that's positive and a ripple effect that means there's going to be a tweak or a bit of positive change not just for me because I benefit every week but for the listeners so I'm deeply grateful to hear that but also because otherwise we wouldn't have this astonishing book that so many of us are getting so much joy from so I'm I'm absolutely over the moon and I guess it gives you that laser point focus to go I'm all in I am all into what I'm doing and there's a big difference between doing something as a bit of a hobby which there's nothing wrong with that and getting a lot of joy from it to this is my everything and I'm putting every inch of heart and soul into it I think there is a difference.

19:26I think you're right and I've always been an all or nothing person if I'm there's there's a phrase I love which is I recognize balance when I swing past it and that's always been how I am and and actually that can be a massive strength particularly in a situation like this I wasn't gonna give up until I absolutely had tried everything oh well it's so brilliant and it you know and it's shit scary and you've got to write that bit out and go for it. And I wonder how, how was your confidence? How were your nerves just before other people started to read it? Because it's a really strange thing. The transition from you're happily writing away and you deeply believe in every word that you're writing.

20:15And if anyone came into the room at that point and questioned you, you'd go, no, no, this I'm in, I'm in this world right now. I'm living it. I'm breathing it. But then for other people to read it question it have queries about it have their own vision of it because how I've imbibed your story will probably be very different to how you feel it is and that's something you have to sort of relinquish control and let go how did you feel confidence wise just before the book came out just so it's so funny and I know that you're going through something yes we'll be going through something very similar.

20:49So I will try and paint this positively. I was terrified. I mean, genuinely, I so many sleepless nights, and so much nausea around how people would receive it, and whether people would find what I found in the characters. And I mean, I've been really lucky that for the most part, people have really positively reacted to it. But even then, I'm still a sensitive flower. And, you know, I have to manage myself really carefully and take breaks away from being so involved in the book that it becomes almost my entire existence. That's the only way I can stay sane. Yeah, it's hard though, isn't it? I don't know what your feelings well I'm sure they were pretty similar to to mine and many other authors that I've spoken to but whenever I've I mean I've completed my debut fiction now it's kind of it's ready it's going to print literally any day which is sort of terrifying so exciting because you've got to stop tweaking and you've got to just leave it be but every time I jumped back into that story it just felt like I was leaving my own life entirely I was so fully immersed in it in the best possible way and now I'm finished I'm a bit like well I don't get to jump into that world anymore you feel a bit bereft so I genuinely feel like it's kind of a grieving process you go through where there's a period where you feel really empty um but you will soon discover Fern that talking about them all incessantly means you'll be back with them for your promotional time and then you'll be struggling to write book two because you can't get book one out of your head.

22:42So enjoy this time is what I would say. I definitely didn't. I was too busy worrying about what's next, what's next. But actually the quietness is good. It is. And you need headspace to be creative in the first place. Before we finish, I'm always intrigued about how ideas land. Now, obviously, you've got this personal experience in your childhood that has stayed with you um whether you knew you were going to use it for creative good or not is you know we can park that to one side it's that that experience and how that's informed who you are as a person stays with you but when did this particular idea land and how because I've had times where ideas have landed pretty fully formed in my head and other times there's the outline of something and I have to feel around in the dark to go what is this what what do I do with it how do your ideas come to you?

23:40Well the list of suspicious things idea was one of those moments where it sounds like I'm making it up but it is actually what happened in that I had tried to write a psychological thriller and it was terrible and no one will ever see it. It's 20 ,000 words in a drawer somewhere. Is it around the same theme or something completely removed? Okay. No, I think I was trying to write what I thought people might buy, which is a terrible idea. And I put it to one side and I was out walking the dog without any intention of thinking about writing or thinking about ideas. And the plot, the characters and the title, the list of suspicious things appeared in my head, the whole thing.

24:30That's my favourite thing ever. It was amazing. I practically ran home trying to write down everything I'd seen, everything I'd experienced on this walk, just so I wouldn't lose any part of it. And really, then the next six to eight months were me capturing all of that over and over and over again, making it richer and richer and richer. And it's really interesting because I specifically say the title because my editor at Penguin often says to me, yours is the first book where we haven't changed the title. And that's because the book arrived fully formed in my head. I love it. I absolutely love it.

25:19And I think we've all got access to that sort of whether you call it channeling or like divine intervention whatever it might be then we've all got access to it but you have to then make a decision whether to act on it or not and I'm sure loads of us have had these ideas and gone oh that yeah interesting maybe for the future but you ran home and you started writing this book yeah I love it uh it's beautiful and it's heaven sent and it's brought me so much joy reading this book and I can't wait Thank you. Honestly, I can't wait for the Happy Place Book Club listeners and followers to get deep into this story and get chatting about it online.

25:55It's a really beautiful community where we can, as I say, nerd off about books and get really excited about characters and themes and plots. So, Jenny, thank you so much for talking to me today. And once again, congratulations on just such a hugely successful, brilliant book. You're really welcome, Fern. Thank you for having me. Oh, I love Jenny so much. I want to be friends with Jenny so bad. What a woman. She's just incredible. Not only am I in full admiration of how she just went with this idea that popped into her head and really had no plan B. I love that. But also, I'm just such a fan of the book.

26:34It's so smart and it beautifully deals with some pretty heavy issues. And you really leave the book feeling like you know the characters. It's incredible. If you need to feel the motivation Jenny felt from the Daisy Mae Cooper episode, you can always search for it in your Happy Place podcast feed. We love Daisy. The book we're reading this month in May is Sociopath by Patrick Gagney. Oh my god. This is the most mesmerising memoir about Patrick's battle to create a place for herself in the world as a sociopath. She's had dark impulses her whole life, but she eventually began to wonder if there was a way for sociopaths like her to integrate happily into society.

27:20I cannot wait to hear what you make of this one. Come and chat to us on Instagram at happyplacebookclub. Slide into our DMs with a voice note. We would love that. All right, for now, the biggest thank you again to Jenny, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Play Studios and to you lovely bookworms, happy reading.

28:06If you're a smoker or vapor ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zinn Nicotine Pouches, you'll discover many good reasons. Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program. There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zinn. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zinn at a store near you. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.