Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep19: Bookshelfie: Debbie Wosskow

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Multi-exit entrepreneur, investor and one of the UK’s most influential business figures, Debbie Wosskow OBE discusses the gender pay gap in writing, her fearlessness in asking men for money, and why the Women’s Prize Trust is so important. Debbie is best known for founding the home-swapping platform Love Home Swap and co-founding the women’s network AllBright. She has built and scaled multiple successful businesses, advised the UK government on the sharing economy and now co-chairs the Invest in Women Taskforce, driving hundreds of millions of pounds of investment into female-led companies.  A former board member at the Women’s Prize Trust, Debbie is Executive Chair of The Better Menopause, a company that produces science-backed nutritional supplements for women navigating perimenopause and menopause, a Board Member of The Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board and a Non-Executive Director at Channel 4. She is also the co-author of the business bestseller, Believe, Build, Become - How to Supercharge Your Career.  Debbie was awarded an OBE in June 2016 for services to business & received Freedom of the City of London 2019. Debbie’s book choices are: ** All my Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews ** Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt ** Piranesi by Susanna Clarke **Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ** We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season eight of the Women’s Prize’s BookshelfiePodcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the biggest celebration of women's creativity in the world and has been running for over 30 years.  Don’t want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! You can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org - every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops.  This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

The gender pay gap begets the gender savings gap, which means we don't invest, which means in my world of raising venture capital and private equity to back my businesses, the single reason for my business success is that I'm really good at asking men for money. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a career. This is the Women's Prize for Fiction, bookshelthy podcast supported by Bayleys. Join us in celebrating women's writing from around the world in the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction. sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives. I'm Vic Hope and I am your host for Season 8 of Bookshelfy,

the podcast that asks inspiring and brilliant women to share the five books by women that have shaped them and their lives. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you should be adding to your reading list. Today I am joined by Debbie Wasco, OBE. Debbie is a multi-exit entrepreneur, investor and one of the UK's most influential business figures. Best known for founding the home swapping platform

Love Home Swap and co-founding the Women's Network, Allbright. She's built and scaled multiple successful businesses, advised the UK government on the sharing economy, and now co-chairs the Invest in Women Task Force, driving hundreds of millions of pounds of investment into female-led companies.

A former board member at the Women's Prize Trust, Debbie is executive chair of the Better Menopause, a company that produces science-backed nutritional supplements for women navigating perimenopause and menopause, a board member of the Mayor of London's Business Advisory Board and a non-executive director at Channel 4. She's also the co-author of the business bestseller, Believe, Build, Become, How to Supercharge Your Career. She was awarded an OBE in June 2016 for services to business and received freedom of the city of London in

2019. Debbie. I was so excruciating. I'm sorry, I realised you just had to sit through that. You're just looking at me like, come on. It's the full of the key. Okay. How does it feel hearing all of that back? It's a bit embarrassing. Really?

You know what? It's incredible, though. Thank you. Thanks, Vic. Well, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. We have talked books a few times. We've sat over dinner and discussed.

Mostly in nightclubs. I wasn't going to say. But, yeah, we've seen each other in nightclubs a few times. But it's so lovely to get to sit down. and discuss the books that you feel have shaped you. You have read so widely. How difficult was it to choose five? It was impossible.

So books have always been my happy place and my solace. I was a very nerdy bookish child. And I think although, as per my sort of wiki intro, I'm known for being a businesswoman, actually reading and theatre, but reading for the post of this conversation is where I like to spend my time. So I probably do get through, I don't know, like 40 or 50 books a year. I'm quite a big reader.

I'm not a big sleeper. So reading for me is something that happens a lot. Having all night. Yeah, it happens every night, but it happens on holidays, definitely, with focus. And I found this impossible. And I think I thought hard because I'd done seven years as a trustee of the women's prize, and because the red thread through my career is women, what can I possibly add to this conversation?

You know, we were discussing, you've been presenting the podcast for the last four years, I think, three, four years. And I did in a very sort of business analytical way look at the recommendations that incredible women had made around incredible female authors and incredible books. And I felt like I wanted to do something a bit different. So I have avoided the canon. So in my choice of five, read into it, of course, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronze. Anne of Green Gables and Nora Ephron and Barbara Cringsolver and Hilary Mantell, of course. We must all. Caviatic.

Right, caveat. But what I tried to do with focus-wise was think about the last decade of my life. Think about some of the books that I've come across that perhaps not everybody's read. So hopefully for people listening to this, there are a few tips of things that I have loved. And I suppose think about the things that get me out of bed in the morning. and a lot of that is around women and sisterhood and real-life sisters and friendship. And it was only when I started to try and do the list of five

that I realized that that was a common thread between a lot of the things that I really loved and that stayed with me. So I hope that for listeners, there are a few that might be new. It brings me a bit more up to date in terms of my reading and it leaves us all reflecting on what has been the joy of being part of the prize for me in the last seven years,

which is the power of the female view and the female word. There's been a few times we've had guests on the podcast who said, you know what, when I started to pick these books, I realized something about myself that I hadn't realized before and I'm seeing these common threads

and what I'm drawn to, and it hadn't really clicked, but there it is. I felt like that. Some of the books are quite dark, I think. What does that say? Well, quite, maybe. But also, I think there's real, there can be beauty and pain, I suppose, what is it that I realized, as I picked them, that actually, this is a Hillary Mantel, I suppose, even though we're not doing her, but I'll do her quickly.

You know, I like passages and books, I've got a good memory that I can remember that means something to me. And actually the wolfhole line around the things you think are disasters in your life are not disasters, really. almost anything can be turned around out of every ditch a path if only you can see it and that I have written like in capital letters and the side of my laptop and I think that's what I love in fiction and I have picked five fiction books

I'm a much bigger reader of fiction than non-fiction although I have written a non-fiction book because I love to lose myself in other people's stories, in women's stories but out of every ditcher path So some of the books that I've chosen, I think, are beautiful and uplifting and engaging, even though they're dealing with really difficult subject matter, suicide, addiction, difficult family relationships, which touch all of our lives.

And I'm 51 now and life is not straightforward. But out of every ditch of path and finding the light and the shade, I suppose, is my superpower. You never know when you needed to hear something. I actually really needed to hear that line right then. Okay, out of every ditcher path. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And I've had some high highs and some really low lows, particularly over the last sort of 17 years since I became a mother.

And there is a theme in the five of motherhood. Motherhood and being a mother and being mothered and how we mother and how we decide how to mother, which is very imperfect and how we learn through motherhood, is something that I'm endlessly interested by because I'm endlessly. getting it wrong and getting it right. So I think recognizing that really as women, we can determine our own life path. We can determine our own happiness. Even when it feels bad, there's light in the shade. And determining your own life path, having that power is a constant thread through out your work and also through the book that you've written. But let's talk about those life moments like you just described and the books that have accompanied you through them. of them. Not all of them. Yeah, yeah, some of them. The last decade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your first

Shelby book is All My Puney Sorrows by Miriam Taves. All My Puney Sorrows offers a profound reflection on the limits of love and the sometimes unimaginable challenges we experience when childhood becomes a new country of adult commitments and responsibilities. In this powerful novel, Taves gives us a startling demonstration of how to carry on with hope and love and the business of living, even when grief loads the heart. Tell us about why you take this book. Oh, I love, I just love her. And I was late to her because I think all my penises is 2014.

And I don't think I read it until about 2023 or 22. And I first read Fight Night, which is also a brilliant book. And did that bring you to taste? It did, yeah. You know, what is at the heart of this? And Fight Night is about a really moving mother-daughter-granddaughter relationship. this is about sisters and I have sisters I have a lot of sisters you know and I always talk about in my book

and as I reflect on my work around economic empowerment for women that I'm the latest in a long line of proudly difficult women and my sisters stand alongside me in this regard and this is about two sisters the von Ries and sisters and the the novel's narrator has always lived in her sister's shadow and her sister is gifted and beautiful and happily married and she's a very celebrated constant pianist. However, Yolandi, the other sister, feels like a failure,

but Elfrida, the sort of super talented kickhouse sister, has really, really challenging mental health issues, and she is depressed. And the novel is about her wanting to kill herself, which sounds like a sort of horrible read or a devastating break in a relationship

between sisters but I actually found it unbelievably uplifting and beautiful there's a quote from it and it's very funny you know Landy says she wanted to die

and I wanted her to live and so we were enemies who loved each other which is just a sort of shard to the heart so for me as well for the author because when

I read something that I love, I try to dig deep on the author, she is drawing on the suicide of her own sister, so it is a real life story. And I don't know if you've seen the, you know, again, I draw a lot of comparisons between books and theatre. But if you've just seen, I saw Mini Driver and I saw Lenny Henry in the play recently, which also has a suicide theme to it, which is about, you know, brilliant things in life. And I think that there's a lot of, lot to draw from these very dark tales. I found it honest and funny and gut-wrenching. And I think as a writer, she mixes laughter and poignancy like no one else. I would say it's a must-read. And she's not terribly well-known in the UK. And I would say read everything she's written.

When you say gut-wrenching, honest and funny, which of those emotions do you think lingered with you, the longest? I think gut wrenching. I think it always does, doesn't it? I think these dark stories of how beautiful and challenging life can be. And I think we've all have people in our lives who struggle with their mental health, you know, a line from the play that I, the mini driver play that I saw on Saturday, which is that anybody who hasn't struggled with their mental health over the years, this hasn't been living properly. I think that in extremist, which is what happens in this book, and how it impacts on sisters, and depending on how you count them, I've got four sisters, so I've steps and halves and all that. And I think also that dynamic of sisterly love and understanding and fractiousness and everything that comes with sisterhood for me is super powerful. And, you know, for those of us who don't have sisters by blood, sisterhood extends beyond to, you know, our sisters around the world, our sisters who are our friends, the book explores the limits and the challenges of helping someone you love, whoever that might be. How's that theme informed the way that you lead teams, teams of our sisters, or support others under pressure? Have you implemented anything that you feel like you learned from the book?

Well, you know, I think Albright, which is my third business, which were the members clubs for women and the digital platform for women's careers, you know, our mantra, if you like, was sisterhood works, which we had written in neon in the entrance halls of the buildings here and in the US. And the reason that was front and center

and how we thought about that business was because we really believed it. Anna, my co-founder, Anna Jones, was one of four sisters as well. both as the eldest so read into that what you will and I knew which you can tell if he matters and I think that the red thread definitely through the last decade and that's the period of time

when I've pit these books has been the belief that women's networks are not as strong as men's women's work networks get less powerful as we age up and you know it because you're in it right now but that period of time when you've got tiny children the last thing anybody wants to do ever anyway

is go to a networking event where they don't know anyone and there's sort of canapes and warm wine and you walk in on your own as a woman. So a big part of the thesis behind Albright was to create spaces that were by women for women where everything from the hamwash and the basins to the art on the walls was about showcasing the female experience

and female talent. And I think we tried really hard to build supportive environments for women but that were also challenging. And I suppose that's sort of, try and distill that book and what it tells us is that it isn't always easy to love it isn't always easy to support sometimes the best version of support is saying and doing unpalatable things but i think that when i look to my own network at 51 of my career network which has been

built and i have 26 years since i saw it's my first business it's the women in my life who are there for me who are there to support me but that doesn't always mean that they're not sharing some unpalatable truths with me. And I think those are the people that we love forever, don't we? Yeah, sisterhood. Sisterhood, yeah. That idea that it's not always easy to love or be loved is very strong in your second book, Shelfy Book, which is loved and missed by Susie Boyes.

When your beloved daughter is lost in the fog of addiction and you make off with a baby in order to save the day, can willpower and a daring creative zeal carry you through? examining the limits, disappointments and excesses of love in all its forms, loved and missed is a whipsmart, incisive and modernly witty novel about love's gains and missteps. Now, I know that the author, Susie Boyt, is a friend of yours. She's my friend, so it's a cheat, isn't it? It's not a cheat, it actually gives it a whole other level. Did knowing the author on a personal level impact how you experience this book?

Did you sort of find an intimacy that brought a new layer of understanding to it? Yeah, so I would say so. I mean, I've known Susie for probably 15 years, and therefore I've got the privilege of having an insight into her very kind heart. That's how she is as a person. She's loyal. She's sensitive. She's thoughtful.

We met when we met on the board of the Hampst Theatre together, and I've always been a super fan of her writing, because she's a beautiful writer, and I think she is as she is in life. observant and sensitive and a fantastic storyteller in a quiet way, I would say. So if I thought about loved and miss, which I think is the best pick of Susie books, but I would direct everybody to read Susie books, it's a quiet masterpiece about women's lives. I think it has that in common with our first book actually, and it's got a daughter,

mother-granddaughter dynamic. I actually read it. I can't always remember when I read things, but I do remember loved and missed because I read it in a day and into the night when I was in Ibiza, which is both of our happy places. And I love an early night,

so it takes a lot to stay up. So that tells you everything you need to know about Susie's writing. Again, it's happy, sad, funny, tragic. And the thing that I loved about it is it's about the, excesses and the limits and the disappointments of love. I read a review of it which called it a thriller about parenting, which I thought was a very accurate description. And as you

described, it's about a grandmother Ruth raising her granddaughter Lily whilst her addict daughter has relinquished parental control and she rescued or essentially kidnapped her as a baby. It's about the heartbreak of addiction, really, and loving someone who can't love you in return. But much like the first book, I didn't find it a sad book. I thought that there was lots that it spoke so beautifully to about the tiny, lovely, quiet moments of child rearing. And Susie's brilliant at that, you know, biscuits, dunked in tea and holiday breaststrokeing in the Valley Erics. What was the point for me? I am a single mother. I have been since my kids were tiny. You know, the thing that I really ruminated on is that the strands through the mother-daughter

granddaughter and you have Ruth raising Lily with very, very careful love in the same way she raised Eleanor, who is an addict. And this sort of essay existential, I'm awakened. I'm awake at night question, which is particularly the case, I think, for the single mother where you tend not have anyone to talk to about it, is what if our best parenting efforts don't work or they're useless or they're not good enough, right? And that for me was the thread through Susie's book, which I think is the dark question that we often then ask ourselves really writ large. The other thing about Susie's writing is she's brilliant at letting the major show-stopping events happen off-screen,

if she were to mean. So that's the way that she often writes. They sort of happen, and then you find out that they've happened in the next chapter. I thought that was just brilliantly deployed in this book, which has drama in it, but it is really a way of using some of the small moments in life to showcase some of the biggest issues.

She's just super talented at that. I love the way you describe those small moments, the dunking of business in tea, or the breaststroke in the valiarics, there's little gestures of care. How do you show love? Oh, God. I mean, I don't show it through cooking.

Like, I'm a fantastically undomestic mother, if you ask either of my children who are generally on the brink of getting scurvy. I think that with them, and they're nearly 15 and 17, no, 17 next week, you know, we've been a tight team their whole lives. And we do a lot.

together through experiences, so through travel, and then they're quite different, my kids. So for Noah, our thing is theatre. It's always been theatre, and it's an amazing thing to have a theatre companion who's sort of new to theatre, and frankly, he will sit through a lot of tough stuff. So we tend to do that together. Gwesi's mega sporty, and she plays, you know, lacrosse at a very high level, and I watch her play. So honestly, it's imperfect, but my thing for them has always been showing up and it's always been listening and what I'm trying to achieve as the mother of teenagers is to sit on the side of you can tell me anything I would rather know which is a sort of difficult message to land with them so I think I show love through

conversation and through connection and through doing stuff together I'm not very good at like you know the joke about me is always the thing that you would never say is I'm just going to sit on the say for and flop. I'm not very good at that. But I think in the context of loved and missed, it is small things. I can just start a stretch to making them a cup of tea. You know, I can. But we tend to be actively doing things together. And we always have. We've talked about how you know Susie Boy. You've met so many authors throughout your professional life. You've interviewed so many at your all bright clubs around the world. And of course, you were on the board for the Women's Prize Trust, which is the charity behind the women's prizes.

Was it their access to female creatives that drew you to the women's prize? Totally, because I'm a nerd, and I'm not creative in that way. I always feel like I've had a butt in me, but I've never dared to put that to the test fiction, that is. And I think a wonderful part of my business life and being a founder to create the business that I want to run

or the environment I want to be in every day for me is getting to know. no female creative talent that sits adjacent to my world. So writers, fiction and nonfiction, playwrights, theatre directors, artists, you know, Albright was an amazing backdrop for all of those things because within reason we could invite anyone in and for a period of time they wanted to come, right? And it was a sort of metaphor for all of those things. And that for me is great joy.

I'm endlessly curious about how creative people are so talented. And I think adjacency to them, I hope some of that talent sort of rubs off. So, yeah, absolutely. And I think for the prize, you know, why the prize, yes, books and reading and writers. But one of the stats for me that always stuck, and I chaired the Development Board for the prize, which business people frequently do because you're responsible for sort of shaking the tin to fundraise, is that the gender pay gap in writing and in fiction is, bigger than the gender pay gap than anything else, 36%.

So I get connected in my charitable work, but kind of in my business world as well, to economic inequality. I just think we need to have those conversations. And if I can use my muscle for anything, it's to drive change. And so I felt that that could be my role with the prize, as well as just sort of nerding off

because I get to meet writers and that's great. And also it's just the best reading list of the year every year and I read the long list and the short list. I think that showcasing economic inequality, you know, in my world as an entrepreneur, only 2% of venture capital in the UK goes to back a female entrepreneur, and yet we deliver 35% better returns than men. And that has not changed in my entrepreneurial lifetime, and it needs to change. So I tend to be quite simple in the way that I think about things.

If I see something like that, I want to showcase this, statistics and push for change. And I think the prize has a really important role to play in that because prize winners exponentially earn more money. And that's a basic thing to say, but I'm kind of basic about this stuff. I don't think women talk about money enough. And I don't think we talk enough about wanting to be rich. We should. Like, we absolutely should. And then we deploy our capital and backing other women. Great. But unless we even have the conversation, then I don't think change happens. So the price for me was a sort of beautiful circle of all of those things, like nerd adjacency. But, you know, being able to incorporate creativity in my conversations

about why do women under-earned men so significantly, the gender pay gap begets the gender savings gap, which means we don't invest, which means in my world of raising venture capital and private equity to back my businesses, the single reason for my business success is that I'm really good at asking men for money. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a career. And that needs to change. Female investor is twice as likely to back a female entrepreneur as a male investor. So for books, it's not something that we think about. And I've picked one of the prize winners to talk about. But if I were to pick another one, I think fugitive pieces, which was a really early winner, it's just a brilliant example of the economic clout of the prize. I think I'm going to miss quite the

stats, but it had sold something like, I don't know, like hundreds of copies before it won the prize. And it went on to sell 25 million copies and have a movie maiden. So I think that these things are so important. Kate Moss of whom I am a superfan founded the prize 30 years ago in a year when there were no female authors on the book a long list. And I think we all have a responsibility to showcase this incredible female talent that's out there and make sure that they can make a living as a creativist it's just increasingly hard to do it and it's always harder for women the track record of the prize is undeniable it's incredible and i totally agree with what you say about being around those creatives and it rubbing off it's inspiring isn't it's uplifting

that's what we do um well let's talk about that prize winner yes your third book is piranesi yes and actually you mentioned before about going to the theatre with your son noa yeah i know you both read this book around the same time um and this was a winner it in 2021, which was the year that I judge. You with a judge, amazing. Pyrenezi lives in a dreamlike house with infinite halls, endless corridors and thousands of statues, recording its wonders in his journal. His tranquil existence is disrupted when messages appear hinting at another person's presence and a mysterious truth about his world and identity, forcing him to uncover secrets and confront a reality far different from the one he knows. My God. I know. That was an

amazing description. I don't think my, I'm not going to attempt it. It's so strange. Yeah, so strange. I know that you, like me, read it for 50, 60 pages going, not for me. Not for me. And then, bam, we're in. That's it. I mean, I love, Susanna Clark is an amazing writer and I love Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norah. But there was obviously a huge gap and she had, you know, loads of health challenges. And this book is, it's not my normal kind of book, right? And, and, And similarly, as you described it, the first 60 pages are very geographical, you know, because they're scoping out this labyrinth and the rooms and the birds and the statues and the

skeletons. And I'm like, what, you know, like, where are we? And you have to keep going back and rereading it to check, you've got where you are. But it's so other and so high impact. And it's so magical and mysterious. And it's not my normal book. And I think as I read it, and then because I was doing this with you, I had to kind of quickly reread everything.

It's quite hard to talk about books that you read a long time ago. This is 2021. It's a metaphor for the internal world that we all have in our heads. And I think the reason I picked it as my prize winner out of 30s is because I think it shows the breadth of what women can write. Yes. It's not a woman's story. It's not a woman's story.

it's not relationships, it's not, you know, all the other stuff that I've picked is potentially a bit more in that conventional what we expect women to write. And part of the reason for picking that is that, again, back to the kind of economics of fiction, men read less than women, men by books written by men, almost exclusively, women by books written by men and women. And that's part of the reason why women are just underread. However, I think this is a book for anyone that happens to be written by a woman and that's why I wanted to pick it because I think it's just it just shows the breadth of what women can write but also of what women can read and appreciate and for me it was a good push out of my comfort zone because when I saw it on the list and I don't know how it was

for you as judges it was very other compared to anything else that year and I think picking something that's different and special and magical and melancholy and high impact and happens to be written by woman is a big a sort of win for the prize I think we both thought this is not the kind of book I usually read and then I sort of thought I don't think it's the kind of book

anyone usually read how can it be because it's so very different agreed so utterly transporting did the experience of sharing the reading with your son with knowing yeah I love doing that yeah definitely because I know he struggled with it at first

too and I generally He reads what he wants to read, but I, you know, I do highly recommend women's prize winners to him. And the fact that he, and he tends to reread, which I don't do, the fact that he went through this quite a few times, I think, made it clear to me how high impact and different the storytelling was and just the quality of the writing. You literally read it as though you're exploring those halls, that geography, keep going back and lost, where am I going now? The novel celebrates curiosity and stillness. In such a fast-moving business world, do you see value in Pernese's focus on the calm?

Yeah, I mean, I find that practically impossible. I'm terrible at meditation. You know, all the things I'm always told to do for calm, I find difficult. I do, you know, I exercise every day, but I do it pretty relentlessly. I walk, but I do it quickly. the calm for me is reading and theatre. That's my calm place because I can, I do find it easy to transport myself into somebody else's world

with those stimulus. In my actual life, I find it really hard to slow down. So no matter how many courses I try to do at the London Buddha Centre, it just doesn't ever stick, right? How many calm apps I download and delete? It doesn't. But this for me is the place, but I genuinely can do it.

And in the theatre, where you're foam-free, where you're transported to somebody else's life, actually what I find really interesting was, I'm doing way more than five books now, but Hamnet and the theatre production of Hamlet, obviously it's being made into a movie, which is a previous prize winner. I think I do feel that the red thread

through books of theatre is really important for me, but the power of calm that's driven by somebody else's story, and getting out of your head, out of your life, out of the office and out of your to-do list and out of the stress is the most powerful thing for me. Bailey's 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 adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream,

or paired with your favourite book. Check out bailey's.com for our favourite bailey's recipes. Well, from a book that really took us out of our comfort zone, we move on to one that, for me personally, I don't want to call it my comfort zone, my comfortable place, but it's a book where I felt so at home and felt so seen. It's Americana by Trimanda and Gosia Dici. Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives.

Americana has been described as a literary masterpiece and rightly so in one of the defining books of the decade. It was shortlisted actually for the 2014 Women's Prize of Fiction. Following Nigerian high school sweethearts, Ifemalu and Obinzee, as they navigate their lives and relationship across Nigeria, the United States and the United Kingdom. Adiché beautifully explores themes including race, relationships and belonging. What makes Americana such a defining book for you? You know, I felt like the hat to be a chimamander in one of my picks and how well that book has stood up actually since 2013

and the power of a female story and a female protagonist that was forthright that was not easy, that was dealing with challenges of race and ethnic, ethnicity and what it means in different places in the world. I think a lot of the backdrop was Obama and I always feel connected to that because Noah was born the day Obama was elected. Yeah, so I sort of have this, you know how you're tied to something. And so that story of that time and actually how different it is to deal with race,

ethnicity and your life as a woman of color and the transference from Nigeria to the US and then what it meant around huge topics that are still massive recurring themes like immigration and how othering all of that can be. To me, of all of her books and I've read all of them, that was the one that I come back to as still now because I've reread it in the last month or so being so relevant and powerful and so broadened its themes. because it is race, but it's also a story of love and relationships and challenges and, you know, on a really, really broad canvas, which is what she writes so beautifully. Immigration is such a live topic today. I can't actually imagine it because I've not read it for a little while and I felt like we were in such a different place, particularly like you mentioned, 2008, Obama, yes, we can. To then reread it now, you say just a month ago, how did that feel?

Where did that take you? I think you would find that the way that immigration is discussed is still absolutely relevant because it shows that immigration makes people poor, not just in terms of riches, but in terms of the process that they're forced into being so difficult, and sometimes it forcing them into criminal situations. I think that's exactly the context for that which we're evaluating immigration now. I suppose what I find depressing, given the current state of the world, is I don't know that the conversations around race in America are the same,

as they were in such a sort of optimistic way back in 2008. So some of that sort of geopolitics in the state of the nation. but I think what it means to be black in America was a huge piece of writing that I think she was pretty unique and landing in that way and through a female lens, I suppose it's that. And that it's complex

and that the American view of race, in her opinion, can flatten people and it doesn't allow for different experiences. And I think the breadth of characters, you know, it's a big book, there's a lot of people in it, living their life as black men and women in different ways in different countries. And for me, that was really, really high impact. You know, my own family, Eastern European immigrants to the UK, and I think recognising that, that doesn't mean one homogenous thing,

right? That sort of notion of sacrifice, the pursuit of belonging is so multifaceted. You actually mentioned in your notes that you first read this in the early years of Love Holmeswell. I did. So this was a time of constant travel. A lot of movement for you. And, you know, you were a single parent, your young children. Balancing that independence, that responsibility, did any part of If Emma Lou's self-discovery

resonate with your journey? Yeah, and I think also that her relationships came and went a bit in the novel, didn't they? You know, it's sort of, like, you think it's a love story, but is it? I think that was really powerful. And I think for me those years, the early love home swap years you know I flew to the US a lot

which meant that I was there and on the ground there and being able to reflect on that but I think there's a theme for her throughout all of her books about whether relationships can be consistent and how that impacts on a woman's own journey of self-discovery

and I think that's a huge essay question for independent women like what is it that we're trying to figure out how much of it is our own journey how much of what we do do as, you know, heterosexual women is impacted by our relationship with men or not, or how much should it be? And I think you do age through a lot of those conversations into your 50s, and perhaps this

is why this puts it's alongside the others that I've picked, where the power of female friendships and relationships almost become the most important thing adjacent to love stories and our self-discovery is driven by ourselves. And absolutely, I don't know, I'm sure you've read Dream. count as well her most recent one that feels so potent what is it exactly that we are looking for and those friendships really come through there's a theme within all the books that you've picked which explore women's inner lives in terms of friendship like we just say sisterhood well-being love resilience how do those themes resonate with your own work in the sphere of money and women

and women in health as well yeah so I have a business that I chair that's reasonably new called the Better Menopause, which is about doctor-developed supplements for women and Perry and menopause. All of my businesses, I'm a very simple entrepreneur, maybe a simple reader as well because you're all sort of looking for connection. They've reflected different decades of my life and better menopause came about because when I was 48, I got super ill, pneumonia and pluracy. It was really unwell and recovering from being in hospital and trying to figure out where I just didn't feel like myself. And I think that's a sort of common theme for women in their late 40s.

And this was three and a half years ago. So the menopause conversation, actually, it's one of the areas where the UK leads the rest of the world because we're more advanced and more advanced clinically than the US. And some of that's driven by talent by the Davina McCall, Mariella Frostruck kind of conversations that have given us a language, particularly for perimenopause, which I'd never heard of. so when I was told post the pneumonia that I was in perimenopause and the reason that I was feeling so bad my symptoms were so bad was because I had no microbiome because I've been on antibiotics for such a long time and I always have light bold moments with anything and that one was like hang on a minute you're telling me that there's an inextricable connection between gut health and women's health between gut health and paramedopause and

and menopause. Well, I've never heard of that. And I consider I'm reasonably well-informed because I feel like I take care of my health. And all of the gut health conversations were so male. You know, they were Tim Spector and they were Huberman and they were about longevity. And women don't tend to talk about longevity in quite the same way, probably because we live longer than men. So I think that we're increasingly being given a language to focus on our health. And so because I tend to be obsessive when I get a thing into my head and then went on this, massive journey to try and develop the first probiotic for women in midlife that would address these gut health symptoms because I felt like I've been taking probiotics forever and what I learned

was they just wouldn't touch the sides because the female microbiome in midlife is totally different to the male microbiome or our microbiome when we're younger. So that was the sort of thesis behind the better menopause. We now have four doctor-developed supplements, one of which is in clinical trial and they deal with the big symptoms of menopause. So gut health, which sits over everything, sleep, my sleep's always been terrible, but went totally off the rails in my late 40s. We have better night. Metabolism, you know, there's a huge live conversation around GLP-1s

on which I have no judgment, but this is an alternative or to help women on or off board because one of the big menopause symptoms that we hear most about from our community is mid-section, mid-life weight gain that they can't do anything about. And then the final product that we launched a few weeks ago is called better libido because meta doesn't like you talking about sex because you know again slightly arcs back to this wither relationships and the arc of the female life and female reproduction which is what we hear a lot from women in their 40s and beyond is they just don't want to have sex anymore and that has a huge impact on their relationships so that business and that community and that paramanopause menopause community for me it is part of my motivation to do anything which is make it better you know that

The stat for me is that one and 10 women leave the workforce because of their menopause symptoms. 25% of women want to. I know that our reproductive system tends to count against us in terms of our careers. It's super hard to stay in. What you're doing at the moment, like four or five months post baby, with the boobs and the pumping. I mean, I can remember it all. And the point is it's hard to keep your career on track, to keep your career on track, to keep, being economically productive to keep your networks going that everything that we know as a driver

of success is really hard if you decide to have kids and if you're having them at the age where by the way they are your peak earning years the mean age to start a business in the UK is 33 that tends to be not always but often when women have got young children so the last thing I want to hear is that they're leaving the workforce in their 50s if they've managed to keep going to them because of their men report symptoms so again I tend to focus and prioritize, where can I use my muscle, you know, where can I shine a light? And the way that I tend to do it is through building businesses, because I am unashamedly for profit. My work for the prize is charitable work. My work for theatres is charitable work. But I always lean

into, just make sure women earn. Because if women earn, then they have agency. And that for me comes from my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, who is a magnificent woman, who was extremely glamorous and lived to her late 90s, but she always talked about the need for being economically independent as a woman, and I've seen that in my mother and the women in my family, and I think that just gives you choices. And I feel like if I have a role or a purpose of anything with that work, better menopause work, or the investing women task force work or anything that I talk about, it's to help women feel that they can, and that they can keep going. Whatever that means to them whether that means working flexibly or working differently or you know god knows i've

reinvented myself endlessly because i only have quite a short attention span so i have five or six years of anything in me and then i want to talk about something different but i think women can and if i can convince women that they can then that that's part of how i see my role i'm convinced right now good good good yes you had used your muscles so well and yeah um debby's referring to i was pumping in the studio just last week because we had a couple of air yeah yeah we had a couple of recordings and my boobs were full. Three months postpartum. We've arrived at your fifth and final

boot, Shelby, Boot Debbie, which is we all want impossible things by Catherine Newman. Eddie and Ash have been best friends for over 40 years. Since childhood, they've seen each other through life's milestones, stealing vodka from their parents,

the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriages, infertility, children. So when Eddie is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Asher's world reshapes around the rhythms of Eddie's care from chip dice and watermelon cubes to music therapy

from snack smuggling to impromptu excursions into the frozen winter night because life is about squeezing the joy out of every moment about building a powerhouse of memories about learning when to hold on and when to let go. Tell us about why this is your final thing today. Oh my God, this book. I mean, I am not a choir. Probably already. I know.

But this book, I can remember. also a holiday read for me in Marrakesh, where it, which is another sort of happy place for me alongside Ibiza. This book is just unashamedly about friendship. It's about this huge life-defining friendship between Eddie and Ash, as Ash cares for Eddie,

who's dying of ovarian cancer in a hospice. Now, again, I did think about this. It's another one that should be really dark, but it's so moving and it's so humorous. and it's so poignant, and it's so real. That's what I love about it because it doesn't canonise the characters. You know, part of the reason that I loved Ash so much

is she was dealing with this grief, this unthinkable grief, worse than a relationship loss by just shagging away around. And so there was sort of humour in the sadness. I know. And it's messy. and Ashie's life is messy

and it's full of families have brothers in it as well and grief and this just endless search for connection which I think drives all of us I didn't include Nora Ephron who doesn't love Nora Ephron I love Nora Fron but it felt quite Nora Ephron-esque

in terms of some of the lines of some brilliant lines it's also which I'm a sucker for based loosely on a real life story story of Catherine Newman and her best friend dying and it made me absolutely sobbed my eyes out. I sent it to all of my girlfriends, particularly Joanne and my best mate, who thankfully is not dying of terminal cancer,

but who I love. And we just all saw so much in it about how beautiful female friendship is and how it's for life. You know, and it trumps everything. I suppose that was my sort of takeaway from this book. I think that's a really profound way of putting it, female friendship.

It does. It trumps everything. How have your whole thing? female friendships evolved over time and what have they taught you about love and loyalty? Yeah, I mean, they're my people for sure. I think if I have any skill, I maybe have two skills or two and a half. I can read really quickly. So that's like a superpower, particularly for this. I'm good at picking up women along the way. I really am. And if I, and if I look at my circle of female friends it's a beautiful varied thing where I've got people who go back to being four years old but I've also got women that I've picked up along the way you know I've a very tight-knit

group of female entrepreneurial friends because there aren't very many of us and they have definitely been the people over time who I'm able to be most honest with about work and and that feels very important but I haven't known them forever um Joanna who's my sort of closest friend probably I've famously picked up, you may actually relate to this, but on the Pilates reformers. So I went back to Pilates, I had a cesarean section with Gracie, six weeks after she was born. And I mean, my God, I was clinging onto the thing for dear life.

It was quite hard. Like, I couldn't even move it. And there was a woman next to me who was like a goddess of just sort of. And I said to her afterwards, oh my God, like I had a baby six weeks ago. You know, I've got milk like, this is all. I'm never, ever going to. And then I'm a big, I'm not hippie-dippy, but I do believe that things can happen for a reason and the universe serves up connection or maybe a different way of putting that is I think that there are moments of serendipity in life. And I went, I think even that night or the night after to a work event and she was there with her then partner who she's not with anymore.

And so that was, so I'm good at that. I'm good at kind of. And I think, and Anna who, you know, is my Allbright co-founder and. when we're involved in better men and pours together and whom I adore, I was set up with at a party that I nearly didn't go to of parents, the school of, like one of those where I'm like, but it's on the way home, I'll go.

And then the dad, who I didn't really know, said there's someone that you should meet, and that was her. So I think that they are everything, none of that's anti-men, Albright wasn't anti-men, I'm not anti-men in my life, but the power of sisterhood,

the power of connection, the power of support, the power of laughs, and the power of one of our WhatsApp groups called the commune, which, you know, when all else fails, we focus on how we're going to live together in old age, et cetera, et cetera, has been an amazing thing. And men are wonderful in many ways,

and my career would not be where it is, were it not for the support of men, but women are the people with whom I can do warts and all supportive conversations through the ups and downs in life. And I think this book, you know, the woman who's dying has a husband. And the woman who's supporting her has a husband, sort of, a strange husband, the brother's floating around. Anyway, all of that. But it's the story of them.

It's the story of them. And that, to me, shows how important knowledge and humor and warts and all love with the women in your life is. Eddie's illness reshapes Ash's life. Yes. It forces it to slow down. and it forces it to pay attention. You've talked previously about how you suffered from burnout in your 40s. And this novel also finds, like you said, joys and small rituals,

such as food and laughter and shared memories. So I'd love to know how now in your 50s you prioritise your health and what your little rituals are that keep you having when you mentioned Pilates. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I've become a mega weights person, which I never ever was in a million years. I'm such a scared of that. But I find there's a real power in feeling strong.

And 40-year-old me didn't really know that. 30-year-old me certainly didn't, because I used to just cardio, cardio the life out of everything. So I think there's a power and strength. I definitely, when I'm derailed, which by the way is often, and I know that it can all look a bit glossy and everything, but obviously is not. I see solace in my routine.

And my routine is get up early, sweat every day, you know, I like clothes, try and get myself together and be around people that I love. and make sure that in my week I've got time to walk, I've got time to go to the theatre I've got time to read because with my work life

particularly now I have a portfolio you know I do better men you did the whole rap sheet at the beginning board of channel four the channel it's quite easy to lose yourself because you don't a little bit like for you Vic

there's an unlimited amount of stuff that you can do and if you're quite at alpha and quite driven and quite hard on yourself you end up massively overcommitted and that's always my tendency I think well I've

got better at doing is recognizing that just because I cannot work anyone doesn't mean that I should and actually there are ways to have more joy and that's my theme for my 50s is more joy right more joy which isn't necessarily the same thing as more work or more success or more notes of the groundstone or bench pressing more and my nature is that it's just more joy and so doing things like going a way, I mean, I tend to do like fitnessy, retreaty things with girlfriends and doing that kind of thing and just booking in the time, as well as going on adventures with my kids about to go to Dublin with my son this afternoon, more joy. And I think a decade ago, I would have found a thousand reasons why I couldn't do that because I was on the bus and I didn't want anything

to derail that, partly because which I don't think we talk often enough about, there were just economic realities to life that meant that as a single parent, the stuff that you need to get done but recognizing that the two are not in opposition to one another and that you can have a big inner life you can take yourself out of your life through reading and going to the theatre you can go on adventures you can be with your girlfriend you can laugh you can still work really hard and do everything that you need to do but you don't need to say yes to everything and so a part of more joy in my 50s but also say no I never used to say no I love that I'm taking notes but you know a big inner life and more joy feels like a mantra we can all love

live by. Debbie, thank you so much. I'm going to ask you one more question before I let you go and that is if you had to pick one book. Oh my god. Which is a BMI. Um, I think I would pick loved and missed by Susie because I just think it's a beautiful and important book about the highs and lows of family life and living. And more joy. Yeah, more joy. Debbie, thank you so much. What an absolute joy. Thank you. Thanks for having me. To get to speak. to you about books. Thank you. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Bootschelphie podcast. Brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media.

Thank you for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books discussed in our show notes. If you've enjoyed it, please leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women. See you next time.