Book Club Meets: “Women are survivors and scapegoats!” Rage and revenge, with Elizabeth Day

0:06Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. But he didn't make it an absolute priority to inform her. Today, one of us by Elizabeth Day. ...factor into his decisions, either because he knew she'd go along with it, or because it wouldn't matter if she didn't. The worst of it is, he's right. She doesn't want to divorce him. Ben gives her a comfortable life and social standing, and she loves her children. Dragging it all through the courts would be protracted and embarrassing, with no guarantee that she'd get a financial settlement equal to what she deserved. Divorce was for oligarchs and soap stars, not for her.

0:57So she makes a choice. Today is mega exciting because you're going to get to hear what happened at our first ever Happy Place Book Club Live with one of my best mates, author Elizabeth Day. A load of us gathered at the book bar in Chelsea, which is the cutest venue of all time. Imagine the most delightful room with walls adorned with books and cute little lamps and then a bar where you can have a drink and some food. And we had the most gorgeous crowd, just like a lovely bunch of beautiful bookworms. I'm a fellow bookworm. And we all gathered together. Everyone was so kind. It was such a lovely atmosphere.

1:37there were goodie bags, there was chat, there was hugging, there was laughter, it was heaven. So November's Book Club Read was one of us. This is a story that so cleverly exposes topics like power and privilege and class in this country, as well as looking at perimenopause and personal identity shifting over time. Elizabeth and I got into all those areas in this chat, as well as some other stuff like Life After Death and surprisingly the Real Housewives franchise because she's obsessed. I've not seen it. It's on my list for over Christmas. It was the absolute best getting to meet some of you in person and we'll definitely be doing more of these live book clubs because we just had the best night.

2:19So keep your eyes peeled for that. But I also love how involved you all get on Instagram. So do come and follow us if you love books at Happy Place Book club. This is Gemma. Hello Gemma. Hi Fern. As a loyal follower of both Happy Place and How to Fail podcast, I really welcome this book from Elizabeth Day. One of us brings together love, loyalty, betrayal, scandal, manipulation and revenge. The book had so much substance. I enjoyed it so much that after reading it, I also listened to the audiobook. The audiobook really did it justice with such excellent casting of its narrators who brought the brilliantly written book to life.

3:00I absolutely loved it. My name is Rachel and I absolutely loved One of Us. It's the kind of book that is a page turner that you never want to end. The characters are so brilliantly written that even though they're fictional they feel completely recognisable and I just wanted to continue to know how their lives unfolded. There was tragedy in the book that was again sadly familiar and a mystery running through it but it was the characters that I wanted to know more about and that kept me engaged and wanting to turn those pages. Yeah these characters are just so compelling. We deep dive into how Elizabeth wrote each of them so I think you're going to love that bit Rachel.

3:42This is what Victoria made of One of Us. Hello Fern, I really enjoyed reading November's book. I found One of Us an intense read at times with themes of rage, revenge, power, isolation, sexuality and deception, with the standout one for me being revenge. The more the story went on, I found myself questioning, was the revenge delivered by Martin and Cosima justified? Was everyone better off for it in the end or not? OK, Victoria, hold that thought because revenge and whether it was worth it or not comes up big time in this chat. Come on then, let's do it. Here's the show.

4:44Hi. Hi, everyone. So good to see you all. This is Elizabeth Day. Hi. Hello. Oh, it's like lower sofa. It's very slouchy, very comfy. This is our sold-out Happy Place Book Club event, our first proper live one. We've done little book club events at the Happy Place Festival, but this is our first proper Happy Place Book Club event with my darling friend, Elizabeth Day. We're so excited. Before we get into it, first of all, massive thank you for coming along. it's so glorious to have you all here. Gorgeous bunch of women. No men allowed apart from my team. I mean they are allowed, they just don't read books.

5:29And I'd like to say a massive thank you to the book bar. What a beautiful venue. We are definitely coming back. Also I want to say a massive thank you to Never Fully Dressed who worked with us on this event. Yeah, yeah. I'm wearing a kilt, guys. First time since I was 12. And also, just cherries on my boobs. And look at this suit. This suit. I'm sorry, I love Never Filly Dressed. This suit. Unbelievable clothes. So jealous. A great price point. I know. And this, I love this suit. As we were saying before, green velvet, this is like your new thing now. Thank you. I'm going to lean into that. You really need to.

6:05Festive too. Yes. And you've all got these glorious goodie bags, which also feature our dear friend Jamie's candy kittens, which is very generously given. We often have drunken trio nights out, which is so much fun. And I was just saying to Elizabeth in the staff room, I've been saying his surname wrong for forever since I've known him. Yeah. It's not Jamie Lang. It's Jamie Ling. But I think Jamie Lang sounds better. Well, that's his name. So I'm just going to stick to it. So that's how a normal human would say it. Oh, by the way, that's your birthday present. Oh, fun. Thank you. Do you want me to open it now or shall I leave it to later?

6:44That's quite awkward. Yeah. That was so sweet. I think we'll do it later. Okay. Fern is an amazing friend for so many reasons, but you always are so thoughtful with presents. Sometimes you'll send me a present for no reason, other than I'm having a bit of a challenging time. Honestly, you are so thoughtful and lovely. You do the same. When one of my cats died ages ago, you sent me a little framed picture of me and my cat, and it broke my heart. It's like the sweetest thing. Oh. We love each other. Oh, we love her so much. Can I talk about our origin story? yes this is a good one before we go to the book yeah um fern and i well actually we met years ago when i interviewed you for the observer yes i remember then it was but then it was a journalist interviewee kind of relationship so we didn't stay in touch even though i thought you were amazing and then years later we both launched podcasts but fern paved the way for basically everyone else i don't know about that you launched yours in i think march 2018 and i launched mine in july 2018 and in 2019 we found ourselves sitting next to each other, or rather my husband was sitting next to you, at the British Podcast Awards and Jamie was there too.

7:48And we all conspicuously failed to win anything and we were all secretly simmering with rage. So angry. And then we bonded massively after that and then we went on each other's podcasts and it was the beginning of the depression. You missed out a part of that story when I didn't win my category and walked out. That was amazing. It was the most baller move I've ever seen. I'm going to sit here watching other people win. I'm going to go home. Bye. Let's walk out. It was amazing. Anyway, we now love hanging out and talking about books and cats and all things that we'll probably cover this evening for this book club event.

8:22So how I think we're going to do things, because I'm making it up as I go along, guys. Never done this before. We're going to have a really nice chat about Elizabeth's brilliant book. Then I'm going to open it to you guys if you want to ask a question. So maybe get thinking or maybe you've already come with a question prepared that you might want to ask. And then we'll do some pictures or if you want us to sign books, then we will happily do that as well. And then you can enjoy the rest of your merry evening. Does that sound good? OK, great. Well, Elizabeth, first of all, I'm so chuffed that we get to do this.

8:54Me too. I'm so excited to talk about this brilliant book, as you well know, because I sent you a selfie of me. I think I was naked in bed reading your book. I've sold it to the sun thanks very much that was a good 500 quid the only tip of me out there I can't sleep with clothes on it's too hot I loved this book so much and as you know I've read all of your books but this is your best book and I think you know that that's amazing to hear from you because I know how much you read and I love your books and the way that you write and I think we're really similar sometimes in the way that we communicate and I hope that as a writer and with anything I do, I hope I'm getting better with more experience and more accumulated wisdom.

9:41So therefore I do like to think that it's my best book because I hope that I'm learning with every other one that I write and every mistake I make. But you are already exceptional but this is like, it's just so good. Thank you. And you know what's so interesting? Obviously I get to read a lot of books written by authors that I know personally. And I have maybe the first couple of chapters, I find it really hard to not imagine them as any of the characters. But from the minute I started reading Martin, I was like, you were nowhere in sight. You were nowhere in sight. And I think that is just testament to how full bodied the characters were, how well you knew them before you even started to put them on the page.

10:25I'm so glad that you said that. When I wrote my first novel, Scissors, Paper, Stone, I remember my mother coming up to me with a sort of very pale face saying, that's never good. You're very, you're very dark, aren't you? You've got very dark thoughts. And my sister then read it and was like, oh, that woman, Claire, that was friends with our grandparents, you've written her, like she turns up in a chat. I hadn't realised that I'd done it. And both of them struggled to separate the me that they knew from what I'd written on the page. And I do think that as I get older and more mature as a novelist, but also as a human, I feel like I understand people better.

11:06And I understand more about their nuances and their complexities and their contradictions. And doing the podcast is great for that as well. and with One of Us I just felt that I knew these people and I wanted to explore them and part of the reason I was able to leap into their skin so easily is because One of Us is a companion piece to an earlier novel I wrote called The Party and some characters reoccur and the world had already been invented and actually it made me realise why writing sequels are so great because you've done so much of the hard work already and you can just then slip into it and have more fun.

11:43I should say you don't have to have read The Party. This does work as a standalone and there are new characters as well. But I think one of the seminal differences with this book is that I felt an urgent need to say something about the way we live now. And there were so many aspects of the way we live now that I wanted to explore. And I think maybe that comes across on the page, that kind of underlying certainty. Without a doubt, before I pick up on that, by the way the party's being made into a tv show it is i'm so excited that i can finally say it yeah because as you all know trying to make anything for tv is an exercise in managing impossibility so the party came out in 2017 so it's been eight years of sort of trying and failing and now finally i can talk about it it's been announced it is actually happening there's been a press release they're filming it i'm going to be i'm going to go to bridgend in wales in a couple of weeks to be an extra.

12:40Oh, that's so great. That's such a Jilly Cooper move. I love it. It was like my first question. I was like, yeah, this is great, great. But can I be an extra? Yes, it's being adapted for ITV, a five-part drama starring Luke Evans. Incredible. The amazing Luke Evans, Joanna Scanlon, Douglas Hodge, and then Lindsay Duncan. I'm pinching myself. It's incredible. Well, you shouldn't because you deserve every ounce of it. It's so exciting. Going back to what we talked about a minute ago, like you have just said, there was so much you needed to get out in this book. You've somehow managed to write a book that covers power, politics, discrimination, envy, sexism, racism.

13:19It's got like every difficult issue and challenging sort of moment that we could look at all in one book, cleverly woven into all of these different stories and their characters. What were the urgent themes, the one that you thought when you set out to write this book, I have to include this, this has to be spoken about? Thank you so much for picking up on that as well, because I do want one of us to be entertaining. And sometimes whilst I'm delighted that readers are entertained by it, I don't want it to be at the cost of the serious points that I'm also trying to make. and I think the most pressing thing that I wanted to examine, it was two things really.

13:58One was why we keep falling in love with and sometimes electing the people who damage us and I think there's a lot to be said there about how we've been conditioned to view expertise. So historically speaking in this country we have often elected white men who are privately educated who go to Oxbridge and who then sail into the Houses of Parliament without ever having lived a day of their lives as ordinary people. And it feels like we've been historically conditioned, particularly as women, to believe that these very often mediocre men know what's best for us because they're seen as experts and they know how to play the game.

14:43What they are taught in all of these elite institutions is how to play that game. And actually, I think a lot of them apply that game mindset to politics. So it's seen as a kind of chessboard rather than something that really affects our lives and can often damage them, too. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that democracy is a bit like love. It's a bit like dating. We start out thinking and hoping for the best of our romantic partners and our elected politicians. And again and again, they let us down. And turn into Boris Johnson. And turn into Boris Johnson. Exactly. But again and again, we keep giving them chances because of the crushing irrepressibility of hope.

15:23So I wanted to look at that. And then alongside that, one of the things I'm always interested in, in any of my books, is how women are so often the victims, the survivors and the scapegoats of that kind of toxic masculinity. And I never think I'm going to write about it, but it always comes out because that is the world that we live in. And I've made that sound very sort of serious. I wanted to examine it through a lens of entertainment. And I mean that quite literally as well, because reality TV, as you will know, is one of the great loves of my life. And I believe genuinely that reality TV is one of the preeminent cultural forces of our age.

16:08It shapes how we live. President Trump, I believe, we became so familiar with on The Apprentice that then the American voters were like, oh, he's just like crazy Uncle Dennis who sometimes acts inappropriately at a wedding, but we love him. And then you get the likes of Matt Hancock rehabilitating himself through the vehicle of I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. and I'm guesting on various podcasts. And I sort of wanted to look at that as well, about how we are often fed a sort of narrative of someone and we have short memories and allow them back into the fold. So there is an invented, failed Tory MP in one of us who does go on an invented reality TV show.

16:49Called? Called Shit Happens, exclamation mark. And celebrities have to go undercover as sewage workers. and he has to do various challenges that end up with him being covered in human excrement. I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't become a real show after people have read this book. Do you want to host it? No. Absolutely not. No, thank you. But I had a lot of fun writing him. Yeah, he's an amazing character. I mean, the mix of characters are so interesting because there's some that you instantly loathe and it's so enjoyable to loathe them. And there's some that you're really rooting for. And then there's Martin, I think, is a character that you can make your own mind up about.

17:26Yes. He seems like somebody that at the start you might go, what is going on with this guy? What a strange man. And by the end, you sort of understand him a lot more. Who were you rooting for? And who did you enjoy writing those sort of loathsome qualities about? Such a good question. Well, I love Martin. I love Martin. And he's got a cat. He's got a cat. That's basically it. That's the only bit of you, I think, in the book. The cat. And the spa on the lake. And the perimenopause, yes. And the perimenopause. We'll get to that. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know how many of you, if any, have read The Party or indeed one of us, but The Party ends with Martin stroking his cat.

18:04And one of the questions I was most frequently asked when I went to literary festivals to promote that book was, does he kill the cat? And it hadn't even crossed my mind because along with the reality TV and fur and cotton, one of the other loves of my life are just cats. You could never kill a cat in a book. I could never kill a cat. So I part of the reason I wanted to write One of Us was to ensure that the cat survived. Wow. And is actually on the cover. So we know that the cat survives. And Martin, for me, he's the sort of quintessential outsider who is desperate to belong. And he hasn't realised yet that true belonging begins with being true to yourself, about yourself.

18:47So he struggled with his sexuality all of his life. he's been secretly in love with his best friend Ben Fitzmaurice ever since they met at school and then something happened at Ben's 40th birthday party that made them fall out in dramatic style but Martin is still hell-bent on revenge which if you think about it is a kind of love yeah because he's so sort of obsessed with yeah with getting back into Ben's inner circle to bring him down and that's where we meet him at the beginning of One of Us and the reasons I end up rooting for Martina because I believe that it all comes from a sort of self-torture like his feeling that he isn't accepted is all self-imposed it's all this fear that he's not enough and I think so many of us can relate to that even if we can't relate to the unlikable ways in which he sometimes acts and the other thing that I like about Martin is that he's acerbic he's an acerbic observer and he's brave enough and funny enough to say the things that I wouldn't say yeah I love that about So I can kind of use him as a vehicle to say things that I don't think and would never say, but that amuse me that he does.

19:54And then I end up giving him a bit of a redemptive arc. So I love that it ends up more hopeful than it began for him. Absolutely. Although you for a couple of characters and I don't know who's read it and who's not. So I'm sort of being choosy with how much I say. And there's something I want to say in a minute that might blow a bit of the plot, but we'll see how it goes. But with a couple of the characters, they realise that revenge actually isn't as sweet as imagined. And I thought that was so interesting because, you know, again, a very relatable storyline. Many of us will have, you know, dealt with injustice or someone's done us over or whatever the situation is.

20:32And you plot revenge in your head or fantasise about it. And you imagine that it's going to feel so great and conclusive by the end. But actually, that's not the case for your characters. Why did you decide that? Exactly that. I think, you know, I'm a Scorpio. There was this amazing video of Margaret Atwood being asked recently about being a Scorpio. And I feel I set the trend for that because she came on How to Fail and I asked her about being a Scorpio. And she said, you know, of course I hold grudges. I'm a Scorpio. It's the life I've been given. And it's so true. Just blame the stars. Yes.

21:08I definitely hold a grudge in that I will forgive I will never forget and it is very rooted in injustice if I feel someone has done something wrong to someone I love it's like I'm keeping a list of names yeah and are you writing them down I'm not actually that bad I'm not quite writing them down um but it's a bit like that with exes as well if you feel like an ex has done you wrong and you have that sense like well what am I going to wear today in case I run into them in the street and I want to prove the point that they made a massive mistake by breaking up with me and then if it ever does happen and if you ever do cross paths with that ex or that person who did your friend wrong it's actually not that satisfying because the narrative you built up in your head you're right bears very little relation to the disappointing individual that they actually are and you realize that's the revenge yeah yes that's true my friend said to me once the best revenge is a life well lived yeah which I think is very wise I love um but yeah I I just wanted to show that revenge really is a form of twisted power in and of its own way and Martin is seeking revenge on Ben because part of what he now thinks he loathes about Ben is the fact that power has corrupted Ben and he's on course to become the next Tory prime minister But actually, revenge is twisting Martin into someone he isn't fundamentally.

22:28Yeah. And it's partly why I developed this somewhat unlikely friendship between him and the eldest daughter of Ben Fitzmauritan's wife, Serena Cosima, who's an environmental activist. Because there's something about Cosima, who's 17. There's a purity in her vision. Her ideals are entirely uncorrupted by the realities of adulthood or cynicism. and I liked the idea that Martin could reconnect with an innocent part of himself through their friendship. Yeah, you can just see how tortured he is, you know, even sort of looking back to the school days of feeling, and it's, again, you've woven in class into this storyline as well and I found that so interesting because, again, like many of us, I've certainly felt like, oh, I'm not in the cool gang or I can't penetrate that group of people, they will not accept me.

23:19And again, it could have been all completely in my head And I had this really interesting shift in my teens where I went to a state school and I became really good friends with a group of public school boys. It was a very unlikely pairing. And we all found each other completely fascinating. But there were at times where I'd be maybe at a party and there would be an extended group that I didn't know. And I would feel really like commoners mark excluded, not accepted. Or I would see them as much more sophisticated probably than they felt. They were all about 16. but it just shows how the like the lengths that you go to and also the the mental torture you put yourself through because it's almost comfier to think of yourself as an outsider because then it sort of validates all the feelings of insecurity you've got like oh I'm right to to not like myself very much I'm not accepted by anybody it's such it was just such a clever a clever dynamic between the two of them?

24:14Thank you. I'm obsessed with class, it turns out. And again, I didn't realise what I was writing about until someone told me, oh, you're very good at class. I was like, oh, is that what it is? Interesting. And you're so right about outsidership. Exclusivity thrives on othering because you can't be exclusive unless you're tribally defining yourself in relation to someone who's outside of all of that. And that's an interesting dynamic to play with. And I think part of the reason I'm obsessed with class and belonging and all of those things, as you know, I grew up in the north of Ireland, even though I speak with a very English accent.

24:55So we moved out there when I was four. My dad got a job as a surgeon in the local hospital and I never fitted in, even though it was my home. And then I ended up getting a scholarship, just like Martin to a boarding school in England when I was 13. And from the first day of that school, I was sort of accepted because I spoke in the right way. But there again, I didn't belong because I hadn't grown up in that environment and I didn't know the rules. And quite quickly, I felt like I had to learn how to code switch. And that's a sort of performance. And so then when you're performing, you can't accept yourself either.

25:31And I always remember our queen, Brene Brown. Oh, I know. We are blessed to live in the same lifetime. Yes. What a time to be alive. I know. But I remember her saying something that has always stuck with me about the difference between belonging and fitting in. So when you're fitting in, you're changing yourself according to what you think that cool group wants of you. And when you belong, you're accepted exactly as you are. And so I think all of my characters are searching for belonging. And only a few of them are brave enough to do the self-work that true belonging requires. I mean, much like the character Fliss, who I loved.

26:09I love Fliss. How much can I say about Fliss? I feel like, I mean, does anyone mind spoilers? No. You can say. There's a question I really want to ask, which involves me having to say that she dies. That's OK. We learn that she dies quite early on. We do. Yeah, yeah. It's early on and it becomes a really interesting, deep thread of the story. So we haven't really ruined anything there. But what I found so fascinating was that you wrote a very short chapter where she's talking about being dead. Yes. I was like, that is such a great idea. Fascinating. Why did you do it? Oh, my gosh. You're so clever to ask about that.

26:50I mean, I'm really not. You are. No one else has. Oh, OK. Good. And you are. Great. Thank you. It was a very late addition, that chapter. So Fliss, yes, she dies. And in the opening chapter, Martin is invited to her funeral. And that's his way back into the Fitzmaurice family fold. And we don't know how she's died or why. And so there's a slight mystery there as well. And when I wrote the first draft of the book, I wrote it straight through four narrative voices on rotation. So Martin, Richard Tate, Serena and Cosima, the daughter. And then I wrote one big chunk of Fliss that sort of opened the second half of the book, just explaining what had happened to her from her perspective.

27:35And then when I read through that draft, my agent said, you know, actually the beating heart of the story is Fliss. And I think she should be seeded through the book earlier and like all the way through. and I realised how right she was because in a way by constraining Fist to just one part I'd been guilty of doing what so many of the people that she knew and loved had done to her which was to sort of treat her as the black sheep of the family and kind of sideline her and not pay her much attention and so I decided to thread her through the book. That's by the way quite annoying in the middle of writing a book so you've then got to do that like yes that's wonderful because you now got that you're like I know I've got to do that what yeah it's gonna take me so long I know there was so much but then I thought oh how can I do it what if she has this voice from beyond the grave which gives her the power that she never had in her lifetime which is that she can see everything that's happening and all the motivations and I knew it was a risk and I thought oh have I gone a bit mad no but then I did it anyway and I said to my agent if I've gone a bit mad just tell me and she really liked what I'd done and so that's why she exists in that form and actually I mean you and I have spoken about this so much my belief is that not everything can be explained by the materialist scientific paradigm actually energy does last forever and And I love the idea that there is this collective spiritual plane.

29:10Me too. Yeah, where people can communicate from. Otherwise, life is really bleak. Yeah. I just can't bear the thought like, you just die. That's it. Bye, everyone. I love the fact that you included that and that she has this sense of belonging, actually, after she's died. I thought that was so, so beautiful. By the way, on that note, who's listened to the telepathy tape? Me. I was about to ask you that, too. Have you not? Oh, guys, you're about to lose. forget the book of your life forget one of us just go and listen to the Timothy tapes I'm up to date with series two oh my god it's incredible I'll say no more but if you like that kind of thing then that is the podcast for you as well as Happy Place and How to Fail yes putting that out there but it's a limited series whereas Happy Place and How to Fail will just continue until we die and then talk to you from the dead oh yeah we'll continue podcasting from the other side.

30:07We need to hit those quotas. You really do. That's ridiculous. But I loved that character. I loved how misunderstood she was. And I think, again, many of us will relate to that, that nobody quite gets us or understands our motives or, or in her case, you know, flat sort of don't, don't believe what she's saying. I found that so heartbreaking, so heartbreaking. There's a lot of women in this book who aren't believed when they speak their truth. And a little fun fact is that there is a scene set in One of Us, which is quite a seminal scene for the things that happen, which is set in the British Museum and it's set against a backdrop of an exhibition on female rage.

30:51And that's an exhibition that I was asked to be a guest curator for. And it was an amazing experience because it was looking at representations of female rage through the millennia and all of these extraordinary sort of sculptures from Indonesia and bronze castings of Lilith. And it was just really mind expanding. And they asked me to give a speech for the opening, which I did. And in the book, Ben and Serena attend that opening. And Serena's looking at the woman giving a speech in a purple jumpsuit. That was me. Yes, that's so great. She's just wanging on about female anger. Why can't you just shut up?

31:26And that was me. That's so brilliant. I didn't know that. Let's talk about Serena, because I know that she's a character that you adored writing. Yes. Tell us why. So Serena is really unlike me in terms of how she looks, in terms of her background, in terms of what she values and in terms of her emotional repression. Well, I can't even say it. That's how unrepressed I am. Her emotional repression. But there was one stark point of similarity, which is that she is the first woman I've written who's going through the perimenopause slash menopause as I was going through it. And I don't think there's enough representation of that in fiction yet.

32:08There's so much amazing work that has been done by our dear friend Davina McCall and many other phenomenal women. And I'm so grateful to them because I know so much more than I did. But I want to see more of that in fiction because hormones affect us so hugely. Half the population go through it. I've never seen it represented in a film that I can think of. No. Why is that? It's a guarantee we're going to go through it and it's just missed out of all these stories. And it's so interesting because there probably are characters who subconsciously or otherwise are informed by what they're going through because they're a certain age, but it's never been explicitly stated.

32:45So I wanted to write Serena going through hot flushes and anxiety and also grappling with this idea of transition. and for Serena it's a fear that she's losing the one thing that she has always thought is her worth which is her physical beauty and she finds it very difficult to grapple with the fact that she thinks she's losing that she thinks that her body's changing and that was a very interesting character to write because she's sort of on a threshold. The other way in which I really appreciated writing her and getting to know her is that she is a mother of four children and because she comes from this certain background, it's kind of upper class background.

33:25She's packed them off to nannies and boarding schools without really questioning it, because it's just what her family have always done. And during the pandemic, the children come back home and she realises to her surprise that she loves being a mother, but she doesn't feel that she can admit that. So there's still this slight sort of distance between her and her children. And she's trying to make amends, but kind of getting in her own way. And the reason that was so powerful for me was because I had just come to terms with the fact that I was not going to be a mother in the conventional sense.

33:58I'd just come to the end of a 12-year fertility journey. And this is the first book I wrote in the aftermath of that. And I think that informed one of us in so many ways. It gave me a sense of liberation that I'd never had before. It gave me a sense that maybe I was enough without having fulfilled this thing that I thought of as a kind of biological imperative. I thought it made me a failure as a woman not to have children. I no longer think that. And part of the reason I'm able to say that is because writing Serena healed me because I was able to explore motherhood on the page. And that's one of the great privileges of what we do is that we can explore other lives on the page.

34:40Yeah. And think how that's going to touch so many other people as well who have been through the same as you. It's going to, that's that ripple effect is amazing. It's another beautiful part of getting to write down your thoughts, your feelings and have that level of catharsis. It's amazing. Absolutely. And you can also write down what you imagine and all the really difficult things about being a mother, too. Yeah. And so just having that opportunity to explore someone's internal mechanisms around that, that was really, yeah, it was it was it was really helpful to me, actually. Yeah, she's a great character.

35:12I love following her whole story and some horrendous things that she goes through and trying to find her own self-worth. You really get a sense of that throughout the whole book. And also, as you say, the importance of touching on perimenopause and menopause in fiction is huge. And you've definitely kickstarted that for many people. Now, as you said earlier, you are a huge fan of reality TV. and I want to know how your favourite franchise the Real Housewives franchise may have informed some of the dynamics some of the power play maybe even some of the characters I don't know and now we're getting to the real stuff let's get to the meat of this shit Jamal oh my gosh the Real Housewives informs my everyday like there's barely there's barely a day that goes by that I don't watch some kind of episode of Real Housewives really it's my comfort place can I admit something yes I've never seen it.

36:05That's okay. That's okay. There's time. That has caused a gasp over everything we've said so far. There's still time. I've got Christmas is coming, so I can watch it then. And I am your perfect guide. Okay. I will take you by the hand and lead you through. Okay. Part of the reason I love The Real Housewives is because when I started watching it, it was still so vanishingly rare to see groups of women of a certain age grappling with things like widowhood, dating through menopause, bankruptcy, going to jail. Yeah, it's quite, I'm getting the picture, it's extreme. But it's also mundane in the sense that they're also grappling with raising teenage children or what to wear on a trip to Amsterdam.

36:50There's all that sort of stuff as well. And it was so rare to see that age group of women on our screens in any scripted drama. and it was also the first place that I saw the reality of fertility treatment depicted on the Real Housewives of OC, Megan King Edmonds, if anyone remembers that. That was so niche. That was happening when I was going through IVF and there was no other conversation about it. So that's why I first got into it and as a novelist it's an incredible resource to see how women who are not always like us can interact and of course yes it's camp and fabulous and over the top a lot of the time, but it's also real.

37:31And there are true friendship dynamics at play there where they fall out and they make up. And I suppose one of the things it's taught me again and again and again is that people act in unexpected ways all of the time. And that actually to make your characters believable, you shouldn't make them consistent. You should always throw in an element of surprise, something where you're like, oh, I can't believe they did that, or I would never do that, or that makes them a bit unlikable because that is all of us. We are all a bit flawed. And when placed under pressure, we do act in unexpected ways. So it definitely informed some of the character dynamics.

38:09Yeah, I love that. I mean, none of us are consistent. My God. No. I mean, we're really, really not. I think that's so important to weave into all the characters. I would love to know more about your writing process this far into your writing career. because I think, like you say, not only do you, you know, hopefully get better at writing, I'm not just talking about you, like any writer, like doing any skill, you hope that you get better at it, but also I think you hone the process. And I don't know about you, but when I first started writing, I very much applied the rule that I should write until I'm on my knees.

38:48I've got nothing else to say and actually again listening to one of our greats elizabeth gilbert oh i've learned so much from her about knowing when to stop and you know her whole thing is like she'll have a an unfinished sentence i think that might be a hemingway thing but she'll have an unfinished sentence so she has to go back to it but i think knowing when to stop during a day is so key to writing well and often you can just flog a dead horse and then you know the next day you're like everything i've written i'm deleting it was shit you know the thing you did the day before it's maybe little and often but I wonder what your process is at this point there is so much that I want to say about this it's such a rich topic to discuss because Elizabeth Gilbert is totally right and she she writes in Big Magic about the myth of the torture creative genius yeah who is very often male and in his garret and just tearing his hair out because it's just so awful having to create and be a genius where is the muse and ultimately for most of us we don't have that privilege we we are not independently wealthy we can't afford a garret we've got day jobs and like if we want to write we have to fit it in around the rest of our lives and I think there's a really great and magical discipline to that and I think we fetishize the other thing without paying attention to this bit which is living life that makes you into a better writer in my opinion.

40:13And for me, because I started out writing novels when I did have a full-time job on a newspaper as a staff feature writer, I had to get scraps of time in my lunch break. I would go to Costa Coffee on York Way or on train journeys or at weekends. And my deal to myself was that I would write a thousand words and then I would stop. And it didn't matter if I thought those 1000 words were terrible, because as you say, you go back and edit them. And that's the great joy of writing a book is that there is an element of time and so I yeah I don't force myself to have five out to rise at 5am have like a matcha tea go for a five mile run do my affirmations my meditations my journaling I mean I'd be exhausted by that I just it's overwhelming so um I don't do I don't have a routine um the only thing that I try to do is at the beginning and end of a book I do try and go away for a consistent period of time.

41:08It might just be a week, but just so that I can really focus on landing the plane, like landing the creative plane. Yeah, it's so important. And also to honour it and mark it. I think we're all guilty of whatever we do, going, oh, yeah, done that, great, next. And you don't stop and go, wow, I wrote a book, or I'm really proud of that, or even get excited about what's to come next. Thinking about Big Magic, which, again, Elizabeth Gilbert features, I'm going back to the telepathy tapes, guys, but she features in series two. I haven't listened to series two yet. Is she on it? She's on it. She's on it.

41:40Talking all about creativity. And that book, who's read Big Magic? It's the most, I mean, I saw it on a shelf somewhere. I didn't raise my hand. It's just the most brilliant book. And, you know, she talks about all of this stuff, but also talks about the notion of an idea landing in your head. and if you don't then apply discipline and action to that bit of you know creativity that's landed in your brain it will float off into the ether and then someone else did she talk about the Ann Patchett story yes oh my gosh that story is and it's in big magic isn't it but it blows your mind that story basically Elizabeth Gilbert had this idea for a novel about scientists in the Amazon and she knew it was a slightly unhinged idea but she knew it was a good idea but she could never like quite get it and she sort of tried and it wasn't flowing and then she met Ann Patchett at a books conference and they hugged and they felt an immediate kindred spirit thing and she could feel the transference of her creative idea into Ann Patchett's mind and without ever having spoken about it Ann Patchett then wrote State of Wonder which was all about scientists in the Amazon yeah and like a sort of a lonely woman who is in love like the exact story exactly Exactly.

42:54That makes me panic more than feel comforted. I know. Well, I've had loads of ideas and I haven't had time to do them yet, so please don't steal them, anyone. Don't transfer them to Stephen Barber. No, I'm not hugging anyone. But I don't want to bump into Anne either. She's not having my idea. But did you have an element of that with any parts of the story? Or it could be the whole thing. When I wrote scripted, or before I'd written scripted, I was out running and I was running up these steps near where I live and there was an old shill on the floor and then a plastic bag. and for some reason my brain went what if you found a script of your life on the side of the road and I was like what I am what is going on I'm losing my mind and by the time I'd got home which is maybe another five minutes of the run at the end I thought that's quite an interesting concept maybe that could be could it be a tv show or like how could I flesh this out and then I thought I'd never written a novel maybe it could be a novel and it was my friend Clay who said just start writing it tomorrow it doesn't matter if you do anything with it just get it out of you would write it so she was the one that sort of motivated me to do the action bit otherwise I think I probably could have just ruminated about that weird concept for yonks and done absolutely nothing how much of that was sort of like a download or even small elements of the story can I just say before I answer that that I remember when Fern was writing scripted going for one of our dinners with Jamie Lang Lang and um us asking Fern what the novel was and she told us and Jamie and I looked at each other and we were like, that is the most amazing idea.

44:27It was so high concept and you were like so kind of humble about it. It was brilliant. But who is ever purely confident about anything they're doing? I am certainly not, ever, ever. And sadly, I think for many of us, it is when you get a good reaction to something, whether we like that or not. when people say oh my god one of us this character or this is how I felt reading it that's the bit where you go oh yeah I do believe in that idea I think I mean with a book it's slightly different because you have to commit to it enough to go back to it every day for like a year two years so you you do have to have belief but I think there is still an element of doubt like I've just made up this whole world in my head and I'm expecting strangers to get it like that is it's a weird process to go through.

45:18It's magical and then when people do get it and they do read it it's like having this extraordinary connection and so a lot of the time you'll never meet the person that you had a connection with on the other side of the page and that's it's such a beautiful thing but in terms of how much of one of us was a download I had a psychic tell me once that that there was a novel I was going to write and it was going to come to me in a dream and I was like okay let me get to sleep right now and it didn't come to me in a dream I'm always longing for that like Paul McCartney that's what my next book that's happened with my next novel that I started half writing and then ditched because I've transferred yeah that idea to you yeah you've dreamt wow yeah yeah I'll tell you about it later but we're not the book about no I can't tell me later okay okay yeah um so I didn't dream it but I was offered a trip to an Austrian fasting clinic which is in the book sounds really fun yeah okay now I don't know I was in a weird headspace and I was like yes it sounds I definitely I need that I need to punish myself so I went and um they encourage mindful eating which is actually a really great thing and you sit at this crisp white tablecloth and you stare at the most beautiful view of an Austrian lake and kind of mists unfurling in the background across treetops and you have to chew for at least 15 bites every kind of mouthful of buckwheat cracker.

46:43I'm never going. I know okay um while I was doing that because you you're encouraged not to talk or look at your phone or read anything so I was just staring out at this lake and these mists and I thought of the book like every meal time I thought okay this is where I want to start what's that character going to do in this chapter and then I would rush back to my room and I would write it all down. So there was a kind of dreamlike quality to it. And I had that week of pure percolation and sort of sitting with an idea. And I think that's so important that very often in this hustle culture, we are constantly encouraged to be doing.

47:22And if we're not doing, we feel guilty. And actually, if you are creating something, anything, it doesn't have to be a book. It can be like a patchwork quilt or an evening meal. you need time to allow your soul to breathe and so I think that's what that week gave me yeah without a doubt we did you're so right you know we are constantly filling our time and feeling guilty when we're not how do we expect any creativity to find its way to us when we're constantly on the go and also we need to get out there and live a bit as well I think that's the other part of hustle culture is that we're meant to be so like robots who are so disciplined but actually I think most great ideas whether it is you know it doesn't have to be a book could be artwork or music whatever is informed by you feeling something and again when we're constantly distracted that's so much less about feeling and so much more about just the doing bit you're almost numb in in those states so it is it is important to do that after you I mean not only do you write the book but then you go out and you do this bit where you're talking about the book you're getting people excited about it?

48:29What happens after that? Do you feel a pressure like, I've got to have another idea straight away, I've got to start work on another book? Or are you again, you know, decent at giving yourself that breathing space to see what might turn up? I am not that good at giving myself the breathing space, because I find it very helpful when I have a book out in the world, not to be too hung up on how it's received. Obviously, I love it being received well, but I'm also aware that it's not going to be by everyone. I now no longer read reviews unless they have been filtered by my trusted and beloved publicist.

49:09Yeah, bad idea. I can't do it. I've done it before and I know that it's only me looking for evidence that I'm a terrible person and it doesn't actually help. so part of the way in which I avoid being too hung up on how this book is being received is to have an idea for the next one and to hopefully be writing the next one as this one is coming out so I have an idea for the next one and I have started writing it but only just started and I love having an idea bubbling away because it's almost like a refuge as well it's somewhere I can go that feels safe so um in that respect I always like to be writing something but in another respect part of that is actually breathing space because it's breathing space into a new idea yeah but it has been a a like a relentless schedule which is something that I have wanted because I am so passionate about meeting all of you I know that you could be doing a million other things tonight and the fact that you've chosen to spend your time here and your money on books like I will never take it for granted and it's a really important part of why I do everything that I do it's connection that's what I love about it so I've wanted to do all of that and over Christmas I've been I've deliberately not booked anything and Justin my husband was like let's pretend we're going away I was like well I don't want to lie but I just want to be at home doing nothing nothing So yeah, I do have that time coming up.

50:38Same. I mean, that, my favourite words are do nothing. Oh my God, yes. When there's a weekend and there's nothing. Yeah. Oh my God, there's nothing greater. I agree. Just like watch shit, tell you, watch your housewives. Yeah, which is great telly, not shit. Great TV, sorry. I had to correct you there. Such a diss. But you're so, before I ask this next question, how are we doing for time? I have no clue. Yeah, okay, one last question. So it's not even a question, it's a statement. But you're so right about the gorgeous people turning up tonight and venues like this, this gorgeous venue, the book bar.

51:15I went to this amazing orchestra, it wasn't an orchestra, it was a quartet, but this beautiful string instrument night of Hans Zimmer music the other day. And you weren't allowed to get your phone out until the last song. And in a similar way to books, I think moments like that prove that yes, we get scared about AI or how much our kids are using their phones or how much we're screen addicted or whatever. But actually those things are immovable and people do want to feel something. They want to share a collective experience. We all are craving that more than anything. The other stuff's all just bad habit.

51:53Books aren't going anywhere. Live music isn't going anywhere. And I think you're so right. We just need to keep going out and doing this stuff and talking about things that really give us fire in our belly and make us feel you know part of something that's what we're trying to do with the happy place book club but also something that really lights that that that imagination in us all I think we get slightly deadened in adulthood we're just doing boring stuff all the time um mortar books and and you know and music and all of that good stuff yeah and I I also think just to add to that, that the thing that distinguishes us from AI, it's our flaws.

52:33And you have blazed the trail for celebrating the flaws and the imperfections. And how to fail does it spit for that as well? That is the thing that makes us unique. And it's also the thing that gives us our unique creative voice is actually the flaws and the imperfections. And if you read something that's generated by AI, it can be incredibly helpful when you're drawing up a legal contract. But you can always sort of tell it becomes this sort of soup of mildly Pinterest-y blandness. And that sometimes serves its purpose, but it's not satisfying for a human reader to read a whole book like that or to listen to a whole podcast like that because the flaws aren't there.

53:18And I think that that's such a great metaphor for everything really um and I just want to add my thanks not only to Chrissy and everyone at Book Bar but to you Fern um on a personal level you are such a dear friend but you've really sort of supported and championed me at moments of my own insecurity and doubt and I really also value as a listener to Happy Place and someone who loves everything that happy place stands for what you do for primarily women but some open-minded men too but for what you do for all the rest of us and i know that that has come at personal cost and i just want you to know that what you do is so deeply meaningful and appreciated it's so lovely of you don't make me go all emotional crikey cry that means it's a successful interview Exactly.

54:14I know what you're thinking. Well, it's likewise, you know how much I love our friendship dearly. And this is the great thing about being a woman. Like I said, just women. I mean, is that we want to like hold each other up and cheerlead each other and support each other. And that's just the best feeling ever. You know, your brilliant book doing so amazingly boosts me. And I know that you feel the same. You know, if I'm doing something, you'll champion me. it's just an amazing amazing thing so i love you elizabeth i love you too and if someone does you wrong the scorpio will bear a lifelong grudge correct and rightly so i've already got a few um so what we're going to do now is open the floor to any of you that would like to ask a question oh already hands up amazing crowd sometimes we get very sort of british audiences who are like heads down don't want to look at anyone um right who have we got first what's your name and what question would you like to ask i'm this able you miss um you write so well across different genres i wondered if your editor or agent had ever said please don't write in this genre and stick to this i'm um for context writing my very tricky second novel and i suspect is more bonkers than my editor agent are going to want when do you know to stick to your guns and if you're doing your own thing creatively and when do you know it's time to listen to advice wow that is an amazing question and actually you'll probably have very good advice for this as well um she will I have had a past experience of someone not getting what I was trying to write and saying no it should be structured entirely like this other very popular book which bore no resemblance to the book that I was writing and I learned not to send my work to that person because for me it's such a sensitive period of time when you're sharing your creative work for the first time that you really need to be able to trust that the person reading it if they do have suggestions can express them with equal sensitivity and can sort of express them as questions like oh can you tell me what you were trying to do here and that's so much better and if they lead with love and saying oh I love this bit that you did and I wonder if we could work some of that into this chapter it's so much better to receive so I would say it's not about dismissing someone's advice it's about asking them to express it in a way that you can digest and I think only you can answer the question of when it's an idea that you really want to lean into and the reason you will know is because you cannot ignore it.

56:56You might put it aside for a few days or a few weeks, but there's something that compels you to return to it. And I would say just trust your instinct. And as women, we have been so conditioned not to trust our instinct over so many millennia because so many people find it incredibly scary and threatening and powerful that actually you need to trust that creative voice and stick to it whilst taking advice from people that you also trust and respect to express it sensitively yeah amazing it sounds great by the way um uh I mean I definitely echo all of that um I think yeah you you have to go with that sense of gut definitely and dare to do things differently when it feels right as well and to break the mold and I think you're so right with the critique you you do want somebody that's gonna be able to deliver it appropriately I've definitely got a lot better with I mean obviously doing the job I've done even before I started writing books you get so sadly used to people just telling you exactly what they think of you and you're meant to stomach it I think with writing because I've always had a huge element of imposter syndrome I've greatly received any feedback because I believe I can only get better from again listening to the right people I'm not like giving it to hundreds of people and saying oh, Auntie Karen, can you tell me what you think?

58:18You know, it's people who are professionally there to do that. So I think the first, especially the copy edit, the first book I wrote, I was like, oh my God, I don't even know who this person, who's Jane and why is she saying this? I found it so unnerving. And I'm like, oh, that's so interesting that they've pulled that out and they don't quite understand it. You know, why am I not articulating it properly? So I think if you can even apply the stuff that feels tricky to knowing that it could be leading you down the right path then I think sometimes that works too thank you so much for your question who's up next yes what's your name hi my name's Jen hi Jen I thought it was great that you've spoken a lot on the process because I think a lot of what we hear is like the end results and like the final story that goes out so it's really quite exciting to hear um I'm a physio but I have loads of different creative art blurt and I kind of work in performing arts sector and I just wondered in your process both of you of writing whether you found these periods of like creative block and whether you reach to something outside the world of writing found useful or like I hope I'm like an exercise or something that you found helped you come back to first of all thank you for the amazing work that you do for me being a physio is so creative because you have to be so in tune with people's bodies and I think you're incredible.

59:42Yes is a short answer. I find exercise incredibly helpful. I know you're the same and I grew up thinking that I hated exercise because I hated team sports at school because I was rubbish at any team sport and then I went through a divorce in my 30s and I also went through unsuccessful fertility treatment and recurrent miscarriage and I wanted to get back in my body and to focus on the things that my body could do and to make myself feel strong and connected again and I started running it was a short lift period and I also started doing spin classes which I found that I loved just like being in that chapel of sound and you're and you're sort of in a team but you're individual and I realized that it wasn't exercise I hated it was just the fear of letting everyone down and I got into that and I got into yoga and now I've got into strength training in my 40s and all of those things are so important for me to get out of my head and into my body and when I'm doing those things I'm not actively thinking I'm being and so that's an important part of my routine and I think it's probably helped me not have creative block she said touching wood superstitiously but I think the other thing that's helped me not have creative block and I wonder if you're the same but I've so constantly worked to deadline as a print journalist and even doing podcasts you kind of have to get the work out there so you have to be less precious about it and think okay well it's not going to be perfect it's not going to be the great work of literature that I imagined I might right but it but it's unique because it comes from me and my voice is unique and your voice is unique and actually it's pretty good so I every time I start writing a book I think I'm going to build a beautiful cathedral and what I end up with is a perfectly serviceable garden shed but but garden sheds are great and you can store loads in them so it's sort of about that so um exercise basically um I hate spinning just gonna put that out there I'm you're a runner it's not for me it's not and my knees bad so I can't even run right now.

1:01:50Anyway, this is an interesting question for me to answer at the moment because I started writing a second novel and halfway through, like almost exactly halfway through, I was in a really good flow. I had this lightning bolt moment of inspiration for a nonfiction and there was such urgency behind it. I was like, if I don't do this now, I will never write this book so I called my literary agent and said bad news and good news actually but I've had another idea and I have to do this book now I've got to so you know I've got two different publishers so one of them had to be gently told that there would be a slight pause on that book and then this new book that I've got coming out in March flew out of me and I'm so glad that I took that sort of swerve and went down a different lane because I needed to write this book It's come at the right time for me in my personal life.

1:02:46It's taught me lots. I think it's fast tracked me in certain ways. So I'm really excited about it. It's quite a punchy book. It's definitely the most honest writing I've done, which is quite scary. But I've I've almost finished. I'm on the last edit. And that means that very soon I have to pick back up with a book that I wrote ages ago that is half done and I am shitting myself. Like what if it's not there in my head anymore? What if I'm going to have to read the first half? I can't remember half of it. But what if I don't have that feeling of magic and, you know, that fire in my belly with it?

1:03:26I'm really nervous about it and I don't know until I start. But I do think, like you said, Elizabeth, yes, there's going to be that bit of excitement. I love this idea. This is amazing. And then sometimes you just got to bloody do it and you cannot wait for this magic moment where today is the day where I start and I feel like inspired and ethereal and it's all going to flow out of me I'm going to wear a caftan and it's might you know put a hat on you know you just got to get up in your pajamas and do it and that's what I'm going to have to apply with this half finished book because I know I'm sort of almost dreading like getting back into it because I'm I can't remember if it's any good or not you know the whole thing's freaking me out so I think that's where you have to apply just the action bit and and not wait for to feel motivated I guess great question and can I just add to that I know exactly how you feel because before writing One of Us I had to reread the party just to like get all my facts in in shape um and I was dreading it absolutely dreading it I put it off for ages and ages and ages a bit like dog a dog being confronted with his own vomit I was like oh my god it's gonna be awful it's gonna be awful and then I read it I was like huh pretty good I I think you'll be so pleasantly surprised.

1:04:38I really hope so. Yeah, don't worry. It's going to be fine. I really hope so. Okay, who's next? Hey, what's your name? I'm Christina Fulcher. Hi. Christina. I saw Christina last week. And we're matching. Fellow Housewives fans. Oh, love. And those were obvious. Yeah. Happy birthday. Yes, happy birthday to you. Thank you. And my question is, as we're getting to the end of 2026, you've absolutely smashed it. It was the day. like all before like debuts and and now you have another you're publishing other books and like how thinking into now 2025 and then into 2026 how do you dream into like other businesses other projects do you manage a team how do you kind of dream into that bring that all kind of together well thank you for the question and thank you for your amazing support so christina and i connected during the pandemic when she ran an online yoga class along the principles of my book philosophy and I learned about it on Instagram I was like please can I come to the class it was amazing it was like very early on in the pandemic and we've stayed in touch ever since that's so great I know um I want to be really honest because it's happy Facebook club and I feel like I can be I don't have a plan and I don't know and part of this year has been feeling a degree of panic and overwhelm at the relentless pace of the last 11 months and the other part has been extraordinary gratitude that I'm in this place in my life where there are so many opportunities and I do fizz with excitement when I get to pursue them all but I haven't necessarily always been good at finding the right teams to execute the right things because what I do is creative and it's not managerial like my skill set is not managing people necessarily I've got no boundaries and I'm very conflict avoidant so that's not a good manager hard relate yeah and um and actually changing out members of the team for a conflict avoidant people pleaser has been a real challenge but through it I have grown and so I think 2026 for me is like now the right people are in place and so it's almost seeing what they say to me and how they envisage the year and my aspiration is to be more considered around things that I do not that I'm not considered what I mean by that is sort of doing less with more consideration and more elevation almost and therefore having more space in my life to feel aligned with peace and my soul purpose that's what I want for I turned 47 on Monday I was about to say for the second half of my 40s I was like for the remaining three years of my 40s that's what I'm striving for so that's a slightly vague mishmash in answer to your excellent question but I'll let you know how I get on oh thank you that is literally the main thing this suit thank you for asking that because I feel like you have such an empire and you do it with such grace yeah I mean very quick and short we the happy place if you don't listen to the normal podcast is much like Elizabeth's we do a weekly episode interviewing someone brilliant we have our festivals we've just launched early bird tickets if you want to come along there's all sorts of gorgeous like-minded people and you can do everything from yoga to listening to live podcasts to shopping and eating nice food and silent discos and all sorts of fun stuff.

1:08:08And we have a book in print, much like you. I know. I feel like I just copy you. I'm so sorry. I mean, I'm just copying everyone else anyway. So we have books we published. We had two amazing books last year. We published Youngblood's book and also Plame of Faith's amazing Sunday Times bestselling book, MILF, which is an incredible read. So we are continuing to publish brilliant stories that will hopefully be helpful to people. And we launched our Happy Place Marketplace as well. last year um so we we're trying to make this wellness space less overwhelming and we've curated and handpicked some gorgeous little brands that we love working with a lot of them are female run and british run businesses um so do go check it out and we do these gorgeous edit boxes that we do like four drops a year full of amazing products 100 quids worth in uh in a box for 29.99 so it's a right bargain yeah i love it sorry that was a much better answer i mean i don't know what I'm doing next year.

1:09:02I still have no clue. I'm fumbling through all of that and trying to parent a near teenager and a 10-year-old and all sorts of drama. But yeah, none of us know what we're doing. We're just bumbling along, all of us. But look, I think now what we're going to do is sign some books if you want them signed. If you want to leave and go home, we won't be offended. We're just going to wave you on your merry way. But yeah, we'll maybe form some sort of queue because again, we're British and we do queues. But before we do that, Massive thank you to the amazing Elizabeth Day. Thank you so much. Thank you.

1:09:36Thank you to amazing fans. Thank you, my darling. Oh, my God. That was the most fun ever. I just loved it. And if you watch this on YouTube and don't just listen to it, you need to check out Elizabeth's suit, which I can't stop thinking about. It's just like emerald, sparkly, velvet, dreamboat of a suit. it was just the best if only I could hang out with my mates every night and chat about books that's what I'm thinking I simply cannot believe we are already in December what is going on so do you want to know what our final read of the year is of course you do it's called fundamentally by Nasaiba Eunice now do you recognize that name she was the first member of the audience to ask a question to me and Elizabeth at the book bar so she's already a dedicated member of the happy place book club and we just love this.

1:10:27Do you know what? Elizabeth and I were actually a little bit mortified because Nassaiber asked a question about advice for anybody who's looking to write something a bit different to something they've written before and we both gave advice before we realised that she is a celebrated author. This book fundamentally has had a lot of hype and love around it for very good reasons. We were sort of quietly mortified that we had offered any advice at all. So let's talk about the novel. In this book, Nadia is an academic who's been disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, Rosie. So she decides to make a getaway, accepting a UN job in Iraq.

1:11:05Meanwhile, Sarah is a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just 15. And Nadia is struck by how similar they are, both feisty and opinionated from a Muslim background with a shared love of dairy milk and rude pickup lines. This book is so funny so well written you might not have expected that from the description that I just gave but it is laugh out loud funny I'd love it if you would read along with us so come and have a chat about the book on Instagram at happy place book club in the meantime a massive thanks again to Elizabeth to the producers of this episode Anushka Tate and Basil Ox to be and to you whether you were there on the day or have joined us here I appreciate you loads bookworms

1:11:51Thank you.