Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep21: Bookshelfie: Pandora Sykes

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

In this episode Zing Tsjeng is joined by journalist, author and podcaster, Pandora Sykes. A former editor and columnist for the Sunday Times Style and a Contributing Editor at Elle, she has written for publications including Telegraph, Observer, GQ and Vogue. She is the author of The Sunday Times bestseller, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? , the host of her new podcast series Doing It Right and the co-host of the weekly pop-culture and current affairs podcast, The High Low. Pandora's book choices are: We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik The Confession by Jessie Burton   Every fortnight, join Zing Tsjeng, editor at VICE, and inspirational guests, including Dolly Alderton, Stanley Tucci, Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis as they celebrate the best fiction written by women. They'll discuss the diverse back-catalogue of Women’s Prize-winning books spanning a generation, explore the life-changing books that sit on other women’s bookshelves and talk about what the future holds for women writing today. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and this series will also take you behind the scenes throughout 2020 as we explore the history of the Prize in its 25th year and gain unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2020 Prize winner. Sit back and enjoy. This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices, and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Zing Singh, your host for Season 2 of the Women's Prize podcast, coming to you every fortnight throughout 2020. You've joined me for a special bookshelfy episode in which we ask an inspiring woman to share the story of her life through five brilliant books by women. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Bookshelfy. We are still practicing safe social distancing,

so this podcast is being recorded remotely. Today's guest is journalist, author and podcaster Pandora Sykes, a former editor and columnist for Sunday Time style and a contributing editor at Elle. She's written for publications including The Telegraph, Observer, GQ and Vogue, and she is also the author of the Sunday Times bestseller, How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? The host of her new podcast, Doing It Right, and the co-host of the weekly pop culture and current affairs podcast, The High-Low. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Zing. Thank you so much for coming on.

I mean, I feel like I've listened to your voice and read your writing for literally years. So it's actually really lovely to put a voice to the name, if not sadly a face to the name. Right back at you, I feel like I've been doing exactly the same and I think about your piece about Glastonbury, probably most days. Oh my God. I had so much fun writing that and then I immediately fell into a deep depression about how sad

I was to Miss Glastonbury. Giveeth and taketh away. You gaveeth to us, but it tooketh from you. I know. I mean, that's what you want of all good love letters to Glastonbury, right? I mean, it's basically how I feel about the festival when I do actually go. How has your lockdown been? Fine. Fine. Fine. I feel like, yeah, that's just a safe response, really, isn't it? It's fine. It could have been so much worse. and everyone's got their own hurdles, haven't they?

But I have been tremendously lucky. You know, my family are healthy and I'm able to mostly do my job. So I can't ask for anything more. How about you? It's been, I mean, fine, I think. I think the funny thing is I was just talking about this with a friend. And we're both saying that at the start of lockdown, everyone said, you know, just look at this as a chance to reset, to relax,

to kind of take stock off your life. And actually, this year has been so busy. And I think I'm probably not the only one who feels that way. I mean, you've had an incredibly busy year as well. I had a really busy year, and I also had a new baby. So I don't think that I was necessarily exposed to some of the realities that I would have been, had I not been in an intense work period and had a baby. That's not to say that doing either of those things, like, you know,

bringing out a book in a pandemic, it's not easy. And having a new baby in a pandemic, it's not easy. but I'm actually, I think, fortunate in many ways for having those distractions. And many other ways as well, obviously, you know, being safe and healthy is the biggest privilege of all right now. Exactly. And I think that everyone was in such dire need of distraction for most of this year. I mean, it's the reason why everyone went absolutely nuts for stuff like Tiger King, which now, to me, feels as distant as the Sahara, you know. You can track lockdown through what we were consuming. There was the... Tiger King stage. There was may I destroy you, there was the normal people stage. And because

this year has gone on for so long now, it feels like some of those things were years ago. I know. I mean, I remember watching normal people and then a few months later when lockdown sort of eased a bit, spotting Paul Mescoe jogging in Hackney Marshes. And it was honestly like one of the tigers from Tiger King had just like appeared in Hackney in front of me. It was so strange because something that you spent so long thinking about in lockdown was suddenly right in front of you. I mean, what a year. It was strange for him becoming a lockdown heartthrob

because I think people developed much more intense feelings for characters that they watched during lockdown. So I feel quite sorry for him because the brief period of time that women have been allowed out of their homes, I imagine he had some probably quite high octane interludes with them. Oh my God, I can only imagine. And, you know, I only spotted him from the far off distance. It wasn't as if I even went up to him.

So I can only imagine the kind of interactions he's had in the last few months becoming the lockdown heartthrob of 2020. So on to bookshelfy. You've picked some amazing books, books that I really, really love. Have you always been a big reader? I have always been a big reader. Yeah, I'd say it's always been my favorite hobby, favorite way to pass the time. I was always quite solitary when I was younger.

And still now, actually, I need a lot of time on my own, which becomes increasingly difficult when you have young children. So my evenings are kind of my reading time. So yeah, I've always loved reading. I did find it really hard to pick five books, though. I've never been someone who loves, like, what five books would you take to a desert island? I need 50.

So this was actually quite a challenge. But so I would say they are some of my favorite, most formative books, but not all, to be fair to the others. So the first book you picked was, we need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which actually previously won the prize in 2005. It is the story of a very chilly mother who has a deeply fraught and troubled relationship with her quite strange son, Kevin, who then, spoiler alert, goes on to commit a heinous act of violence at his school.

Yes. So you read this in 2003, right? Yes, so it came out 17 years ago, didn't it? I read it when I would have been 16 and I can remember reading it. I can remember reading it on a coach, so I must have been on a school trip and lots of my friends were reading it. And although at that time I wasn't reading the newspapers or reading critical reviews of books, there was still something in the air about this book when it came out that even percolated down to teenagers knowing that this was a book that was not controversial,

though I'm sure it was controversial to some people, but it was a talking point book, wasn't it? Obviously, considering the subject matter. I actually remember reading this and what shocked me, I think, was how frosty the mother in the novel is. She's not a very sympathetic character and I think that was part of why it was so controversial at the time. You know, mothers in literature weren't really depicted in that way? Absolutely. And Larnel Shriver's never shied away from addressing things that some people find uncomfortable or would rather not address. And I mean, she's become a much more controversial figure as an author actually in those last 15 years, because she will address certain things or has opinions that lots of people wouldn't agree with.

I didn't know any of that. When I read, we need to talk about Kevin. It was the first time. I had read her work, but there is a tremendous bravery there because, you know, Eva never wants to be a mother. And that's not a spoiler. It's on the back of the book as well. And so their entire relationship is not only tainted by that, but Kevin knows that too. And I think that was what was so fascinating in an almost quite vulgar way in my 16 year old head is like, I couldn't believe that she could make it so obvious that she didn't really necessarily love being his mother and that he would make his disdain for her so obvious. You know, I had a great relationship with my mother and I was enormously privileged to have a safe and comfortable home with, you know, it was just very, very normal and our relationship was very normal. So reading this hugely dysfunctional relationship that was filled with, you know, it was just very normal. And, you know, it was just very normal. And, you know, it was just very normal. And, you know, it was just very normal. And,

very obvious and kind of abject distaste, even the hatred at times, was kind of fascinating and quite addictive to read, I think. I'm actually curious to know, you know, thinking back on this book, which you read when you're a teenager, now you're a mum yourself, how do you react to the main character in the novel? Do you feel any differently about the book now that you know what it's like to be a mum now? So when we sat down to talk today, I had another little flick through, having not read it for a long time. And I did think, oh, I need to reread this now because I'd be rereading it with the eyes of, as you say, a mother in her 30s rather than as a teenager. And I even chanced upon a bit where she's talking about breastfeeding and various things around

pregnancy and having a new baby and her kind of disgust for that. And that would be really interesting, I think, to read again. It would take on a new significance, just how much Eva really struggled with so many aspects of being a mother, not just specifically being Kevin's mother, even though Kevin is a difficult child. He's a strange child as well, and she really struggles to parent him. But just it becomes obvious how much she struggled with,

kind of the whole concept of parenting, the identity of being not just Kevin's mother, but a mother. So yes, I want to go back and read it again now for sure. It's so interesting the things you pick up when you read, I guess, grown-up or Adam. novels when you're a teenager and if you go back and revisit them when you're an adult or around the same age as the protagonist or the author was when they read it when they wrote it because I feel like I remember reading we need to talk about Kevin when I was quite young too and I completely

understand the addictiveness of reading it it's almost thrilling to I guess get an insight into a mother not necessarily your mother but how a mother might truly feel about your child you're almost a bit like, oh, this is like a dirty secret. I shouldn't be reading this, but I am. Totally. And I wasn't really thinking about, I didn't really have empathy, maybe, not in a unkind way, but I think I did read it more like a thriller.

And now I think I would read it and feel the tremendous pain of, because I can't imagine anything more painful than not being able to parent your child or not being comfortable, parenting your child, you've bought something into this world, and you just don't know how to navigate that relationship. And that must be endlessly painful. So I think I'd read it with more empathetic eyes, I think. Definitely. And I think, did you watch the movie adaptation of this book?

I did, and I was trying to think about it. Is that, was it Tilda Swinton? Yeah. So it's Tilda Swinton playing the mother and Ezra Miller playing Kevin. Yes. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, I can remember bits of it. Yes, it's haunting on the screen. I don't actually think I've got any desire to watch that again. I think it's once is enough. It's one of those books where when you read it, you flesh out so much more in your head.

And when you watch the movie, it's a very chilly affair. It's got a very gone-grow kind of feeling to it. Neither character are sympathetic at all. No. And I think that's quite hard to do on screen, isn't it? it's quite a substantial book. What is, yeah, you know, it's almost 450 pages. And it's a lot of that is the describing of their relationship and on screen. You've got to do that in a real, in a real economy of words. So I think it becomes much sparser on screen. And it's quite hard to feel

sympathy or fill in any kind of blanks that you can do when you're reading the book. Because she writes it so well. It's, it's still, I think and will always be my favourite of her books by far. Your second book is PrEP by Curtis Sittenfeld, which you read in 2005, and it was actually long listed for the Women's Prize in 2006 as well. So tell me a bit about this book. That's another lovely coincidence.

I did not even do this on purpose. This book, I just adore this book. I love Curtis Sittenfeld's writing, and I'm so pleased to see that she just, just keeps bringing out better and better books and the, you know, her reputation now as a short story writer and as a fiction writer and she's just, I think she's just brilliant and she is a woman that really embraces so many aspects of her craft, you know, what she did in an American wife or in Rodham and then what she does in her short stories and they actually feel like

quite different books to prep, I think, although what prep does have in common with her other writing is her amazing ability to observe in, again, kind of excruciating detail. She's such a rigorously honest narrator, and she's so observant, and the language she uses manages to achieve so much. But anyway, PrEP is about a teenage girl called Lee, who goes to a mixed boarding school in Connecticut, and it's a very waspy boarding school. It's kind of like gossip girl,

but in boarding school form in Connecticut. And Lee is not from the same background as most of her classmates, but she really wanted to go, she really wants to escape her parents, basically. She does that teenage thing, and Curtis writes about it so well of, you know, just kind of

wanting a life separate from them and not wanting them involved in her life. And it's painful. to read, it must be painful for her parents. And she goes to the school and she brings, what's so incredibly interesting is she acts like she's this kind of blank slate and she's just observing everyone else. But she brings all of her biases to it, of course, as we all do.

And what I love about it, and this is why I love building's romance as a genre, which is, you know, a coming of age story. and I wrote my dissertation at university actually on prep and on the character of Brian E Talis in Atonement. And I don't think I did terribly well in that dissertation, but still love a building's room on. And one of my favourite bits is where Lee realizes through a friend of hers called Conchita

or another character called Conchita, that she's not the only person who's constantly kind of appraising other people and, you know, thinking where do these people fit and what can these people bring me in? Conchita says please Lee you're not going to act like we don't all have ideas about each other are you the remark shocked me certainly I had ideas about other people but conchita was the first person I'd encountered who seemed to have ideas about me and I just think that's such a great

observation about the teenage ego is becoming aware that other people exist in their own narratives I think that's a brilliant bit from the book actually it's made me want to read it now I mean, it's also the classic teenage experience where you're just the only person in the world feeling these feelings and therefore you're the most important person there is. That's why I love catcher in the Rye as well. I'm very predictable. I'm a sucker for all of those teenage coming of age stories. And there was another one actually that I read just the other day, which I think might have just come out, which was like a female catcher in the Rye called The Falconer or the Falconer. and yeah they give me all the same feelings when I read it because it makes me, I just wish I'd read this as a teenager. I wish I'd read this as a 14 year old

and I think I would have had so much more self-awareness. What were you like as a teenager? I was loud and I was sociable but like now I always needed a lot of time on my own and I was always thinking, thinking, thinking and trying to work things out. But I wasn't as able to make my, peace with myself and the world as I am now. I was always looking for things to make sense.

And obviously there's a lot of ambiguity in the world. Not everything makes sense. So I think I could have done with a book like PrEP, which maybe would have allowed me to see the areas of grey a little bit more and gone easier on myself and probably other people around me as well. Were you always thinking of becoming a writer? I always wanted to write. Yes. I always wanted to be a journalist. I remember when I was like 14, always entering the Vogue had like a writer of the year competition. I did write lots of short stories when I was little, but I think I was always more drawn to journalism. Yeah, for as long as I can remember. Never ever thought about anything else, actually, I don't think. It must have felt like you come full circle, you know, when you'd become

wardrobe, mistress of Sunday time style. You know, I remember those Vogue essay writing competitions always seems so impossibly glamorous when you're trying to enter when you're a teenager. So actually getting into fashion was a felt like a little cool. Did you celebrate? Do you know what? It's strange when I look back at that time as a fashion editor because my, so my journalism career has now been 10 years

and I was a fashion writer for five years of it. So it's half of it, but I think in the eyes of most people observing, I would be a fashion writer, predominantly a fashion writer. I was excited about being at the Sunday Times. I'd always wanted to work there. And I did really enjoy working in fashion, but it was never my intention. I love aesthetics and I love decorating.

So I'm interested in style in the same way I'm interested in interiors and design and just the kind of the way things look and are laid out and, you know, kind of parlayed into the world. But I didn't specifically mean to come into fashion. it was more just where jobs were coming up when I was an editorial assistant. So I really enjoyed the time there, but I don't think I ever had a moment of, yes, this is exactly where I want to be. I don't think I've ever had a moment of being this is exactly where I want to be,

because I would feel like I'm working things out. You know, I'm sure you probably have that as well of thinking like, okay, this feels like me and then it doesn't feel like you anymore, so you kind of take a new direction. And I'd say it's all held together by a commonality, which is that I'm just interested in the way people think and what they talk about and in the case of Woodrowad Mistress, what they wear and the psychology of why they want to wear it.

But I don't think I specifically attended to be a fashion writer and I feel very much like I've left that chapter behind now. Who's to say in the future I might do it again? But certainly it was an enormous privilege to work at the Sunday Times because I've just been reading it for so many years. years. I really like what you said about being interested in aesthetics and not necessarily fashion, because I also wrote a little bit about fashion at the start of my career. And the fashion industry as a whole is so different to what you imagine it's like when you're a kid reading magazines,

around from the newsagents. It's much more like an industry with, you know, this spring, the summer, there's autumn, there's winter, there's cruised as a resort. By the end of it, it felt a little bit relentless to me, to be honest. It's exhausting. And I think I'm so aware of like how ridiculous it always sounds to people who don't go to fashion shows to be like, oh, I'm covering fashion shows. It's so tiring. But it was a mad schedule because, you know, you would be doing. The thing about fashion is it really never sleeps. So if you're covering shows, you're, you know, fashion shows all day.

And then you're filing writing you need to do. And then there were drinks things and there were dinners. And that was part of the job. And that's the bit that looks really glamorous, but that's the bit that actually I've probably never been great at. Like, I'm kind of a hermit. And I love now being freelance and just working from home. And the great thing now about recording remotely is I can do almost everything from my desk.

So the kind of pace of that life, not necessarily the hours. I'd say I still work pretty long hours now, but just being on all the time and being dressed up. and I think I probably drunk the Kool-Aid for a bit as well. And then I realized that what I love is style. It's not fashion. I'm much more interested in style. And that stayed with me.

The urge to shop is not in me now, like it probably once was when I was looking at new products every single day on every single website. And I'm much more invested now in secondhand. I always loved it. But I think when I was working as a fashion, columnist and I couldn't bring any secondhand into my pages, I maybe got distracted by the new and shiny for a bit and it's nice to be the other side of that now and to have learnt from that,

I think. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bayleys is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adultery, whether in coffee, over ice cream or paired with your favourite book. The third book you picked is A Little Life by Hanya Yaneagahara, which you read in 2015. And by coincidence, this was also shortlisted for the prize in 2018.

This is so super. I'm so glad this is, my choices are so on brand. I mean, this was shortlisted for a lot of incredible prizes, wasn't it? I can see on the front of my copy. Oh yes, this is women's fiction. also shortlisted for various other awards as well. I mean, I feel like this book was largely considered to be a masterpiece but a devastating one. Yes, it is. That's kind of what I think of it. It's a devastating masterpiece.

I would read it again, but I know many, many people who would not. So for those listening who don't know what a little life is about, would you be able to sum it up? It is quite a difficult one to sum up. It's very sprawling. Yes, I'll have to give quite a basic summary, but it's so not basic. It's about the friendship, the very close friendship between four friends from college, but the identities of those four men as well. So it's not just about their friendship, it's about them as men and their romantic lives and their professional lives.

And there is just everything about being a human and a man is, woven into this. And what I love is there's so many books about female friendship. And there's a lot more books about female trauma, I think, than male trauma. And the first time I'd read a book, and definitely the first time I'd read a book by a woman about four men. And I found it enormously enlightening. I thought it was enormously perceptive. I really don't think you would ever know that these were men written by a woman. She so fully inhabits them. And it's also a really good book on the subject of male trauma and how men deal with trauma.

Yeah. And it's, I mean, I think some people have suggested she went too far on the misery. Because at times it can feel unrelenting. But I really admire her for resisting a kind of Hollywood narrative. and she is not afraid, I think, to piss off her reader maybe sometimes. She refuses to give the reader what they want, which is a happy ending. Yes, yeah, she does, she does. And she's obviously, the thing about Hanya Yanahara is she's also an incredible journalist.

She had this incredible job in New York media. And then she comes out with this 700-page book, the scope of her intelligence, basically, and her timekeeping. is obviously incredible. I mean, the timekeeping especially, because this is a real kind of heavy tone of a book. I mean, even just reading it, you have to really commit to reading it

because it will just grab you and then completely ring you out emotionally. So I devoured it. I read it. I remember, I can remember exactly where I was, my husband took a picture of me reading it. We were in Italy on holiday, and I just read it solidly.

So I'm very antisocial on holiday. Like my worst nightmare would be to be on holiday with 10 people and you talk all day. Like I want to do like an hour of talking and then I used to do four hours of reading. So luckily this was one of those holidays where I could do sort of 14 hours of reading a day. So I read it in three days. I fully immersed myself, you know, and I came out a different woman at the end. And I think I put a picture on Instagram of it. And I had so many people saying, oh my God, you know, I've had to read it like 10 pages a week.

They had to really eke it out. How did you consume it? I'm trying to remember. think I'm like you. I read very quick. I can read very quickly if I devote the headspace to it. So I think I read this over the space of maybe a single holiday. And I remember finishing it. And the person I was with looked at me so strangely because I was just sobbing. Yeah. Yeah. It absolutely makes you so. Yeah. Sobing into kind of, you know, you're sort of gasping for breath a little bit because it's just so intense. And I'm trying to think if I often cry when I read a book, I cry. I cry

a lot when I watch films or even adverts, anything. Do you cry a lot reading books? No, never. So that's why this kind of took me by surprise. Books where the old happy ending is resisted. That really gets me because I'm quite naive, I think. Like, I kind of love cheesy stuff and I love happy endings. And I don't think everything happens for a reason. I find that really insulting. But I try and always find the silver lining or the optimistic thread. And there isn't really much. of that in a little life so that's probably what got me so the fourth book you picked is we need new stories by nesrin malick uh which you read last summer i believe yeah last august yeah so nezrin is actually one of our 2021 judges for next year which is again you've done a really good job of just

preempting i did i did know i did know that that is one thing i knew but again i'm very glad there's a nice little link but so tell me about this book so this book is just blew me away with its confidence and its clarity and its economy with words. So, Nezrean is a columnist for The Guardian and I have been a big fan of her writing for a long time. She writes, she's completely unafraid, which I think is much harder to be now, to not consider the feedback loop, basically, in your writing. And Nezrein writes, so from the soul, she has complete conviction.

And she writes from, I feel like she's got a critical distance, which is what is so brilliant in a critic. And we need new stories, is essentially she's debunking all the myths she thinks are damaging or hold back progress in Western society. and her six myths are, we have achieved gender equality, so the whole feminism's gone too far,

we don't need political correctness, we are in a free speech crisis, we are divided by identity politics, we should be proud of our history, we have reliable narrators. And I must have folded down, I'm looking at this book now, about 60 pages,

and I interviewed her for my own book. And there was something Nezrean said that became, absolutely pivotal, not just to me writing the book, but honestly to how I make decisions now in my life, is her view of progress, whether it's individual or global, is that all gain involves loss. And that's a really simple statement, but I found it kind of revolutionary because I think, and this comes very much into us living in a binary world and everything moving too fast and us not valuing the process and just looking at the outcome you know goals culture all of that but what

this comes down to is realizing that things aren't only good and for a long-term objective you might have to relinquish some things on the way and I think that works at a social level and I think that works at a personal level with how do we know we're doing it right I mean how did that kind of inform the book itself that observation that she made? It informed the book, I think, because what I wanted to do is to go on a journey with a lot of different things. I wasn't looking to give conclusive answers. I was actually asking a series of questions and encouraging, hopefully, people to ask questions themselves about things, whether it's about wellness or work culture or ambition or the way we view motherhood or women.

and I am someone that I'm quite sitting on the fancy and I'm really willing to have my opinions challenge and I like ambiguity as well. The challenge of the book is that I wanted to question things but that didn't necessarily mean that I was criticizing the people that made those choices or I didn't want it to seem like I was criticising the people that made their choices because I believe really strongly that people can make any choice they want. What I thought was important is we need to look at the context within those choices are made

and we need to look at the framework and we need to look at what happens next when we make that choice. And the kind of essential premise of the book is that there are a lot of choices in life now for lots of women. But instead of seeing them as options, people are seeing them as obligations. and I think what you see as a lot of women trying to lead what they think is a life that will bring them X, Y, Z. So that's why I see wellness as something that can be dangerous, not the acts of self-care, not the act of going to yoga, but the industry of wellness, the business of wellness, which sells kind of the mind-body at great expense. and is seeing women, I think, kind of go on this endless journey of self-improvement and betterment, and it just never ends. And it also has taken as very far from the idea of wellness, which in the 60s was developed as a way to keep society healthy as much as the individual. But it's just become completely detached from its social origins.

So I think what I found really valuable about Nezrean's statement is that sometimes these stories, truths might be uncomfortable or sometimes these options might be uncomfortable. If you if you choose one path, you might not be able to take another. And I just found it something really interesting to keep coming back to when I was writing. And actually her her interview and her saying that comes right at the end of the book, but I interviewed her quite early on. And so it kind of informed the journey I went on as I was writing and and it really helped me in my personal life as well you know to think okay well I'd love to do that work project right now but that will take at all on XYZ in my life or oh I'd love to do this but you know I've just had a baby so that's not that's not going to make me feel

great to do that in my mothering identity so it just really helped me personally as well I think also one of the things to pick up on what you said about women give being given this kind of endless choice it's somehow like we have this choice but we're not empowered to fully seek any of it we expect you to kind of go after all of it and to be happy with just little crumbs here and there of everything that we are able to get so you know you get an incredible work assignment but you can only really have a crumb of self-care at the end of it you can maybe run yourself a bubble bath but be exhausted and not be able to enjoy it and that's having it all there are really loaded choices I think you know one of the things

that I found most interesting is that the working parents gap is smaller than it's ever been before. 91% of fathers are working fathers and 75% of mothers also work outside the home. So there's only 16% between there. But the gap in terms of the kind of care load and not just the physical care load, but like I look at the cognitive load, the kind of executive functioning and planning, of having a family and the allostatic load, which is the toll that stress takes or that mothering takes on the body. And there's so many fascinating statistics just about the impact it has on women or even women when they're going back into the workplace. So yes, women that have children can work, but paternity leaves are still really rubbish for a lot of men. And without a decent paternity leave,

who's picking up the slack? You know, if you've got a boss that says, no, you can never leave before 6pm, then who's always leaving at 4.30 or 5 to pick up the kids? And there were so many things around that that I felt like just aren't being probed enough, those little pockets. Like 53% of women, for example, who commute to work say that the commute is the most stressful part of her day. That's really interesting to me. Like, why is the commute the most stressful part of a working mother's day? is it, or even just a women's day, is it because, unlike most men, she's already having to think about the supermarket shop

or the Christmas presents that need to be bought or the party, the Christmas party that they're hosting, what will they be eating? You know, there's so many things that we just didn't have a word for. We just thought that it's like the physical load. And that's it. but there's all this like planning that goes into life and very often in a heterosexual couple

and that's another thing I was interested in. The research is always just into a heterosexual couple. So it was very interesting to talk to some same sex couples, particularly those who were mothers about how that breaks down. What I find interesting as well is that, you know, one of the myths that is in We Need New Stories is the myth of gender equality. But basically what you're saying is,

sure, we might have the physical equality, we might physically be able to get the same job as a man, get paid the same, have the same leave time if we have kids, but the cognitive drag of being the person who has to remind the other about taking the bins out or remembering to put a play date in the diary, that takes its own toll as well. Totally, because you've only got so much brain space to, you know, if you've got a social life to plan, lull,

and, you know, children to plan and a job to plan, then one of those things has to go. And the thing is, I think when you have young children and you're a two working parent household, that's got to happen. And something I found enormously freeing was the four-burners theory by David Sedaris, which he wrote about in Laugh-Cookaburrower, short story for The New Yorker, which was that you have these four burners. And he wasn't talking about parenting, but I found it as a fairly new parent at the time and struggling to keep kind of all my identities healthy. He said you have four burners in life. You have health. You have family.

You have work and you have friends. And he said, I only think you can have two burners going strongly at the same time. His husband says he can have three burners going. But certainly there's no question that you can have four healthy burners at all time. Right, because that means you burned the house down. You burn the house down and you would. burn out. So I think just knowing that there are all these different levels, like on a mixing board,

you know, that need to be adjusted. And that's fine, that's life, but we have to be aware of all those levels when we're having these conversations. I find it enormously frustrating to read about gender equality or about working mothers or working parenthood where we're not talking about paternity leaves. And we're not talking about the cognitive and that. a static load because those are the things that make women very often feel burned out or frazzled or just, you know, on the edge of a complete crisis is the multiplicity of those things.

It's the reality of having, of being expected to be the person with a four burner hob when you really maybe only have three. Totally, totally. And as I said, I don't think this is just something that people with children necessarily feel. They might feel it with a kind of particular acuteness from one area. But I think it's that women, whether or not they have children, definitely feel a pressure to be performing all of this at the same level at all times. And it's interesting because these are themes that are also picked up in the fifth and final book you chose, which is The Confession by Jesse Burton.

Yes. So you read this most recently. I read this most recently. I read this this summer and I read it at a point where I was struggling a little bit mentally and I actually wrote, you know, I wrote like a fan letter to the author afterwards, just to say that I was so, I don't even know if I was comforted or galvanised or relieved or just so grateful that she'd written such. an emotionally intelligent novel and how much it gave me as the reader. But the confession is about a young girl in the 80s, Elise, who's in her early 20s, and she falls in love with an older writer called Connie, and they move to Hollywood together. And then there's another contemporary narrative at the same time of Connie's daughter, Rose, who's now in her 30s, and is kind of at a crisis in her personal life,

but also has all these unanswer questions about her mother. And so these two timelines are both progressing in the 80s and in the now, but at the same time coming closer and closer together to answer questions both about what happened then, but also about the future for Rose as well. It's very much about female identity, about sexuality and ambition. and aging and motherhood and choosing commercial work versus artistic,

you know, the role of the female artist. She covers so many big questions of identity, but with the lightest of touches. And it's enormously satisfying and enormously moving to read. And I kind of felt, I think, a little bit like when I read PrEP, like I was just, thank you for putting these observations into words me like thank you for just this meticulous way your brain works and there's this bit here that i thought a lot of women would really identify with this is the character of rose i didn't know

who i was anymore or what an earth i was supposed to do with myself i felt no kindness towards myself i was ashamed at my stasis and ineptitude because the truth is everyone has their losses their shames their obsessive thoughts and these people seem to manage it somehow they do it they get on, they make a life for themselves. And I think that's a, I don't know if it's meant to function like this, but I found it a really great kind of kick up the bum to be like, everyone flounders, get on with it. It's such a lovely passage, isn't it?

It makes, it's so empathetic. It's almost the complete opposite of the first book you chose, which the protagonist is just incredibly chilly and unsympathetic. It's really writing that kind of extends a hand to the audience and, you know, reassures them. Yeah, she manages to do two things at the same time, Jesse Burton, which I think is so clever in which she has characters that can be very cruel to one another. But that cruelty does not extend to the narrative or to the reader. If that makes sense, it's not a cruel book.

No, I think that does make sense. So it sort of takes you along for the ride. It doesn't attempt to boot you out with every sentence. No, I did not feel booted out. I felt quite the opposite. it. I mean, it's also sounds like a great novel about female relationships as well, you know, the relationships that women have with each other. The relationships women have with each other. And what was so great about this book is there's a romantic relationship between two women.

And then there's a relationship between a mother and child. And then there's a relationship between an older and a younger woman who have no family connection. There's a relationship between two friends at very different points in their lives. There's a relationship between a woman and her father. There are a few relationships unturned actually by Jessie in this book, but it does not feel formulaic. It doesn't feel like she had a tick box of, here are all the female relationships I need to touch on. It doesn't feel like that at all.

But it feels, what makes it feel so compelling, I think, is that I hadn't read a book like that. You know, you could say that part of it is a queer love story, but it's also about lots of other things as well. It's not easy to summarize. It resists summary, which again, I think is just so clever. Why do you think it's spoke to you so much? I just love observation and feeling like the characters have been on a journey with themselves.

And that probably is what, aside from we need new stories, which is obviously nonfiction, that is probably what unites these books. They all go on a journey of self-knowledge, I think, and there's kind of these very, poignant, painful moments of self-awareness, these pricks of self-awareness throughout the books. And that's probably what I love most or what I look for, whether subconsciously or consciously in fiction. That's a great commercial for all of the books you've recommended, actually. Because I think the very, very best literature makes you feel like you've gone on a journey

with a character, but also that you've kind of changed along the journey with them. Totally, totally. I love to feel changed by a book. I mean, isn't that why most of us read? Honestly, literature and reading has been such an amazing thing to be talking about during lockdown because we might all be stuck at home with nothing but, you know, each other on Zoom or microphone or Zencastr, which is what we're recording this podcast on. But at least we have the ability to make these journeys through literature and books.

Absolutely. They're transporting, transportive. I think that's why I would always be such a fan of reading is it's not necessarily a you're not running away from who you are you're kind of understanding more about yourself and the world through other people and their writing so if you had to choose one book from or the list that as your favourite which one would it be seeing you're not going to do that sorry we do this to everybody i'm i apologize i'll say a little life but i just i wouldn't recommend it to everyone at every moment in their life can i caveat it with that no i think if you're in a fragile place this is not the book for you

Well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Zing Singh and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. You definitely want to click subscribe. Please rate and review this podcast. It's the easiest way to help spread the word about the female talent you've heard from today. And thanks very much for listening. See you next time.