Speaker 1: I have two younger sisters. Their names are Lucy and Mully.
Speaker 1: Both are bringand and formidable, very very funny, generous, imaginative
Speaker 1: human beings. They're both accomplished professionals. They have children of
Speaker 1: their own at this point, and they are excellent parents.
Speaker 1: And yet, somehow, when we hang out and irresistible force
Speaker 1: grips us in WhatsApp groups and in each other's living rooms,
Speaker 1: on car trips and at family picnics, the three of
Speaker 1: us revert to our most juvenile, most unreconstructed selves. When
Speaker 1: I'm with my sisters, decades of adult life drop away,
Speaker 1: and all I'm interested in is being outrageous, being the biggest, smartest,
Speaker 1: the most adolescent version of myself all over again. And
Speaker 1: to be clear, it's entirely their fault. They are a
Speaker 1: pair of monstrous bitches. I know how lucky I am
Speaker 1: to have the particular joy of siblings, people who know
Speaker 1: you better than most people in your life. Sibling dynamics
Speaker 1: make for great literature. It's the thing that stays with
Speaker 1: you when you remember Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. And let's
Speaker 1: face it, Lizzie Bennett only makes sense because she has
Speaker 1: to navigate Lydia and Kidding's Nonsense siblings push and pull
Speaker 1: one another in surprising directions. In a book, they offer
Speaker 1: fixed points in character alongside the opportunity for shifting perspectives
Speaker 1: and surprising motivations. So today I'm talking with an author
Speaker 1: for whom that dynamic has shaped three brilliant novels. I'm
Speaker 1: speaking with Irish author kil And Hughes. I'm Michael Williams,
Speaker 1: and this is Read. This a show about the books
Speaker 1: we love and the stories behind me. Kilan Hughes is
Speaker 1: an Irish poet and writer, whose debut novel, Orchard and
Speaker 1: the Wasp, was published in twenty eighteen to rave reviews.
Speaker 1: Since then, she's written several award winning short stories and
Speaker 1: another novel in twenty twenty called The Wild Laughter. Her
Speaker 1: third and latest novel, The Alternatives, is maybe her best yet.
Speaker 1: I adored it. It follows the Flattery sisters, geologist Olwin
Speaker 1: Chefnell philosopher May and political scientist Rona, who were plunged
Speaker 1: prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances.
Speaker 1: When the novel picks up, we find them in their thirties,
Speaker 1: living somewhat distant lives fighting their own unique battles, but
Speaker 1: the disappearance of Olwin brings the siblings back together, forcing
Speaker 1: them to confront old wounds and rebuild alliances. As one
Speaker 1: of five children in her own family, Kilan is perfectly
Speaker 1: positioned to capture the specific tensions and dynamics that are
Speaker 1: at play with the Flattery sisters, And so that was
Speaker 1: where I wanted to begin our conversation. Siblings have played
Speaker 1: a major role in all three of your novels, and
Speaker 1: I'm interested in what it is about the sibling dynamic
Speaker 1: in particular that is useful as a novelist.
Speaker 2: I can't get away from it. Yeah, I need to
Speaker 2: write a novel now about just colleagues or you know, friends,
Speaker 2: But yeah, the mega theme seems to be established at
Speaker 2: adult siblings. I just think they're such interesting relationships because
Speaker 2: they're both a chosen relationship, but also they're not chosen.
Speaker 2: You know, if you do stay in touch as adult siblings,
Speaker 2: that's not a given, So there is an element of
Speaker 2: choice there, and the reasons why people stay in touch,
Speaker 2: for example, if their worldviews are very different, can also
Speaker 2: be really interesting. For example, you know, if you're in
Speaker 2: your fifties or sixties and your parents aren't around anymore.
Speaker 2: Sometimes your siblings are the only people who are evidence
Speaker 2: of the fact that something happened. You know, they were there,
Speaker 2: they know something. So you have this sense of your
Speaker 2: own life being more real because of their existence. And
Speaker 2: so that's something that's hard to put a price on
Speaker 2: it in terms of the trauma that you're willing to
Speaker 2: go through by being triggered by being around them or
Speaker 2: putting to bed things that have never been absolved, you know,
Speaker 2: or discussed between you. In our friendships, you would never
Speaker 2: put up with big, unresolved issues, and violence is done
Speaker 2: to put it kind of in an extreme way. And
Speaker 2: I do think that in adult siblings, when those relationships
Speaker 2: are maintained and they're fraud I do think that that's
Speaker 2: a very unique scenario where people have made a decision well,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a kind of calculus involved. This relationship
Speaker 2: is worth overlooking the fact that they haven't done this
Speaker 2: work on themselves, as usually the way you're going to
Speaker 2: think about it yourself, they're probably thinking exactly the same thing.
Speaker 2: So I think that shared experience is so formative. But
Speaker 2: even though experiences can be shared among siblings, they also
Speaker 2: might have been experienced very diff.
Speaker 1: One of the things you capture so well in the novel,
Speaker 1: I think is that a lot of those dynamics sent
Speaker 1: around the question of care and responsibility and how what
Speaker 1: we feel we owe to other people and the ways
Speaker 1: in which we feel we get the opportunity to choose
Speaker 1: to care or whether we're forced to care because of
Speaker 1: that dynamic. And I think that's a really interesting recurring
Speaker 1: theme in this book. Who are we responsible to and how? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I think that who you pay attention to
Speaker 2: is a form of care. Where your attention goes, So
Speaker 2: that's both kind of with how you spend your life
Speaker 2: in terms of the work that you do and the
Speaker 2: way that you spend your time, but also who you
Speaker 2: maintain relationships with. And I think that paying attention is
Speaker 2: a form of care. And it's really easy to forget
Speaker 2: that when we talk about the attention economy all the time,
Speaker 2: which is obviously a capitalist framework and is not a
Speaker 2: very helpful one. So I think, Yeah, the novel ended
Speaker 2: up being about care in a lot of ways that
Speaker 2: I didn't anticipate. And I was going to give it
Speaker 2: an epigraph by James Baldwin at a certain point, and
Speaker 2: it was love is the only reality, the only terror,
Speaker 2: and the only hope. And I think that you could
Speaker 2: equally kind of substitute in there for a love care,
Speaker 2: which is kind of a synonym. But then I thought, well, no,
Speaker 2: you can't start a novel with the James Baldwin quote,
Speaker 2: because it's going to be downhill from the reader's perspective
Speaker 2: from then. But I would never have known what the
Speaker 2: kind of epigraph or that kind of cohering idea would
Speaker 2: be at the beginning of the novel, or even halfway through.
Speaker 2: It's only when I get to the end of a
Speaker 2: novel that I really know what it's about. I think
Speaker 2: I might have been afraid to write a novel about Care.
Speaker 2: I think I was. You know, that might seem a
Speaker 2: bit twee or coy or weirdly directed if I knew
Speaker 2: that to begin with. It's more just I started out
Speaker 2: with this feeling that in paying attention, Alwan, the character
Speaker 2: who is a geologist and who works in the earth sciences,
Speaker 2: so she's kind of representing someone who works in climate change,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to think about what it is to
Speaker 2: love someone who does that work, and supposed to support
Speaker 2: them and acknowledge them as well as to be that person,
Speaker 2: And I was really afraid of where the novel might
Speaker 2: take me. So I'm very glad that it wound up
Speaker 2: being about the set of things that it's about. But
Speaker 2: I didn't know that to begin with.
Speaker 1: Do I understand correctly your partner works in climate change,
Speaker 1: In climate science, it's such a fascinating thing to me, Like,
Speaker 1: I have friends who work in that space, and I
Speaker 1: know when we're at a dinner or a social thing,
Speaker 1: there's only so far anyone's willing to ask them about
Speaker 1: their work because they're aware of the rich seam of
Speaker 1: despair that sits just beneath the surface. And it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating dynamic that I think you capture beautifully here. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's so it's so difficult to witness,
Speaker 2: especially if my partner is really interested in science communication
Speaker 2: and as a form of activism, I suppose, as a
Speaker 2: form of dealing with the feelings that arise from working
Speaker 2: in that area. It's so relentless and you kind of
Speaker 2: have to turn that into a form of action otherwise
Speaker 2: it would eat you up. And so for him, communication
Speaker 2: is part of the action. But I have seen at
Speaker 2: dinner party, at social event, at mingling in a lobby,
Speaker 2: how quickly the question goes from what do you do
Speaker 2: for a living? Too? Do you have hope? And then
Speaker 2: you see this mental calibration going on of how much
Speaker 2: time does this person have? How much nuance can I give?
Speaker 2: And it's such a lot of responsibility to be thrown
Speaker 2: on you, and at any given point of the day,
Speaker 2: you never know where it's going to come from. That
Speaker 2: someone ultimately is starting to run scenarios in their mind
Speaker 2: for their family, and it's loaded. It's extremely difficult. So
Speaker 2: it's not just the work itself and the relentlessness of
Speaker 2: the data and the relentlessness of the pushback that there
Speaker 2: is in terms of dissemination of that data and really
Speaker 2: trying to equip people with what they can do, what
Speaker 2: they need to know, but also that care giving load
Speaker 2: that you're suddenly you suddenly have as a responsibility, you know,
Speaker 2: which can be very very existential and very real in
Speaker 2: terms of the impact on the other people.
Speaker 1: There's so much locked up in that, you know, the
Speaker 1: relationship between the individual and the societal responsibility, that relationship,
Speaker 1: as you say, between care and responsibility but the question
Speaker 1: about whether one has hope or not comes through again
Speaker 1: and again in the alternatives, and actually part of the
Speaker 1: power of the book is that it renders that question
Speaker 1: almost irrelevant. Having hope or not having hope is beside
Speaker 1: the point. We still have to find a way to
Speaker 1: go on, and we still have to find a way
Speaker 1: to be true to one another and to find meaning
Speaker 1: in whatever's left either way of it is the novel
Speaker 1: singularly well placed to tease out those ideas, do you think?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: I set this novel as close to now as I could.
Speaker 2: I missed by about nine months, but I tried to
Speaker 2: set it exactly when it would be published. So as
Speaker 2: I was writing, I was kind of changing the month,
Speaker 2: you know, and I was writing slower than I hoped,
Speaker 2: and I was trying to anticipate what was going to
Speaker 2: happen next year, when was COVID going to end? You know,
Speaker 2: what would twenty twenty three look like, But also try
Speaker 2: to capture the moment that I was in, because there
Speaker 2: are at the beginning of the novel there's a section
Speaker 2: that's set a little earlier, and it turns out that well,
Speaker 2: it felt so urgent to write about now because everything
Speaker 2: is changing so rapidly. It seems like the most interesting
Speaker 2: and also critical questions of our time are happening right now,
Speaker 2: you know, and even tomorrow there'll be even more so.
Speaker 2: And so it just felt like, you know, an urgent
Speaker 2: thing for me to do. That's the feeling that I
Speaker 2: went into the novel with. But then the process of
Speaker 2: writing it and trying to capture the now but also
Speaker 2: anticipate what's just around the corner mirrored partly what the
Speaker 2: novel is about, you know, with that attempt to lurch
Speaker 2: forward in the story as the carpets being pulled from
Speaker 2: beneath our feet, and that's a form of adaptation. So
Speaker 2: I was kind of having to do that as I
Speaker 2: was writing. And you can't write really any character in
Speaker 2: their profession today without getting, you know, the huge issues
Speaker 2: of our time, inequality, climate change, all of the things
Speaker 2: that sit with under underclimate change, like biodiversity loss, you know,
Speaker 2: land use problems, all of that. Those issues are pretty
Speaker 2: much epitomized in every job. There's there's no neutral zone.
Speaker 2: I suppose there's a cliche that a lot of novels
Speaker 2: open with the weather and often close with the weather
Speaker 2: as well, and that you know, Offen, on the last page,
Speaker 2: there'll be some mention of light or some movement towards
Speaker 2: the sky, you know, And and so as a writer,
Speaker 2: it's really tough because you know there's a reason why
Speaker 2: why that's that's the case, and also a tone is established,
Speaker 2: but now there's no neutral weather. So as soon as
Speaker 2: you try and do that, which is just really to
Speaker 2: open a novel, it's already embroiled in these big, existential,
Speaker 2: species wide questions.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned the question of how one's profession
Speaker 1: relates about stuff, because the great engine of this book
Speaker 1: is actually the four different jobs of the four sisters
Speaker 1: and the work that they do. And I'm interested when
Speaker 1: you have a geologist and a philosopher, and a political
Speaker 1: scientist and a chef. Of those four professions, which one
Speaker 1: was the hardest to write your way into, because you
Speaker 1: do capture something I think that feels very authentic about
Speaker 1: each of those worlds. And I'm curious, are these like
Speaker 1: the four parts of killing Hughes, Like, can you manage
Speaker 1: all of those things yourself?
Speaker 2: I am a very impatient cook, and if I start cooking,
Speaker 2: I want to eat within thirty minutes, which is I'm
Speaker 2: a little out of the Olwen with her vegan schnetzel
Speaker 2: and the toaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's upsetting.
Speaker 2: But yes, so I really love food, I really, you know,
Speaker 2: I kind of I am a bit of a foodian
Speaker 2: that I appreciate it, but I don't have the patience.
Speaker 2: And so I think that if someone gets into cooking
Speaker 2: as part of their profession, they have got some fundamental
Speaker 2: aspects of their character that I'm missing. Also the ability
Speaker 2: to multitask. I can't do that. Like if I get
Speaker 2: a phone call and I'm walking on the street, I stop, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know. And so the chef character I did actually
Speaker 2: have to do the most research for, honestly, also with
Speaker 2: things like she's working around local produce so to figure
Speaker 2: out what can be grown in England in which months.
Speaker 2: And then the geologist Alwin was the character that I
Speaker 2: started with, and she's the character that I wrote the
Speaker 2: novel for. Even though it's weighted equally and I grew
Speaker 2: up on the west coast of Ireland, it's completely win stripped.
Speaker 2: I mean, there used to be an endemic forest there.
Speaker 2: But as Alwin tells her students, at one point, you know,
Speaker 2: we went the full hundred percent in terms of getting
Speaker 2: rid of our ancient forest in Ireland. So there's no
Speaker 2: trees and it's completely wind stripped, and you see the
Speaker 2: geology shouldering out of the fields, and you know there's
Speaker 2: this granite and limestone and these low lying hills and
Speaker 2: then this peat, which is you know, a resource that's
Speaker 2: kind of saving us in the sense of how much
Speaker 2: carbon is stored in there. And it's the contrast of
Speaker 2: the I think, the peat and then this rock where
Speaker 2: there's no soil, there's nothing you can grow. It was
Speaker 2: a really tragic area during the famine because it was
Speaker 2: so so hard to grow enough food for subsistence, and
Speaker 2: so partly that landscape. I was writing the book mostly there,
Speaker 2: and I grew up on the west coast of Ireland.
Speaker 2: So something about the rocks and the fact that you
Speaker 2: could see the geology of the place embedded itself in
Speaker 2: me in some way that I think, if I were
Speaker 2: to have ten lives, one of them would be some
Speaker 2: form of being out in the landscape. I suppose. I
Speaker 2: used to think about it as a very romantic job,
Speaker 2: you know, to really be able to look at a
Speaker 2: landscape and read it and know the story. I find
Speaker 2: a really worthy way to spend your life. And I
Speaker 2: can understand, you know, the impulse to spend your life
Speaker 2: doing that, But obviously today to any work in the
Speaker 2: earth science is not at all romantic.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I would also say, if you're too impatient for cooking geology,
Speaker 1: that requires next level of patience. Possibly, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: Rude, this is very true, Thank you. No, realistically, there's nothing,
Speaker 2: there's nothing else I can do. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: verily patient enough to write.
Speaker 1: When we return, Kill and explores what it means to
Speaker 1: write a book about women at work, and also shares
Speaker 1: with us the near death experience that shape the writing
Speaker 1: of the Alternatives. We'll be right back. All four Cystem
Speaker 1: is almost most animated in the book at the point
Speaker 1: at which they're teaching, or the points at which they're
Speaker 1: sharing the things that say mergent to them to another audience,
Speaker 1: and that sense of responsibility to pass on knowledge runs
Speaker 1: through all four of them in a kind of fundamental way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it started out. It's kind of funny
Speaker 2: to me that they'd all have PhDs.
Speaker 1: I just you know, think also three PhDs a one
Speaker 1: honorary doctorate is very important for a sibling dynamic as well.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so it was funny to me and also
Speaker 2: actually funny but also great. You know, it was buoying
Speaker 2: to start a novel thinking, yeah, I'm going to write
Speaker 2: about smart women and just deal with the fact that
Speaker 2: it probably won't be liked just by ritual of the
Speaker 2: fact that they're smart women in it, but also their sisters.
Speaker 2: And I liked the idea that a book about sisterhood
Speaker 2: could also be a book about women at work, and
Speaker 2: that that didn't need to be a separate book. That
Speaker 2: we don't kind of go around our lives thinking about
Speaker 2: ourselves as being a sister, that we're kind of in
Speaker 2: our professional lives and we happen to be a sister
Speaker 2: within them and kind of crossing those especially for women
Speaker 2: who's there isn't a very clear line between their lives
Speaker 2: and their work. So three of the sisters are teaching.
Speaker 2: The one we haven't mentioned is the political scientist Rona.
Speaker 2: We don't see her teaching. She's kind of got the
Speaker 2: cushiest job of all of the siblings. And so there's
Speaker 2: a spectrum shown there, you know, between the different types
Speaker 2: of privilege that you can have as a teacher. But yes,
Speaker 2: they are the philosopher. Now we see her lecturing twice, actually,
Speaker 2: once in real life and then once on zoom. So
Speaker 2: you know, as far away from sex and the city
Speaker 2: as you can, you know, for women with PhDs, kind
Speaker 2: of largely in the country, very little sex.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you over light which sex and
Speaker 1: the city character they are, just to complete that. There's
Speaker 1: a great line here. Rona tries to raid now in
Speaker 1: every way she knows how to rate a person, but
Speaker 1: she cannot resolve her She's too exactly herself. There's such
Speaker 1: a nice summation of the problem siblings have saying one another.
Speaker 1: I think not because of lack of knowledge, but because
Speaker 1: of too much.
Speaker 3: But they do.
Speaker 2: I think they do all love one another and want
Speaker 2: to be in each other's lives. And I think part
Speaker 2: of the pain of Rona's character who's the one who's
Speaker 2: least involved and who they all kind of have issues with,
Speaker 2: but she is the one who I think there's the
Speaker 2: biggest trauma therefore, in terms of feeling that the others
Speaker 2: don't really want or need her, and all of the
Speaker 2: other siblings acknowledge that they both want and need one
Speaker 2: another in some way, you know, because The novel is
Speaker 2: partly about the delusion of self sufficiency as a you know,
Speaker 2: coping mechanism, as a viable way of continuing in this world,
Speaker 2: and a viable iteration you know, of the trajectory or
Speaker 2: you know that we're on. I really don't think that
Speaker 2: it is viable.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that plays out for each of
Speaker 1: the characters is the presence of Leo Ronan's son, and
Speaker 1: the way in which something shifts when you conceive of
Speaker 1: yourself as an anti rather than just as a sister
Speaker 1: or as the presence of the next generation. There has
Speaker 1: a kind of huge effect on each of the characters.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and there's something else that's kind of bonding them,
Speaker 2: connecting them into the future. And I suppose they all
Speaker 2: would have an instinct to be involved in the upbringing
Speaker 2: of Leo because their parents were neither of them were
Speaker 2: really suited to being parents. They had parents who probably
Speaker 2: were quite good company some days, and then we're largely
Speaker 2: absent a lot, you know, And so the instinct there
Speaker 2: would be to try and remedy that, as we often
Speaker 2: try and do the exact opposite of whatever whatever her
Speaker 2: own formative traumas were. And I really wasn't sure how
Speaker 2: they would respond, so it was kind of entertaining for me,
Speaker 2: you know, to initially put him in the car. Of course,
Speaker 2: I had a feeling that Mave would be seeing her
Speaker 2: imagine if this was my son, because she that's the
Speaker 2: moment that she's in in her life, and she's very broody,
Speaker 2: and then now finds the child so relatable on the
Speaker 2: level of how curious he is about the world and
Speaker 2: kind of what a blank Slady is in terms of
Speaker 2: having a clarity of perceptions. So she's kind of interested
Speaker 2: in terms of her own work and the phases, you know,
Speaker 2: of childhood development, and they end up, you know, having
Speaker 2: a surprising kind of bond in the book that I
Speaker 2: didn't anticipate.
Speaker 1: One of the more unexpected sections of The Alternatives is
Speaker 1: when the four sisters are finally reunited. Killen uses the
Speaker 1: much anticipated dramatic moment to change up her approach entirely
Speaker 1: shifting from the close third person narrative into the form
Speaker 1: of a playscript. It comes at a point where we're
Speaker 1: already so deeply invested in the characters, so familiar with
Speaker 1: their inner lives, that having their interactions take the form
Speaker 1: of pure dialogue offers this speed and immediacy. It's intensely rewarding,
Speaker 1: if surprising, and I was curious to find out more
Speaker 1: why the playscript?
Speaker 2: Well why not? That's that's basically it. No, because I
Speaker 2: write without a plan. You might have heard me say
Speaker 2: that before.
Speaker 1: Write without a plan and no drafting. You just write
Speaker 1: and then you finish and then it's done.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I really really do not like to know
Speaker 2: anything that's coming up, because then I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: just creating a bridge from this moment to that moment
Speaker 2: and nothing in the middle really matters. And for me,
Speaker 2: every page has to matter and could affect the story
Speaker 2: in a huge way. And that's kind of what I
Speaker 2: write for, is that discovery and that surprise, because a novel,
Speaker 2: for me, is always wiser and more surprising than I
Speaker 2: am myself. So that's why I write. To become a
Speaker 2: better person or you know, or to learn something, to
Speaker 2: go somewhere new. So it's really important for me to
Speaker 2: to not know. When you get very far into a novel,
Speaker 2: there's a certain That's why I write faster when I
Speaker 2: get to the end, because you start to see it
Speaker 2: because you know the characters so well. And also just
Speaker 2: things speed up. So when then the novel turns into
Speaker 2: a play, I only figured out that that would happen,
Speaker 2: or that it might happen throughout three pages beforehand. And
Speaker 2: you know, I emailed a friend. I was like, oh damn.
Speaker 2: So we've got four PhD sisters, very little sex, and
Speaker 2: now there's a play in the middle of the novel,
Speaker 2: like and my last novel involved a youth in asia case,
Speaker 2: so like, I'm really just killing my own career. You
Speaker 2: love it, and I think it happened because this is
Speaker 2: when the sibling has come together, and what happens when
Speaker 2: adult siblings come together talk just so much talk and
Speaker 2: cross talk and competitive talk. And I needed to get
Speaker 2: out of the character's way. I had the sense that
Speaker 2: by now in the novel, the reader, I hope, if
Speaker 2: I've done my job, the reader knows them and is
Speaker 2: interest to see what they're going to be like when
Speaker 2: they're together, and understands a lot of the ins and
Speaker 2: outs of you know, Alwin's relationship with Rona, with Nell's
Speaker 2: relationship with al when they want to see it. And
Speaker 2: it's a bit like, I guess the reward of meeting
Speaker 2: like your in laws after hearing about them for a
Speaker 2: really long time, the reward and the punishment. You know,
Speaker 2: you know so much about these people, but you just
Speaker 2: have to see it. And so yes, it was part
Speaker 2: least just there was so much talk. If I was
Speaker 2: going to write it out in pros, the book would
Speaker 2: have been several hundred pages longer, and I didn't feel
Speaker 2: that the scope would then match the page count and
Speaker 2: the intensity of it as well. I mean, there's just
Speaker 2: this so much that kind of loaded in between every exchange.
Speaker 2: I like to think that as a reader that would
Speaker 2: have been rewarding and a kind of payoff for having
Speaker 2: sat through several chapters where you're learning all about their
Speaker 2: lives separately and meeting characters that you're not really going
Speaker 2: to meet again, and so now here you are getting
Speaker 2: to see the core characters whose lives you've learned so
Speaker 2: much about. Yeah, I suppose there is a precedent. Years ago,
Speaker 2: I had read a couple of times Ulysses, and then
Speaker 2: I had listened to it. The last time I kind
Speaker 2: of readis quote unquote was as an audiobook, and so
Speaker 2: i'd forgotten actually that the Circe chapter is as a play,
Speaker 2: and so it was it was cool to go back
Speaker 2: to that afterwards. But it was actually I had forgotten
Speaker 2: about it until after I wrote this book, and then
Speaker 2: went back and said, okay, well there was a precedent,
Speaker 2: and not not a bad one.
Speaker 1: Good as far as they.
Speaker 2: Recently I read Isabellahammad's Enter Ghost, which is really really good.
Speaker 2: I loved it. And it's about a Palestinian theatrical group
Speaker 2: trying to put on a production of Hamlets, and so
Speaker 2: you see kind of the director and all the actors
Speaker 2: in scenes, and then it goes into playscript mode as
Speaker 2: they're rehearsing now and then. So I thought that was
Speaker 2: really cool. It was nice to see, hopefully as a trend.
Speaker 1: Did I read correctly that you were hit by a
Speaker 1: truck while writing this book?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: That seems a bit on the nose as a metaphor,
Speaker 1: also not terribly helpful creatively, I would imagine.
Speaker 2: Well, it definitely passed. Is this the book you should
Speaker 2: be writing if we were you to be hit by
Speaker 2: a bus? You know? Test? Which is that? Genuinely the
Speaker 2: thing I always ask myself when I'm writing a book,
Speaker 2: is this the book that were you to be hit by?
Speaker 2: I usually say a bus, insert truck that you that
Speaker 2: you would need to be writing, that you'd be glad
Speaker 2: to have been writing, And it turns out that you
Speaker 2: are simultaneously glad, but also in the moment of being
Speaker 2: hit and just before being hit, are absolutely tortured by
Speaker 2: because it's like finally, like I am writing the book
Speaker 2: that I must write, and I am not going to
Speaker 2: get to finish it. Actually my thought was and I
Speaker 2: didn't get to finish my fucking book. That was the thought.
Speaker 2: I was like almost shaking my head.
Speaker 1: How far into the book will?
Speaker 2: I was very far in. I was actually in the
Speaker 2: play section. And if I had been ten percent less
Speaker 2: far through the book, I would have lost the book.
Speaker 2: So even if I had survived the accident, I would
Speaker 2: have lost the book because the way that I write,
Speaker 2: it's bills momentum, and at a certain point if you
Speaker 2: stop or there's any kind of slow down or pause,
Speaker 2: and you can just lose it. And I've never ever
Speaker 2: been able to retrieve work that I paused and stopped.
Speaker 2: One of the things I started out with this book,
Speaker 2: you know, during COVID, was I wanted there to be
Speaker 2: some form of joy on every page. And I felt
Speaker 2: at the time that to write a novel is to
Speaker 2: kind of believe in the future. It's kind of an
Speaker 2: act of faith because everything during COVID, you know, there
Speaker 2: was no certainty, and people were reading fewer books, people
Speaker 2: were kind of binging on Netflix, and I was simultaneously
Speaker 2: really worried that all art from that period would be
Speaker 2: reduced in the sense that it would be based on
Speaker 2: memory rather than witnessed you know, and lived experience and
Speaker 2: the serendipity that most artists live for, where and you're
Speaker 2: really deep into a work, it seems like the whole
Speaker 2: world is refracted through what you're working on and is
Speaker 2: relevant to it. And that's something that any artist listening
Speaker 2: will recognize. It's, you know, one of the most amazing
Speaker 2: things about making art. So yeah, I wanted there to
Speaker 2: be joy, to to bring me out of the covidness,
Speaker 2: and also because I really value humor in you know,
Speaker 2: in novels, and so the sisters did make me laugh,
Speaker 2: and so did all the other characters in the book,
Speaker 2: and after the crash, I was very grateful for that,
Speaker 2: but also it hurt to laugh. It really hurt, like
Speaker 2: they were physically hurt, because it was my ribs that
Speaker 2: were mostly damaged. So Yeah, it was very tough. Like
Speaker 2: whenever there was a funny line.
Speaker 1: That's good. I like the idea that that's how the
Speaker 1: novelist punishes herself after an accident is make yourself laugh.
Speaker 1: It's the only way killan. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Michael Kilan Hughes's novel The Alternatives is available at all
Speaker 1: good bookstores.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I wanted to tell you what I've
Speaker 1: been reading this week, and like so many other readers,
Speaker 1: I was a huge fan of Teffy Brodessa Ekner's debut novel,
Speaker 1: Fleischmann Is in Trouble. Her follow up novel, Long Island,
Speaker 1: compromises out. It's about a kidnapping and the ripples and
Speaker 1: resonances of it through several generations of the family that
Speaker 1: come next. It is an absolute rom and I had
Speaker 1: a great time with it. You can find it and
Speaker 1: all the other books we mentioned today at your favorite
Speaker 1: independam bookstore. That's it for this week's show. As always, Like, Share, subscribe, follow, review, share,
Speaker 1: like subscribe all of the things. Next week I read this.
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Australian journalist and novelist Malcolm Knox to
Speaker 1: discuss the rating of his latest novel, The First Friend.
Speaker 3: This book was probably the most fun that I've ever
Speaker 3: had writing anything, and I hope that's conveyed because it is,
Speaker 3: on a surface level, potentially quite a grim place and
Speaker 3: time in the Great Terror in the Soviet Union in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight. Fun is not what immediately springs to mind.
Speaker 1: This is produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing
Speaker 1: by Travis Evans. Original compositions are by Zalton Fetcher. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, See you next week.