WEBVTT - Read This: What’s On Jessica Stanley’s Bookshelves? 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:02.840 Hello again. It's Daniel James and I'm here to share 0:00:02.920 --> 0:00:07.640 another episode I read this Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast, 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.399 hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:14.520 conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.920 and around the world. In this episode, Michael is chatting 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:23.720 with London based Australian writer Jessica Stanley. As always, Michael 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:26.160 joins me to share a little bit more about the episode. 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.320 Hi, Michael, Daniel James. 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.000 Hello, So, Michael, you make a bit of a mission 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:33.600 in this episode that if you go to someone's house, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.120 you're definitely going to spend time scaring their bookshelves. 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:41.120 Correct, Yes, doesn't everyone. Isn't that just a basic thing 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:43.400 you do when you go into someone else's house. I 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.240 am one hundred percent having a furtive perv at what's 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.559 on every bookshelf, and I am passing judgment all the 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.199 way through. This week's guest, Jessica Stanley says that she 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:55.560 does it, but she doesn't pass judgment, and I believe 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:57.880 she's lying. We all look at it and we all 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:00.640 have very strong opinions. And then the other thing is 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.360 like I'm partnered up I know you are too, Daniel, 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.640 But if you're single, I would encourage people to use 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:11.800 people's reading lists, their book recommendations as the ultimate dating determinant. 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:15.000 You know, let's forget dating apps. Let's just say, give 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.600 me your top three books. And if someone doesn't pass muster, 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:18.759 they can get stuffed. 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:21.120 It really can reveal a lot a better person, can't it. 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:24.279 And the idea of what's on someone else's bookshelves plays 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:26.280 a bit of a key role in Jessica Stanley's new 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.840 novel City Yourself Kissed. Tell me a little bit about it. 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.280 No, you're absolutely right. The thing that spurred me onto 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:37.600 that particularly unkind diatribe is that this novel that we're 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.720 talking about today begins with all the kind of beats 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.520 and expectations of a conventional rom com. You know, there's 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:46.920 a meat cut, a grand gesture, someone falls in a 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:51.360 lay human connection. But Jessica Stanley is a really smart writer. 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:54.560 She's much more interested in the question of kind of 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.520 human connection and in what comes next. This is a 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:01.800 book about the decade after the World Romance. She follows 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:04.800 her two characters, Coralie and Adam, as they go through 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:08.920 children and renovations and jobs and extended families and friends 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.760 and disappointment and corrosion and compromising, just all the grit 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.200 and grist of everyday life, which could be a trudge 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.079 in the hands of a lesser writer, but a writer 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:22.200 like Jessica Stanley turns it into something graceful and playful 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.839 and funny and dare I say it even romantic. It's 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:28.280 quite the feat and it's lovely to chat to her 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:28.760 about it. 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.680 Coming up in just a moment. What's on Jessica Stanley's bookshelves? 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.280 Where I want to start is an element of the 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.040 meat cut in your book, which is the swapping of 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:51.360 apartments and the looking at other people's bookshelves. And I 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:53.920 want to know, when you visit someone's house for the 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.640 first time, how nosy are you on the question of 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:57.760 what's on their bookshelves? 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:03.120 Well, I'm interested, but as with most things, I'm observing, 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.880 but I'm not judging. So I'm interested to see what 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.280 people are reading. But by the time I've made it 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.639 into someone's home, I'm probably intimate with them anyway, so 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.000 I'm certainly not judging. And also I find a lot 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.040 of people in their thirties I'm not in my thirties. 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:20.240 I'm forty three, but a lot of people in their 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:22.760 thirties have moved around so much anyway that maybe they 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.960 would think their shelves weren't really reflective of them, so 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:29.600 to be judged on them would be upsetting. Whereas I'm 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:33.200 one of those people who I started amassing my books 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:35.640 when I went to the Lifeline, book Fair and Camera, 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.840 and I've taken them from every house to every house 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:41.400 my entire life. 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.840 Would someone know a lot about you from your bookshelves? 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:48.480 I think so. One thing that I've done since I 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.560 was really young I probably wouldn't do it now is 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.760 that my books have always been separated into women authors 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:59.280 and then male authors, and I always put the women 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.720 authors in a special in a special place, and the 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.240 male authors I put, you know, in a secondary location 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:08.040 outside the bathroom or something like that. 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.600 Are they books on a shelf that would disqualify a 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:12.680 person for you? 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:17.400 I think I would feel frightened and concerned if someone 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:19.360 had a top Gear book. 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:21.960 Oh yeah, good, yeah, nan out the door. 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:27.160 But apart from that sort of thing, no, because who 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.479 knows someone might have a book because they're reviewing it 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.200 or writing a nusty essay about it. Yeah, I just 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:33.120 I couldn't be sure. 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:36.760 Are there books for you that you would insist that 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.000 someone read if you wanted them to understand you? 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:44.359 Wow? Well, in consider a soft kissed I have Adam 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.960 say to Coraley that he loves the Don Watson book 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:51.919 about Paul Keating, and that makes sense for him because 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.479 he is a political journalist. And Coraly notices that the 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:59.000 spine of that book is corduroy. It's been read, so. 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:01.320 I love that sscription. When I came across it on 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:03.239 the page, I was like, I'd never heard it before, 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:07.200 and a corduroy spine denoting a much loved book really 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:08.080 tickled me. 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.880 And that's funny because I made my husband read that 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:14.960 book when we first met, as well as Watch the 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:19.200 Castle and What's the Murder of Old Chopper? 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.520 Oh, there you go, Chopper, The Castle and Memoirs of 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:25.680 a Bleeding Heart? Yeah, that's a good cultural three. Was 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:27.960 that the Australia that you needed him to understand? 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:29.839 That's exactly it. Yeah? 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:33.320 Did he have equivalent titles he felt that you needed 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:34.279 to understand? 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:38.839 Gosh, I feel really bad. Well, if he did, I'm 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:39.400 not across them. 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.440 You're very literate already though. I imagine your love of 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:46.360 Allan Hollinghurst, for example, would mean that a particular strata 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:49.640 of London society you had a pretty good understanding of. 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:55.320 Yes, but that wasn't my husband's strata of society. What 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:58.599 is Northern Irish? Because he's Northern Irish. So he is 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:03.120 very insistent that I regularly watch a meme which is 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.599 a guy from Northern Ireland saying this is a wonder day, 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:09.159 a wonder day because it's sunny. 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:12.920 There you go, that's a good thing to understand about, 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:17.839 that kind of Northern Irish energy. So tell me about 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:22.919 love and romance on the page. How crucial is it 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:25.200 to your reading history? How much is it something that 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:29.480 you relish, and how actively did you decide to subvert 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.200 those beats when writing Consider your Self Kissed. 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:37.160 It's strange because when I began writing this book, I 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:41.279 had just published a previous book that hadn't gone very well, 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.479 This is a Great Hope, which came out in twenty 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:47.640 twenty two. It had been reviewed really nicely but hadn't 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:50.000 made any sort of splash, and people who knew me 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.720 really liked it, but no one else seemed to notice it, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.000 And I couldn't even come over to launch it because 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:02.240 of the strange timing. But I had got to a 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:05.160 stage where I thought, Okay, writing a book isn't going 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.840 to change my life, And then I thought, well, am 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:13.160 I even going to try again? And I really felt 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.080 as if there was only one reason to try and 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:19.480 write another book, and that was for the love of 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:24.560 actually writing. And I had also come to a point 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:29.360 in my life where care and love feel like everything 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:34.120 to me, not just personally but in the political environment. 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:38.840 It feels like the most natural and intuitive response to 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.760 what's going on more generally, which I would characterize as 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.120 being quite hateful. And so, even though in the past 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.120 most of my most favorite books have been about families, 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.640 I wanted to combine that with a classic love story, 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:58.440 someone meeting someone and that feeling of falling in love, 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.920 but then to also follow that love for the next 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:07.240 ten years when things started to get hard. And one 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:09.440 of the books that I modeled it on, apart from 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.680 the Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, was American Wife 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:18.720 by Curtis Sittenfeld, where she follows fictionalized Laura Bush as 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:23.760 incredibly wildly. She falls in love with a fictionalized George W. Bush, 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.640 and I think you maybe follow them for twenty years, 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.320 and for some reason, she really gets you to care 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:33.439 about these two people. And so I thought, how can 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:37.720 I watch two people fall in love and convey that 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:42.600 to the reader, but also help people in a time 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:46.800 when it's pretty hard to concentrate on long form content 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:49.640 of any kind, and especially fiction. Maybe how can I 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.320 get them to fall in love with the experience of 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:53.160 reading about them. 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.080 One of the things I love so much about this 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:59.720 book is its approach to time. It's as much a 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.680 book about the passing of time as it is about love. 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.200 That actually, when we hit what we think of as 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.120 kind of rom com beads tends to be a kind 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:13.520 of constrained and kind of almost instrumental way of telling 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.720 a story that the point at which you get together 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.040 and you fall in love, that's the end of the 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.839 interesting bit, and what comes afterwards is just the kind 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.120 of day to day of life. Was it always going 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.080 to be that kind of sweeping decade long view. 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.120 Yeah, So I go around with a lot of material 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:32.920 in my mind, things that I think are funny or interesting, 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.480 funny things that people have said, and I sort of wait, 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.040 until I can come up with a structure or sort 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:42.760 of line my buckets up in a row to toss 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.600 the toss the content into, you know, like someone feeding 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.439 the penguins at the zoo. And this tenure structure came 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.360 to me right after the joint fortieth birthday party I 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:55.079 had with my husband. I had moved to London when 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.800 I was twenty nine, and I already knew him then, 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:02.520 but we got married pretty quickly afterwards, and so by 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.960 the time we were at our joint fortieth we had 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:07.480 had three children, and we had spent ten years together 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.680 as a married couple. And if I could have seen 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:12.600 when I was twenty nine, if I could have seen 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:17.960 this lovely party, my amazing husband, my lovely children, our friends, 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.240 my friend's children, all hanging out together and celebrating us, 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.679 I wouldn't have believed my luck. It was incredible and amazing. 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:31.520 But the actual emotional experience of having spent that ten years, 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.880 having reached the age of forty and been married for 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.920 so long, I really felt run over by a truck. 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:44.400 And the time, especially my experience of time, was incredible, 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:48.840 where days when you're on your own with a baby 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:55.360 can feel about twenty years long, and then something lovely 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.800 is happening to you and it just washes by and 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.920 is almost a dream afterwards. And so obviously, when I 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.920 was covering the ten years in the book, I was 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:10.280 trying to mimic that sense of time by zooming in 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:14.679 on some very special, deep emotional moments and then zooming 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:17.680 out and showing how time just runs away from you. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.079 When we returned, Jessica shares how being an outsider helped 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.880 her shape the main character, Coraly, and why she only 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:29.360 ever reads exactly what she wants to do. 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:31.080 We'll be right back. 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.880 Your protagonist, Coraly, for her as for yourself. In being 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:50.720 an outsider, that thing about starting your life over again 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.280 in another place and having roots elsewhere, How important to 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.800 you was it that Coraly was also an outsider in 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:00.400 the community that she was building. 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.640 Well, a lot of my favorite books feature an outsider 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:06.439 to a community, and I think it's the best standpoint 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:10.560 to analyze anything from. And of course, my favorite book 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.000 of all times, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:18.120 and Nick is the ultimate outsider. He embeds himself with 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.679 a family that is completely different to his own, and 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:26.040 he just notices every single thing about them, and that's 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:27.840 sort of what I want to do with Crawley, because 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.680 I am obsessed with being from Australia. It's a major 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:37.120 part of who I am. And I moved to London 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:42.520 for love, not necessarily to be in London, and since 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:45.960 then I've come to really love and appreciate it. But 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:51.000 I've also been noticing what's strange and funny about it, 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:53.640 and I want to write the book so I could 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:56.120 put everything that I'd noticed into a book. 0:12:57.400 --> 0:12:59.199 One of the things about that which I think you 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:01.720 capture so beautifully is the way in which any family 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:06.440 or any community is an accretion of different traditions and 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:11.160 different value sets, and an Australian amongst a bunch of Londoners. 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.840 It does seem an important counterweight to certain expectations around class, 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.880 around who's connected to who, and how that that Australianist 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.560 does seem to be a key element in the boog. 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:27.640 Have you had early readers in the UK? Do they 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.679 warm to Coraley's australianis? Do they recognize it? 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.760 It's funny because when I went around to bookshops, you know, 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:38.960 before books come out, you get taken around to you 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:43.360 try and interest booksellers in what you're selling, and I 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.520 was too shy to do the kind of pitch the 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:48.280 intro and when my publicists started off with it's about 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:52.280 an Australian in London, I internally cringed. I thought, these 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:54.720 people are not going to care. And that has been 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:58.839 my personal experience of living in the UK for such 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:01.559 a long time, is that when people hear that you're 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.360 from Australia, or when people hear an Australian voice, they 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:08.680 zone out. So I was anxious about how the book 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:13.400 would be received, especially if the australianist was foregrounded. But 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:19.880 everyone has responded really beautifully, although it's interesting to me 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:23.080 that no one has responded about her being Australian. I 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:25.080 think they have just responded to her as a person, 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:26.680 which is the most you can hope. 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:28.120 For, I think. So. I mean, the other thing you 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.680 have going for you is that telling a story of 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:37.120 the UK during that particular decade is one of massive 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:42.240 kind of social change, social anxiety, political turmoil. Do you 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.040 always know that Adam was going to be in the 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.720 political media sphere? Was that a useful tool for making 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.720 everything from Brexit to COVID to Boris Johnson a key 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:54.840 element of the story. 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:56.920 Yes, that was the only way I could think of 0:14:57.040 --> 0:14:59.920 to bring it in a way that was natural, because 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.440 when I moved over, maybe because I come from a 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:08.880 colonial mindset, I had this vast reserve of knowledge about 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.560 British politics that I was keen to show off, and 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:17.640 making Adam a political journalist seemed like the best and 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.000 most natural way to shoehorn it into a book. And 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.960 I also just had spent so much time. I think 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.680 it's hard to explain to people who weren't there the 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:34.920 way Brexit gripped the UK, because we really didn't know 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:36.920 from one minute to the next if we would have 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.440 a government, if we'd have a prime minister, or even 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:43.360 if we would have the ability to import toilet paper 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:47.840 or the chemicals for clean drinking water, and so watching 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:50.800 the news at ten o'clock became almost a matter of 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.600 life and death, and so I thought making Adam a 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:58.680 political journalist could really vivify that for the readers. 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:03.880 It also carries with it that thing love external pressures 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.680 on a marriage and on a relationship, because that's his 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:09.840 professional sphere. It's very clear that at any moment, you 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:12.000 know as you're reading it you have this kind of anxiety, 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:15.800 you understand the pressure they're under. You understand how close 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.560 at times to the edge Coralli is feeling. And you know, 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.200 if you have a passing acquaintance with UK politics, that 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:25.520 just around the corner is going to be something else 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.280 that means that Adam is not going to be present 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:29.240 in their marriage. 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:35.800 Again, yeah, exactly. And I think that the news environment, 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:40.360 whether we are really following news in depth or whether 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.000 it just comes to us through our feeds or in snippets, 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:48.160 it does have the ability to change our entire state. 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.600 And I have had the experience of being at home, 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:55.520 having a lovely time with my children, then glancing at 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.560 my phone and suddenly my life is ruined, or at 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.600 least my day, because of some horrible political thing that's 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:05.359 happened to me. And I felt that rather than that 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:10.080 being something secret or private that happens to everyone in 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:13.600 their house every day, why not bring that out through 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:15.920 Coraly's experience and make it something that we can talk 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:19.160 about and notice in ourselves the way that politics can 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:24.240 really have a real world impact on people that it's 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:28.160 being done too. Because I think politics is something that 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.199 some people do and mostly it's something that we have 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:36.080 done to us, and I really wanted to show that 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:40.960 from the perspective of someone having politics done to them. 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.960 You said before that your starting point wasn't really so 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:47.879 much the traditional rom com. But it's interesting how quickly 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.320 that shift between a meat cured, a grand romantic gesture, 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:55.199 a kind of rescue child from upon all those beats 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.520 that are so familiar to us from pop culture. There 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:01.760 is something about the life long aftermath of that that 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.200 feels relatively unwritten about. 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.320 I agree. Maybe I'm just blanking, but I don't feel 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:11.680 as though there are many in depth domestic strife novels 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:17.200 where two people are good, conscientious, thoughtful people who don't 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.560 have some kind of dramatic issue in their relationship. They're 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:23.640 just two people struggling to do their best. And that's 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:25.400 really what I wanted to show if I could. 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:29.479 Yeah, there's no false drama in there. There's no gender Bokay, 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:31.880 this person has suddenly done this massive act of betrayal 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:34.440 or whatever. It's just it's kind of hard to get 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:38.240 on with life and work and a creative life or 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:42.600 a kind of independent, imaginative life and parenting and all 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:47.240 that other stuff. How important to you is the conception 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:51.399 of yourself as a writer. Have you always thought ultimately 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:52.879 you would write books. 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.200 Actually, when I was young, reading was such a huge 0:18:57.240 --> 0:19:00.760 part of my life, and I really clearly remember when 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.479 we lived in Parkville. My parents would take me to 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:06.280 the library all the time. But there was a night 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:09.280 when the North Carlton library stayed open late, and so 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:11.600 I would go in my pajamas and dressing gown and 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.080 get my books for the week. And it was just 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:18.600 an absolutely mandatory part of my life to escape into 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.200 a book. It was almost like a life support system. 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:28.880 And in my house, books were venerated and authors were 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:34.680 as important as God's and so I just didn't consider 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:37.719 that I could take my kind of love of reading 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.840 and my love of writing and actually turn that into 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:45.879 a book. So I spent so long kind of trying 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:47.840 to earn money on the basis of it by being 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:51.399 a copywriter and that sort of stuff. And I didn't 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:53.800 start writing until I was about thirty, and my first 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.760 book didn't come out until I was forty, And so 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:59.879 that's a lot of life where I haven't conceptualized my 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:04.879 as a writer. And so now when I'm filling in 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.520 the card when I come into Australia to say what 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:11.320 I do. I write novelist and that makes me very happy. 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:14.800 But no, I wasn't one of those people who thought, yes, 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.320 that will be me someday. And I take a lot 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.080 of inspiration from people who came to it very late 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:22.720 and make it their life. 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:23.720 But I'll be. 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.480 Fitzgerald who didn't start writing until she was about sixty. 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.479 I need a Bruckner people like that. So there are 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:31.720 role models that I could look to. 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.960 It's funny many of those examples, many of those role 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:38.919 models of writers who come to it later are women. 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:43.720 That women's lives by and large don't allow for the 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:47.400 kind of space needed to give over to creative practice. 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:49.960 And so again and again you'll hear in these interviews 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.800 women who need to make that choice later rather than earlier. 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:59.480 Absolutely, and I have had to grow as a person 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:03.800 to be able to communicate to people who love me 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:07.680 that four hours a day minimum needs to be put 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:11.760 aside for me to be perfectly alone. And a lot 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:16.359 of women can't do that for a long time, whether 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.160 for personal reasons or just how their life is set up. 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:22.680 And so everyone who is struggling to do that, I 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:28.320 really feel for them. And I was that person for 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:29.520 a long time, so I get it. 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:35.880 Much like the rhythms in Consider your Self Kissed, There 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:40.320 is something too about time and being able to kind 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:43.359 of you know, I quite like the conception of not 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:45.800 really starting to write until you're thirty, not having a 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:48.800 first book till you're forty. Is if you can write 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:51.800 and write for pleasure and hone your craft and work 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:53.320 out the stories you want to tell them, the things 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:57.439 you want to capture, not having that sense of being 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:00.080 in a hurry, I think can only be a good thing. 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:01.960 Maybe, yeah, I agree, I think so. 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:04.760 The thing for me, part of the important part of 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.560 it was that sense of being an active reader from 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:10.119 an early age like that reading was very important to me, 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.160 but it wasn't just a passive experience that to read 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:16.240 something was to add something to the world. Part of 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:19.280 that is, yet, how is reader a job? I'm not sure. 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:20.040 I hope it is. 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.440 Well. For me, reading was pure freedom, and so I 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.560 would go into the library, get my ten or twenty books, 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:31.320 and I would deal with the words as they came 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:35.280 into my body and became emotions and images. And even 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:37.680 now I tend to read in a way that is 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.679 extremely agentic, so I never feel as if there's a 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:44.240 book I must read. I only read what I want, 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:48.600 and when words are coming into me, I can let 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:52.560 them wash over me. It is just the area of 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:57.160 my life where I feel totally on solid ground, totally 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:01.280 able to experience what the book is giving. It's something 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:03.520 I don't have anywhere else in my life, but it 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:06.560 makes me feel strong and happy. 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:11.480 Jessica Stanley's new novel, Consider Yourself Kissed, is available at 0:23:11.560 --> 0:23:13.080 all Good bookstores now. 0:23:19.600 --> 0:23:22.160 Thanks so much for listening to another episode. I've read 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:24.960