Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep2: Bookshelfie: Jojo Moyes

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Bestselling author Jojo Moyes discusses her passion for libraries, the importance of staying silly and how to build complex characters aka the ‘kick the dog’ test. Jojo Moyes is a novelist and screenwriter. Her books include the bestsellers Me Before You, After You and Still Me, The One Plus One, The Giver of Stars, Someone Else's Shoes and her short story collection Paris for One and Other Stories. Jojo's novels have been translated into forty-six languages, have hit the number one spot in twelve countries and have sold over fifty-seven million copies worldwide. Me Before You has now sold over fourteen million copies and was adapted into a major film starring Sam Claflin and Emilia Clarke. Her latest book, We All Live Here, takes us to the heart of the Kennedy household, in a moving family saga about love, friendship and what matters most. Jojo’s  book choices are: ** National Velvet by Enid Bagnold ** The Collected Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker ** Behind The Scenes at The Museum by Kate Atkinson ** Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen ** Three Women by Lisa Taddeo 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 for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and continues to champion the very best books written by women. 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.

At Harrison Healthcare, we know that lasting health starts with personalized care. We're not just a clinic. We're your partner in prevention, helping you achieve your health and longevity goals. Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the compassionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve. Today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com.com. slash Toronto. I was a bookish child.

I was an only child till I was 19. And my parents were big readers. So I literally read everything from the Bible to the joy of sex. I mean, just completely indiscriminate. I was reading Updike at kind of 14 and Giles cartoon books. And I was allowed to buy five comics every week from the local news agent. And my mom and dad had this theory that they didn't care what I read as long as I read. So it could be comic.

It could be instruction manuals. I was just that child who was always obsessed with a book. I think my nan, who I used to go and see every Sunday, would call me a bookworm and not in a good way because I just always have my nose buried in a book. This is the Women's Prize for Fiction Bookshelfy 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 delighted to be joined by Jojo Moise.

Jojo is a novelist and screenwriter. Her books include the bestsellers, Me Before You, After You and Still Me, The One Plus One, The Give Her Of You, the giver of stars, someone else's shoes, and her short story collection, Paris for One and other stories. Jojo's novels have been translated into 46 languages have hit the number one spot in 12 countries, Anna sold over 57 million coffees worldwide.

The eyes. What? It's just always a surprise when you hear it. It sounds nuts. It's nuts, but it's very much the case. Me Before You has now sold over 14 million coffees and was adapted into a major film starring Sam Claflin and Amelia Clark. In 2023, Jojo joined BBC Maestro's online platform of world-class experts

with her course writing love stories, which is available now. And she was a judge as well on the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2013. Her latest book, We All Live Here, takes us to the heart of the Kennedy household in a moving family saga about love, friendship and what matters most. Jojo, welcome. It's such a pleasure. to see you again. Yeah, thank you for having me.

Delighted to be here again. I'm amazed that it was 2013. That's such a long time. Your eyes again lit up. It's like different expression this time. I have no concept of time anymore. It's all gone. How was your experience of judging?

I loved it, but I think I, the thing I learned was that if I didn't love a book after 100 pages, that I should have let it go. And I think I felt such an kind of exaggerated obligation to the authors involved to keep reading in case I was missing something that it became a kind of huge undertaking because there's a lot of books to read but I loved it I just yeah it's a really interesting thing to do that's the thing isn't it if it doesn't get you in the first hundred pages it's not going to make your long list or your short list realistically but there is that obligation and you know as a novelist what goes into writing those books and you know there could be a gem on page 243 and also for years my books

took a long time to get going. So I think I just felt afraid that I might be being unfair, but now I'm a lot more ruthless. Yeah, speed reading is always no mean feat. Life is too short. It's always another good book out there. I mean, as a writer, love is so central to your storytelling. What draws you back to romance over and over again?

Well, I would say, well, it's not romance. I'd say it's just love because the last few books have not had romance at their center at all. They've actually had female friendship, the bonds in families, just the bonds between women who shouldn't have even met. I feel like love is at the center of everything. It's at the center of every war. It's at the center of every political battle. It's what people are passionate about. It's what roots them to their home. It's it's about defending things. It's about what makes you angry. It's like the root emotion of everything. The lack of it causes huge problems.

You know, too much of it can cause equal problems. I know it. Yeah, you can put love at the heart of everything. And I think most books, even if they're not classified as love stories or romance, have love at the heart of them. So interesting you say that actually, in relation to having judged the women's prize, which I did in 2021. There were so many genres that I thought, this isn't for me.

This is not something I'd usually read. But actually what hooked me was the fact that there was always love at the heart. heart, even of a thriller, which normally I wouldn't be, you know, drawn to at all. Yeah. And sometimes it's about people's inability to express love or to feel love. But there's just, there's a big hole at the heart of something and that can be love. Romance books in the kind of traditional sense, they've historically been quite overlooked, quite denigrated, largely due to their predominantly female readership. We know this. I think we've talked about this before.

Why is it so important that we champion love stories and maybe that we expand what it means to be a love story and frame it differently in the literary world and beyond? What can that teach us? I think Barbara Cartland did us all a huge disservice because I think people began to associate the word love with that kind of slightly dashed off, dictated, formulaic love story. And actually nobody I know who writes books with love at the heart of them writes like that. they are passionate about what they do. They are passionate about their craft. Also, if you, if you think of it in really reductive terms, you just cut off a whole bunch of readers. The thing that's been particularly lovely for me over the past few years was all my publishers have packaged me in a much more gender-neutral way. And so I get messages from male readers who say,

I wouldn't have picked you up before, but I absolutely loved this book. And this is what I thought about A, B and C. My favourite ever story that came to me via an email was from two welders in the North East, who one of them had seen his girlfriend reading me before you and crying, and he'd become intrigued. And so he took it to work. And then his colleague wanted to know why he was sitting outside in the yard, kind of absolutely engrossed every lunchtime. So he started reading it too. And he said, I'm writing to you to let you know that at lunchtime today you would have seen two big, hairy old men crying their eyes out over their sandwiches because of your book. And it was just the best thing ever.

And it's because they weren't put off by the cover. They weren't put off by an idea of what they thought was inside the book. They just saw someone else reading it and became intrigued. And that, I think, is why word of mouth is so important because it's just, you know, packaging can be as off-putting as it can be attractive. and I think there was a period in the 90s where the supermarkets were very proactive in how books were packaged. And they had to do what they said on the tin like a can of beans. So books became very obviously for women, for men.

You know, it was Andy McNabb or it was something glittery with heels on. And now that seems to have eased off a bit. And, you know, I think people purchase their books in different ways. And I think we're all the richer for it. Yeah, very much a product. Do you keep quite an open mind when it comes to reading or do you have a certain genre that you gravitate towards because you know it's going to give you the escape you need?

Oh, no, I will read anything that somebody has recommended to me. I mean, I was a bookish child. I was an only child till I was 19. And my parents were big readers. So I literally read everything from the Bible to the joy of sex. I mean, just completely indiscriminate. I was reading Updike at kind of 14. and Giles cartoon books

and I was allowed to buy five comics every week from the local news agent and my mum and dad had this theory that they didn't care what I read as long as I read. So it could be comics, it could be instruction manuals. I was just that child

who was always obsessed with a book. I think my nan who I used to go and see every Sunday would call me a bookworm and not in a good way because I just always have my nose buried in a book. But I think what it taught me

without me realizing was narrative. It taught me language. It taught me story. And you're just absorbing it rather than ever doing a kind of literary course. You're just absorbing it by osmosis. Well, the Bible and the love of sex aren't on your list today. Let's dive into the five books by women that have shaped you that you wanted to bring to bookshelfy, which are sitting pretty in front of me.

I'm so glad. Well, that's a very generous way of putting it, because some of them are very, very tattie indeed. I love a tattie food. As it should be, as it should be, you say before that you dropped this one in the bath? No, that was that one. This one, the first thing I'll say is every book in this pile, apart from the really tattie Dorothy Parker, is something that I've realized I've given away and then had to repurchase. Because people don't give them back. They never do.

They don't give them back, Mum, this is for you. And I've never learned. I still press books on people and then somebody says, oh, let's go and talk about this book. Can I go to my shelves? And I'm like, nope, that doesn't live there anymore. And I can't remember who I've lent it to. So, yes, there's been some emergency purchasing going on. This is National Velvet by Enid Magnold.

Let's start with that one. Your first book, Shelfy Book, National Velvet by Enid Vagnolds, first published in 1935, and illustrated by Enid Bagnold's daughter, Lorien Jones. I didn't know that. Yes. Okay. National Velvet tells the story of 14-year-old Velvets, who is mad about horses. When she wins a piebald horse in a raffle, she knows he's something special.

Soon she and her friend Mai have their sights set on the biggest race in England. But can a girl win the Grand National? That's the question. Do you remember when you first read this book? I think I read it after watching the film, which everybody knows the film, which starred a very young Elizabeth Taylor and was the kind of breakout of her career. But I love this for very different reasons. And the first thing that struck me when I read the book,

is how different it was from the film, which I know is not uncommon. But this book is sly. It's funny. It's radical. It just has a family that exists in the way that families do in real life where they, you know, somebody's picking their nose and being sick. People are ragging on each other. Just everybody is slightly eccentric and lost in their own thing.

And there's at the heart of it, this large doer woman, the mother who once, once swam the channel herself as a teenager and won 100 gold sovereigns. And what is really radical about this book? And I know it doesn't sound very radical. Oh, girl likes horse, girl wins thing. But if you think about it, this is a story about one woman facilitating another woman to achieve a physically impossible feat. Now, when do you see that kind of story written about girls? You just don't. When do you also see a mother facilitating an extraordinary, brave thing for a young daughter to do. You don't because mothers in fiction tend to be either dead. I mean, the majority of them just are killed off in the first chapter. Or they are annoying,

they are cloying, they are anxious, they are nitpicky. You know, mothers get a really raw deal in fiction. And Violet's mother in this book is not a Walton-esque mother. She's not sweet. She's not kind. She's not sentimental. She's a big kind of silent. She's a big kind of silent hulk of a woman whose kindness comes out in action. Can I read a tiny bit? I'd love that. There is a little scene where she decides that her daughter is going to ride the Grand National, which is an incredibly dangerous race, as everybody knows. And her father, the father, has no idea what's been going on between these two women and his family. And Mrs. Brown says, I'll tell your father. Of this discussion, sorry, I called her violet, it's

Velvet. Of this discussion, Velvet heard nothing. When the battle was over, she was given no more than the result. But in the deep of the night, forces were involved that stirred Araminty Potter to love and to fury and finally to love again. In meeting a heart, but as it turned out, a brittle opposition from her husband, Araminty rose like a sea monster from its home. After her years of silence, she granted with astonishing anger. And William, powerless and exasperated, stung like a gnat upon a knotted hide, that something which was obstinate and visionary and childish bound my and velvet her mother together, and in the night Araminti, in doing battle for their dreams, fought too for her own inarticulate honour. The difference ran to its end. They were shaken

profoundly and slept in friendship at dawn. Mr. Brown rose the next morning, spiritually bruised, feeling that he was going to be made ridiculous, but acquiescent. I mean, I just love that as a depiction of an argument between a long-married couple who are not used to arguing. I just, you know, this is a woman who never says what she thinks and this rising like a sea monster. It feels gladiatorial. Yes, yes. But I love in this book, you know, her strength, her determination that her daughter should be allowed to do the mad thing. And as a slightly weedy 14-year-old myself who became obsessed with horses, even though I grew up in Hackney, I just loved the idea that this. This book told me I could do anything, be anything, with the right determination and the right support.

These messages kind of stay with you without you realising. And I was talking to my stepdad the other day who's 87 and he just said, your whole life, you just decide to do something. And you do it. And it's not always wise. I mean, I, for example, will never try and lay a floor again. But you did try once. I did try once. Joists, like not the top covering.

I laid actual joists, but it was never at entirely level. But yes, but I think this book gave me that idea that anything was possible. And what were your aspirations around that time? I didn't have any. I mean, I was 14 and I grew up in Hackney. And I loved horses, so I think I wanted a horse. But I didn't, I certainly didn't see myself as a writer. We didn't know any writers.

I mean, my parents were artistic, but they were not, you know, Neither of them had been to university. My mother had to cut short art college because I arrived unexpectedly. So, yeah, I think at that point, I just was trying to work out who I was. But then this is why books are so important because unless you see those things projected, you can't imagine your way into them. Do you remember when that aspiration was lit? To become a writer.

Well, I'd always been a writer. I'd always written, like my mother dug out a big box before she died of old kind of exercise books with long-involved stories involving me and telepathic ponies. Yeah, there was a fair amount of dreaming going on. But I think it wasn't until I went to work at a newspaper. I went to work for the independent newspaper for 10 years. And another woman who worked there, Helen Fielding, wrote Bridget Jones as a column. and then that became a runaway bestseller. And I remember thinking, well, hang on, if she can do it,

why can't any of us do it? And that's not to diminish Helen's achievement. She's an extraordinary comic writer. If you see it, you can be it. Yes, that's it. If you see it, you can be it. Access to books is clearly so important for that message entirely. And it's important to you.

I read that you stepped in to save the adult literacy program, Quickreads in 2018, when it was on the brink of closure due to lack of funding. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with libraries and bookshops, which have been the conduit for so many of us discovering and accessing books? Well, libraries are one of the few public spaces that we have left that facilitate people's elevation, if you like. I mean, you cannot succeed in life if you cannot read and you cannot climb up a ladder unless you can, you know, you can understand nonfiction text, also unless you can dream through fictional text. I mean, I can't remember quite how I got involved in the Quickreads thing.

I think I called them and said I'd like to help and then somehow ended up funding it for three years. But it was at a point when my career had gone crazy and I could afford to do it and it just felt like the right thing to do. I was raised. My parents didn't have much money when I was small. but my mum took me to my local library in Stoughtonington Church Street every week and I was allowed to get out four books so I have my five comics and my four books and most of the time I'd read my way through them really quickly but I still remember that place I remember the hush I remember that sense of adventure

when you go in because you're like where am I going to end up this week what am I going to take home what you know there's still that thing of looking at a row of spines and trying to imagine your way into a million stories, like what do I want to get out of this this week? What do I want to feel? It was a remarkable gateway for someone like me. So yeah, I'm a passionate believer in libraries. I think the worst thing about the kind of doom spiral of libraries here

and in America, because they're going through the same thing over there, is that you lose a public commodity. that you won't get back that is not just about space and books. It's about people's ability to improve themselves or enjoy themselves. And I remember going to a library in Washington Heights in New York

when I was doing research for Still Me. And they had security there because crime happened on the doorstep. But it was also a place where people learned tech skills. It was a place where people were taught to read. But more importantly, it was just a safe space. It had aircon in the summer and it had heating in the winter. And I remember watching a woman come up the stairs whose clothes were literally rags.

Like she had kind of epaulets falling off her jacket. She just, she was ragged. And I don't know if she was without a home, but she just looked dirt poor. But she was coming in to read. I mean... It speaks for itself, really. Yeah, it does. You mentioned there the success of me before you.

A huge success, but not out of nowhere. You had been writing for a long time. Yeah, I was a long-term overnight success. How did it feel when that happened? I think I didn't believe it for the first year because I'd written three books that didn't get published and then a further eight before I'd got anywhere near a bestseller chart. And then me before you got picked by the Richard and Judy Book Club,

which felt extraordinary, like finally something. something had kind of rooted and taken. And then I just remember the first week, I think we sold something like 2000. And I just moved to Penguin Michael Joseph from my old publisher. So I remember Louise Maud, the head of the company saying to me, well, we think this will start resurrecting your career. This will be the stepping stone to building you up again. And then it sold, I think, 2000.

And then it started to snowball. And then every week I was expecting the numbers to drop. and they would go up. And luckily I was already halfway through writing the next book, which was a completely different book called The Girl You Left Behind. So I didn't look up too much. I was just busy working and then promoting. And it was sort of a year later and I was thinking,

well, hang on, this hasn't stopped. And someone told me that for about three years, I looked like a rabbit in headlights. I think I just didn't believe it. And I was afraid. And then I probably worked too hard for a long time because you're so conscious of the fragility of that level of success and you just, I remember thinking, right, well, if this fails now, it won't be down to me.

It won't be down to me not trying. I will throw everything at keeping it going. But I think after 10 years, I was pretty wiped out. Yeah. Do you cut yourself some slack now? I do. I do. I have lunches now.

I don't work in the evenings anymore. Is that a balance? Yeah, I have a balance now. I do want to ask because we've seen a lot of discussion in the media about the pros and the cons of the assisted dying bill that's been passed in the UK recently. And this is the subject that you engaged with in me before you. It's deeply complex. It's an emotive issue. How does it feel to have this topic resurface in the public arena? I think it's going to resurface indefinitely because we live in an age where technology can keep people alive long beyond the point at which they might otherwise have been able to do so, 20 years.

30 years ago. And so what we have to ask ourselves is, what is that quality of life? Would I want to live it personally? And I remember when I was researching me before you, I spoke to one of the law lords, or maybe it was just after it was published, but around that time, I spoke to one of the law lords who had been involved in the decision not to grant the right to assisted suicide. And he said at the time, he said everybody in the room when we were discussing it believed in it as a concept, But we couldn't work out how to install the safeguards. And until we can safeguard people, we can't do it. And I have very mixed feelings about it myself.

I have been with two relatives who've died long and protracted deaths, and it was not pretty. And I know in at least one of those cases, she would definitely have wished for it to be ended sooner had she known that somewhere like Dignitas existed. I know that in my bones. there was no dignity, no pleasure, no joy in her life for the last three years, no matter what we all tried to do for her. It just wasn't there. You can't make it happen. She just saw her life as a series of rotten indignities, just horrible.

And she had lived a big life. And so if I put myself in her shoes, I think, well, yes, I would want the right to be able to choose how I went and not to be entirely dependent on strangers, which can be humiliating. But at the same time, I look at my mother, for example, who lived with cancer for five years, and she lived her absolutely fullest life until the very last minute. And she would not have wanted that. And I don't think she would have felt pressured by us to have ended her life.

But I can imagine a situation where if you had a very different kind of family, you would have felt huge guilt about the number of hospital appointments, the endless, because long-term illness is a rollercoaster. It's the hope that kills you. You're just always, I don't know, we're going to make Christmas. No, we're not going to make Christmas. Or we're going to do this? No, we're not going to do this.

It's the rollercoaster nature that is very debilitating. So I don't have an answer. I wish I did. But I'm not sure any of us will. I don't think any of us will. and it being so complex, but thank you for sharing that. JoJo, we move on to your bath book now, the one that fell in the water. Your second book, Shelby book, is The Collector Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker.

Also published as The Penguin Dorothy Parker and the Portable Dorothy Parker in various editions. Oh, okay. This is a collection of Parker's short stories, poetry, monologues, and book and play reviews. Parker brilliantly captures the spirit of the decadent jazz age in New York, where she lived and grew up, exposing both the dazzle and the darkness. Beneath her electrifying wit was a woman for whom happiness was, at best, precarious. Can you tell us a little bit more about this collection? Why did you choose it?

I love a book you can dip into for a start. But I think this was the first book that told me that a woman could be the funniest person in any room or the cleverest. Because, you know, when I grew up in the 70s and 80s, there was definitely a vibe that women should be pretty and not particularly mouthy. And I remember reading her fiction and she just had such an astute take on human nature. There's a piece called The Telephone Call, a short story where a woman is waiting for a call

from a man that she loves. And it could be written today. It's that kind of inner monologue of wanting somebody to be there. And she just was fun. funny. She just, I would not have wanted to sit at a dinner table with her because I think she would have savaged me. And unfortunately, you know, sometimes the people who are unhappiest are also the fastest and funniest. But I just, there was so much in this and little rhymes that I've kind of kept. But I mean, there's some really poignant ones as well. So, for example, there's a little, I'll just read your first verse of a poem. Because she's known for things like the suicide. side poem. Sorry, she should do a trigger warning, but which I can, I'll find in a minute. But she also writes really poignantly. So this is from a poem called I know I have been happiest. I know I have been happiest at your side. But what is done is done and all's to be.

And small the good to linger dolefully. Gayly, I lived and gallantly, it died. I will not make you songs of heart denied. And you being man would have no tears of me. should I offer you fidelity, you'd be, I think, a little terrified. I mean, she just knows about human nature. She knows about men and women. And I mean, I love this edition. But I reread the publishers, not the publishers, no, the kind of intro written by a man. Somebody called Brendan Gill.

And I'm going to apologize in advance to any of his relations who might still be alive. But it is the most mean-spirited kind of misogyn. description of what this woman was. She was extraordinary. And, you know, it says things like the world would have said that she had every opportunity to fulfil her talent.

And now she lived alone with a raspy little concierge of a dog in a hotel room in Manhattan and wanted for nothing and hoped for nothing and got through the day often enough with a bottle. Sounds like quite nice life actually. She got a dog.

Yeah, she's got a dog. But I just also read that and said, would you write that about a man? Would you? No. I'm not sure you would. So yeah, I love this edition but that pissed me up. It's interesting that they've chosen, Brendan,

to write it. Yes, I mean this was, I mean this is I think a 1970s edition. It was probably stolen from my parent's shelf initially. So yeah, 1973. So obviously times were different. But yeah, I haven't read

the modern edition of the Penguin Dorothy Parker, but Penguin, if you have reissued it. Can we have somebody else to write the introduction, please? Well, speaking of your parents' bookshelf, you did note in our preparation chat that it was full of male writers. Yes. Would you say that this book

was a catalyst for discovering more female writers? That's an interesting thought, yes, possibly. I think yeah, I can't think of any other female writers actually of that picture. I mean, obviously there were the Jane Austens and

you know, the classics, but I think all the modern fiction was people like Updike and it was quite rare to get a female perspective on things. So yes, I think that would have been a formative experience for me. Dorothy wasn't afraid to pull apart the power dynamics in gender. It's all the more impressive at the time, as you said, when society was very reluctant to receive those messages. Do you remember reading this and this commentary making an impression on you growing up, sparking something in you? Well, the things I wasn't aware of the politics until I got older. And in fact, I nearly included this, but I decided not to.

The book that utterly sideswiped me on that regard was a book called The Women's Room, and I forget who the author is, so please forgive me. But it was a huge book in the 1980s. And it's an entirely political, feminist fictional story. And I remember getting halfway through the Women's Room, which I think was one of the other few books that had a female author on our shelves. and just thinking, if I finish this book, I am never going to speak to a man again.

I'm never going to marry one. I'm never going to be able to be in a relationship with one because it painted such a bleak picture of male-female relations. And I've still got it, and I must have read through to the end, because it looks absolutely battered. But I just remember that feeling being so intense. Like, what have I just woken up to?

They don't view us the same as them? What? Are you kidding me? And I think that, to some extent, is the great sad realization that I had growing up in my 20s was that I grew up at university and at school thinking that boys and girls were all the same and we all liked each other the same and we all basically thought of each other as the same and then you suddenly hit the workplace and you realize that they do not view you as the same. The moment that it becomes clear, I think we all remember that.

I remember as well there being books that sparked something in me and being, outraged and saying to my mom and her saying, and that's why we're going to change the world, Victoria. Yeah. Still trying. So we're still at it. The Women's Women by Marilyn French.

Thank you. Dorothy Parker was a woman of complexity. Your own characters are known for being so multifaceted. We talked a little bit about the complexities of a family and all those different dynamics. And therefore more believable for it because that's what families are, that's what women are, that's what people are.

how do you create stories that allow readers to escape with the characters but that are also grounded in reality enough that they are familiar to them they understand them? I think it's at its heart mess. I love mess. I love psychological mess. I love domestic mess. I love just people who are in a tangle.

I don't know anybody who has it all sorted out. In fact, the older I get, the less I know and the less everybody else I know knows. and that's kind of part of the joy of it. And I think in terms of representing that on the page, I'm a character writer. For me, character is everything. And I spend far more time trying to work out who my characters are before I start writing than I do any other part of the process.

So I have a very involved lead up to actually starting writing, which involves what was their upbringing? What did their parents do? how did they handle conflict? What would they do if they walked into a bar where a fight was going on? What's in the fridge? Is it, you know, half a bottle of gin and a lime

or is it packed with, you know, protein shakes? All these little things that tell you about a person, you know, famously I've talked about the kick the dog test. If your character walked down the road and saw someone kicking a dog, what would they do? Would they walk past and feel bad afterwards that they didn't intervene? Would they kick the dog?

Would they punch the person who was kicking the dog and run away and steal it? There's a million different ways to respond to those scenarios and each of those will tell you something about the person, about their attitude, their motivations, their fears. So I try to build up all that in my head before my characters meet because even if you only use 1% of that information on the page, that huge kind of underwater part of the iceberg will crunch into something else and then it becomes interesting and I've I've found I mean I think I'm on book 17 or 18 I found over

the years that if I don't do that initial work the characters just don't come alive and and I've also found that although I love plotty books I mean I always try and have a twist in my books but I will read a good character through any set of circumstances if somebody presents me with a character that doesn't have to be good they just have to be compelling but if it's somebody I'm interested by. I will read them in any situation. If, however, I just read something that's kind of a clever plot or a bit of drama or whatever, I will forget it within two hours of finishing the book. And that's kind of not what I want. I just, I love, I love that complexity. I love that thing. I mean, another book that I nearly brought along today was Catherine Hine's standard deviation,

which made me laugh so much. But also, because for the first time in my life, I read this character and I was actually looking around me a bit awkwardly on a plane because I thought, this woman has looked inside me. This woman has sliced off the top of my head while I was sleeping and dug around inside. Why am I in this book? And I love that thing of when you identify with a character so much that you feel validated and represented.

And also it was funny, which I will follow any author who makes me laugh. Yeah. What a feeling when you have that moment. It was Sadie Smith's swing time for me. me. I haven't read that one. That's, I think, the only one of hers. And you saw yourself. I just, I couldn't believe it. I was like, have you been watching me? It's quite unnerving, isn't it? Yeah. Jojo, if you walked past someone kicking a dog, what would you do? Oh my God, I would intervene. And I would probably get my head kicked in because I always find it's much easier to stick up for

somebody else and for yourself. If someone kicked me, I'd probably say sorry. Yeah. Yeah. But if someone kicked a dog or a child, and I have actually been in this situation once, it's a long story, but I kept a horse behind a brick lane for a short period of time. Okay. And we had to watch out for all sorts of odd situations. Like people would drop bottles in their stables or they would feed them apples with razor blades in. I mean, in a city, London in the 80s was wild. And I saw somebody having a go at a girl who was riding her pony on this patch of grass.

And I was on my horse. And I galloped over there like I was a kind of winged angel of vengeance. And I just remember having this man. I was about 4'11, and I had this man at his collar and was getting him off her. And the police got involved. I'd completely forgotten that till this. And afterwards, I thought, what were you doing? But the actual Red Miss descended.

And I realized, I would never have done that for me. But when it's somebody else, you do it, right? And also, if you're on a horse, people are scared of it. Wow. Yeah, this is straight out of the film. If 4'11 me had gone running. over, I think. Nothing would have happened, but yeah. Jodo, your character is complex. It's wonderful and I want to see it written into something. 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 adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Check out Bayleys.com for our favourite Bailey's recipes. Your third book, Shelfy Book, is behind the scenes at the museum by Kate Atkinson. In Kate Atkinson's debut novel, Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a world winter of the 20th century,

a scene through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets. By interspersing flashbacks with the narrative of Ruby's own life, the book chronicles the lives of four generations of women in the family, from Ruby's great-grandmother Alice and grandmother Nell to Ruby's mother Bunty and Ruby herself. Now you've told us that this book kick-started your own writing career. Well, I'd written three books, which as I said, no publisher wanted to publish.

And the various agents who sort of represented me would say things like, well, you know, you haven't really found your voice yet, and I had no clue what they were talking about. You know, it's a concept that's quite hard. to grasp. And then I remember reading this book, which was, I think, a whipbread novel winner, prize winner. And I suddenly understood voice. This book is written with such a consistent tone and it's slightly arch and it's funny but in a very dry way and it's heartbreaking. There is a

point of this book that will make you weep. But also it's just fearless. I mean, the book starts with a sperm. I mean, it's so brave. Can I, sorry, can I just read you the opening lines? I exist. I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall. The clock once belonged to my great grandmother, a woman called Alice, and its tired chime counts me into the world.

I'm begun on the first stroke and finished on the last, when my father rolls off my mother and is plunged into a dreamless sleep. sleep, thanks to the five pints of John Smith's best bitter he is drunk in the punch bowl with his friends, Walter and Bernard Belling. I mean, how can you not love that book? It's, everything is there. You know immediately what the parents' relationship is. I don't know why it's genius to include Walter and Bernard Belling, but often writing is about

specificity and that somehow makes it funny. But also, you're a sperm. I mean, you're literally a sperm at the start of the book, and yet you want to keep reading. And it's that fearless, slightly funny, but not kind of laugh out loud, funny tone that I suddenly understood. And the way the women talk to each other in this book, I just got it. I could picture it. I could feel it. I could smell it.

And then I wrote my next book, which was Sheltering Rain, which became my debut. And I think it's because suddenly I understood the importance of that consistency, that worldview, that tone, the voice. And ever since then, each of my books probably has a very different tone. But I think my voice, which is a kind of combination of my preoccupations, my balance of humor and tragedy, my research, whatever, the voice remains consistent even if the tone of everything is very different. Does that make sense? It does. I mean, I love that we just had JoJo Moyes as a sperm on the podcast. But there is a voice, even though there is a voice.

even though they're different voices in this book. You know, there's four perspectives, but it still feels so distinctive. Yes, it does. You know, if you dipped into this book at any point, you would be aware which book you were reading, even with the different perspectives. Another of Kay Atkinson's books, actually,

life after life, was on the Women's Press of Fiction, 2013 shortlist, which was such a strong short list. Yeah, it was the year that you judged. You had maybe be forgiven by AM Holmes, which is the winner. Oh, my gosh. Bring Up the Bodies by Hillary Manton.

flight behavior by Barbara Kingsover and NW by Zadie Smith. I'm now kind of amazed. What? The strangest thing is actually when you look back, probably A.M. Holmes is the one that has had the least lengthy shelf life. When you read out those four other names, I'm thinking, how did we make that decision? I'm sure it deserved it at the time, but as you say, that's a pretty extraordinary shortlist. Bringing together voices is I think very interesting.

This big cast of characters that you have in a novel and bringing them together, a family where relationships are long established and they're familiar, you're building rapport, you're building back history between them. This is a multi-generational story as is we all live here. Family dynamics are an integral aspect of your newest release. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And what was the starting point for the novel? I think I just always wanted to write a sprawling family, messy family novel, basically.

I love dysfunctional families. I mean, we're all dysfunctional. I shouldn't even say dysfunctional. But I also felt that you didn't see a lot of fiction that centered around, I hate the word blended family. I don't know why, but those families that don't look like traditional nuclear families. And where I live and amongst my friends, nearly every family I know now has bled out at the edges. It's now something different to the way it started. And I don't think that has to be a bad thing.

I think it can be a joyous thing. And I think, you know, I'm 55 now. And one of the things that I've noted more in my life in my 50s is that you become quite reflective. It's, you know, no surprise. And you look at your own life and you look at the mistakes. you don't want to make and you look at what kind of life you want to live going forward. And often that will involve letting go of old resentments or letting go of stuff that doesn't serve you anymore. And what I loved in this book was it's a book about forgiveness. It's a book about

letting go of things that have the capacity to destroy you. And that's the really interesting thing about getting to my age is you look around and some of your friends will have come through marriage breaksups or widowhood or terrible childhoods and they cannot let go of that little kernel of bitterness and it will end up sort of destroying them from the inside and there are other people who who kind of face it head on and go okay well this is ugly how do I get past this and you know I've had a lot of therapy in my life I'm completely unembarrassed to admit it but I think what it's done is giving me the tools to look at those things almost objectively and go okay well, you can choose to do it this way or you can choose to do it that way.

But the interesting thing happens in families is when those two methods crash in the middle. And I also find, and oh my God, people are going to get across from me if I say this. But of my parents' generation and my friend's parents' generation, there is definitely a greater reluctance to look at your own behaviour. And that leads to some quite funny dynamics in families and decisions that have to be made. And I love the film The Odd Couple. I was going to say The Old Couple. This is an old version of The Odd Couple.

And I just love that idea of two old men who cannot let go of their resentments and their old enmities. And I did think about doing this as two old women, but it just wasn't as funny. It just there's something about old men squaring up to each other that makes me laugh every time I think about it. and maybe that's my internalised misogyny, but there you go. No, there's something about we're literally talking about two older gentlemen who attend the same. We go to the same Pilates class. Oh, yes.

And there's something about their friendship that I find it's just so inherently funny. It's gorgeous, but it's inherently funny. And I can't put finger on. I don't know why. No, I don't know either. Yeah, exactly. So yes, I've always wanted to write a much smaller canvas story because most of my canvases tend to be quite big and sprawl.

apart from me before you. I wrote this book so quickly that I became frightened that it was rubbish, which often happens. You can write a story and it's like pulling teeth and it will take you months just to get one chapter done and it feels terrible. Or the opposite can be true and you're deeply suspicious of your process and go, well, this can't be any good because it's coming too easily. But every now and then I think you just get one that comes more easily. I really enjoy hearing you speak about the psychology and the sort of the way that you can analyze these characters.

You would have liked to have been a psychologist if you hadn't have been the writer. I would. I'm just obsessed by people's brains. I'm more and more interested by the patterns we get into. And also one of my recent fascinations is neurologically how different we are, not just the kind of standard your ADHD or you're not. ADHD, but, you know, my brother told me not long ago that he couldn't picture things in his head. It's a condition. And 6% of the population cannot picture a thing in their heads. He said, if you describe an orange to me, he said, I know it's round and it's orange, but I can't see it. And my jaw was on the floor. I was like, but that's how I write. I have to literally play a scene

cinematically through my head again and again and again until I can make the pieces fit in the way I wouldn't be able to write if I had that that thing. And also I discovered recently that my whole mental makeup projects forward all the time. So I'm incapable of thinking about one thing without thinking about the consequences, whereas, for example, my partner lives entirely in the present. So it doesn't occur to him to think about the thing that will happen from the thing. He just exists in a kind of Buddhist sense in the here and now. But that fascinates me as well, because that can lead to so many misunderstandings. But as soon as you understand about somebody,

oh, well, that's because they don't project forward or they can't see an orange in their head. Here we all are internecling. Yeah, and here we all are, exactly that. And the people who are autistic or on the Asperger's spectrum, and then you have the people with ADHD and all the things they bring to it. And we are all completely different.

And yet we were brought up with this idea that somehow our brains all basically work the same way. They don't. Far from it. And so once you understand that about the person, person that you're dealing with, you can forgive them all sorts of things and they can forgive you all sorts of things because you are literally just seeing the world through a completely different prism. And that fascinates me. Letting go that you're talking about. Yeah.

I could talk about this for hours. Me too. But we have to move on. It's time for your fourth book today now, which is Mennonite in A Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janssen. Roda Jansen has reached a crossroads. She's just hit 40 when her brilliant husband of 15 years left her for a guy he met on gay.com. In the same calamitous week, she was hospitalized in a horrible car accident. With no alternatives, Roda decided to pack her bags and head home into the heart of the Christian sect. She had spent years longing to escape. Written with wry humor and huge personality and tackling faith, love, family and aging, men are night in a little black dress is an immensely moving memoir of healing.

Why is this book important to you? I think it was the first book that showed me the power of humour. I remember crying with laughter in bed reading this book. I don't think it was a huge runaway success or anything. In fact, most people don't seem to have heard of it. But I read this book. I laughed so much. I didn't know what to do with myself at various points.

And then I thought, I will read anything this woman writes. And she covers quite bleak topics as well. You know, it's a bit like Nora Ephron and Hartburn. She's taken a terrible event and she's made it funny. She's packaged it up with humour. And until me before you, none of my books really had humor in them. I wrote kind of epic sagas or, you know, occasionally a bit of wry humor would creep in. But it was not laugh out loud, funny.

And when I wrote me before you, I thought this is such a dark topic, you know, assisted suicide. And yet what I understood from my own experience of disability and chronic illness was that the people involved in life and death and illness actually have the darkest sense of humour. They make the worst jokes. And I mean that as the best jokes. Like they make the jokes that you just go, did you really just say that? And so I introduced humour. And then I found that I had to experience the emotion as I wrote or it wasn't working. So if I made myself laugh, I felt really good.

and if I made myself cry, I felt really good because then I knew it was working. And that book went off to be my first massive hit and obviously the biggest book I'll ever write because I don't think I could top that. And it just didn't escape me that if you can make people feel things and especially humour,

then you can possibly convince them to buy something else. But also I just like the idea of making people happy. You know, we all live here. here is obviously a kind of tragic comedy, but it has a lot of funny moments in it. And lovely Marion Keats, who I know is a friend of your podcast, sent me a really sweet message after she read it. And she just said, oh, it just made me feel better. And I thought, gosh, the world is so bleak at the moment.

I just want people to feel better. I just want to give people a little holiday from whatever's going on in their lives. And I know what a relief it is for me to be made to laugh. And so I wanted the same thing for everybody else. It's a little bit of light, isn't it? Yeah, in the dark. And it doesn't diminish what's going on. It's just an extra bit of armoury to get through the day.

We were talking recently about how we can write about devastating, brutal things, but in beautiful language. And I think the same can be said for with humour. Yeah, and I'm always sort of surprised at how, a bit like in acting, people never win the Oscar for comedic films. And I think we don't take it seriously, but I think it's just as valid as the terrible, brutal, you know, a little life is an extraordinary book. But, you know, would I pick it up if I wanted to have a nice week? No, I wouldn't. I need to be so robust. And I think a lot of people don't feel very robust at the moment.

So I make no apology in feeling delight if I can make people laugh a bit. You know, I'm a great believer in silliness as well. I mean, one of the things that I have felt very strongly, even though I'm kind of unconditionally old in my head. Like, how did I get to be 55? No, no, no, no. But you don't like, in my head, I'm like, how did I get to be a bank manager age when in my head I'm 12? And so I think it's really important to keep embracing your silliness. Like, I'm not interested in dignity.

Just give me silliness. I will be that person who's kind of jumping on the back of the trolley to embarrass my children in the supermarket or whatever. You've got to keep silly. that's and especially in times like these you've got to see the darkness in it all and stay silly that's going to be my new my new mantra stay silly stay silly stay silly i'll be jumping in the trolleys with you speaking of age right it strikes me that wrote it in this book she's just hit 40 yeah your massive writing success happened in your 40s me before you do you think it's quite a pivotal time in a woman's life oh my god huge i mean i remember being terrified before i hit 40 it just seemed so

insanely old and like this massive pivotal age that somehow after 40 it was all over. And now I'm sort of thinking, nope, I'm going to be doing the silly stuff till I'm 80, God willing. I just, I want to, I mean, I know I talk about being that age, but I don't feel it. I don't feel it. And I think it's important not to be labelled. Again, when I was talking to my stepdad who's 87 the other night and he said we were talking about the fact that my grandmother, when she was my age, would have had a blue rinse. She would have gone every week to the hairdresser and had her hair set in rollers.

They were a lot older, but yeah, they were really a lot older. And our generation, I think, we just are going, no, no, not going to do that. And, yeah, not going to look at the list of things I shouldn't wear. Oh, no. I don't even believe in rules around what you can wear, like you can't wear red and pink or gold and silver. Come on. Also, who says who? Who made them the fashion?

Police. No, absolutely not. Joanne, do you reach for memoirs a lot? No, no, I don't. I'm definitely someone who likes to lose themselves in fiction the most. I think I probably picked up Men and I in Little Black Dress thinking that it was fiction and then discovered that it was ramped up memoir. You know, there are some memoirs that I've read that I found extraordinary. I remember I'm not a tennis fan particularly, but I remember reading Andrei Agassi's memoir,

and that was extraordinary, and sometimes you can learn something from it. But I just love fiction. I just love being transported by good writing. Your fifth and final book, Shelfy Book, Jojo, is Three Women by Lisa Todayle. In a riveting exploration of female sexuality and desire, we follow Lena, Maggie and Sloan. Three women chronicles the often yawning chasms between enticing fantasy and cruel reality.

it's effused both with erotic yearning and raw honesty and it serves as a vital document of 21st century sexual politics. I read this after it was brought to the podcast a couple of times by a couple of guests and there was a real buzz about this book when it first come out. Do you remember what made you pick it up? I don't. No, I think possibly somebody told me to most of the books I pick up, I'd pick up on personal recommendation.

but I remember just being polexed by it, by its honesty, by the beauty of the writing, because actually it's not just that the subject matter is extraordinary and the reportage is extraordinary. She can write Lisa Tadio. She's an extraordinary writer. And I read it and I had never seen laid bare the complexity of female desire in the way that that book does it.

and it became kind of an interesting test for me in that I would press it on other women and some absolutely loved it and got it and some were almost repulsed by it. It's a real Marmite book. They just really didn't get it or they really did. There were very few halfway houses and I would push it on men as well

to see what they had to say. In fact, I realized I had two copies at home and I haven't got any so I had to buy another one before I came today because... Someone else has got them. Someone else has got them. And in fact, I loved the book so much.

I was so shaken. by it. And I mean, you know, it felt like an earthquake. And I think it felt like that for a lot of women. That I stalked Lisa Tadden. I don't do this often. But I found out from her publisher that she was coming to England. And I basically contacted her via her publisher and said, I think your book is extraordinary and I'd love to meet you. And we met in the West End. This is when I still drank and we drank two extremely large apparel spritzes. And I don't remember much of the afternoon. But I loved her from then on. And she is an extraordinary person.

She's a rare person in that she is a woman who is open about her feelings. And we were talking about a kind of slightly insipid review she'd got from one of the American newspapers. And she just looked at me directly and went, well, yes, I am going to kill them. And I slightly thought that she would. But I love her. You know, she is an original. She has an extraordinary brain. I think she's just adapted the whole thing for a television series,

which I'm not sure if it's on the British streamers, but I know it's gone out in the States. And I just love her. She is a, occasionally you meet women in your life who teach you something about how to be, and she would be the first person to protest that, you know, she would say, you shouldn't be like me. I'm, you know, nothing to admire.

But she really is. She has the commitment to her craft. and the raw honesty. There's a kind of unfiltered quality to her, which is rare in women and in female writing. And I love it. Yeah, to be able to convey that as well on the page, I remember thinking, what am I seeing?

I can't believe what I'm reading. And yet it's familiar. It's in me too. But I couldn't believe that someone could say it. I didn't have the words for it myself. No, exactly. It's amazing chronically. It's about growing up in a patriarchy

and not understanding how it impacts your own design. and your sexuality. And it's a bit like that thing of reading the women's room where you go, oh, I can't be the same person now because I understand something different about myself and how the world works. But it's beautiful and it's sad and you feel for these women even if you don't agree with the choices that they make. But isn't that life? We all make inexplicable nonsense choices. We all do really stupid things. And there's a kind of beauty in her refusal to judge them.

that I love. You're not forced to empathise, but you inherently do. Yes. You really do because you really see their perspective, and it changes the way you look at the world, but also how you look at yourself. Yes. Having open conversations about female sexuality

is especially pertinent in our current climate. Many of my friends have recently read all fours by Miranda July, who we had on the podcast not long ago. Can you tell us how you explore this in your own novels? I think I've got braver. I lived in a small village for 20 years or in a variety of places around a small village and my kids went to the local primary school

and what I felt during that period and also bear in mind I was in my early 30s at that point it is really hard to write about sex if you live in a small community because everyone assumes that you've done whatever you write about. You know, I could write about aircraft carriers in 1946 I could write about World War I in France and everyone would assume I'd just read

up my research. But if you write about something a bit rude, everyone just looks at you in the playground like, yeah, win. I think it's taken me to embrace my, you know, no F's left on the shelf age, to go, no, I'm going to write about women getting oral sex off men they don't know very well, or, you know, women behaving badly and maybe sleeping with two people in the same book. And showing that it doesn't mean that they are without morals or that it's just about being human and making messy choices and getting it wrong and then getting it right and maybe getting it wrong again and that's life. You know, there is nobody in this world who makes 100% correct choices. And it's still hard to write a sex scene because of the terminology.

You know, you either write something terrible and like a really terrible metaphor, or kind of Barbara Cartland kind of, you know, he pressed his manhood against her, which just makes my toes curl even to say it. Or you just go penis. Yeah. And then, or cock. And then the reader literally gets pulled out of the narrative and goes, she said penis. She said penis.

It's like, it's really hard to find a balance between those two things. And that's, that more than anything is the thing that puts me off writing good sex scenes. But I'm in awe of those writers who can do it well. In the Maestro, of course, I did a whole section on sex scenes. And what I worked out while I was doing it is that a sex scene works best if you understand the emotional underpinnings of what's going on. So the scene I used in that example was there's a book called one of my favorite books called How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper, who's now mostly involved in screenwriting. But it's a story about a widower who loses his wife at a young age. And you see the whole thing through his eyes.

And at one point he sleeps with his neighbour, who's this incredibly voluptuous sexual woman. And throughout the sex scene, it's very explicit. You realise he's doing it, but he's so unhappy. And he just misses his wife. And then it sort of becomes a thing about their bodies taking over, which is a relief. And then afterwards, he just feels horrible. And that works brilliantly because, yes, it's explicit. Yes, it uses all the terminology.

But you're with him emotionally. You totally understand what that. scene is there for. It's not just the culmination of two people getting together, which is what people usually think of for a sex scene. It's actually a mistake. It's a sign of where he is emotionally, and it's brilliant. I'd recommend that book to people as well. It's not by a woman. We can read men's books again. Okay. I just want to ask you very briefly, actually, because you mentioned there, the BBC Maestro course, that you do on writing love stories to help other writers in finding their voice, which we keep going back to. Have you found this process rewarding? Yeah, I have,

especially when I got a couple of messages from people saying that as a result of doing the course, they'd written books that had then been picked for publication. Fav. I mean, I felt like I'd become a mother again. Like, I'm so proud. But also, it was really interesting as someone who's never done a writing course, and I didn't study literature at university or anything like that. Everything I've done has been a matter of learning through my own errors. It was really interesting. to have to unpick my own process and work out why I do the things that I do and how I do the things I do. So it was really valuable to me. And I hope it's been really accessible to people who might also feel like they don't want to do a writing course.

It's just been, the feedback has been really lovely. It was very hard. And I think I was sort of lulled into it by the idea of someone calling me maestro. I think it was my ego took over and went, maestro, me, okay. Okay. I read that you credit other fantastic female writers like Jodi Pico, who was a guest on the podcast last season. Also, Sophie Cancela for encouraging you to keep writing sometimes when you felt like giving up. This space is all about creating somewhere where women can uplift and support one another.

How important is that? It's just everything. It really is. I mean, I have had support from male writers as well, especially in the screenwriting arena. But, you know, Sophie Kinsella is responsible for me before you. She took me to lunch at a point when my career was really in the doldrums. And I told her that I'd written 20,000 words of this slightly odd book about a man who wants to die and the woman who wants to change his mind. And she listened and then she said, I think you have to write this book. and then when I got home, her husband called me and said,

I've just been speaking to Sophie and I think you should write this book as well. And I thought, well, there's a woman or a couple who knows what they're talking about in terms of literary achievements. And that gave me the confidence to carry on. And when COVID struck and I was going through a very bleak time personally because I was going through a divorce and my mum was dying and I couldn't write. I mean, I weren't so it's writer's books because I don't believe that that's what. what it was. I think it was just too much real life in this. And I remember speaking to Jodi Piku

about online, you know, we were messaging each other about the fact that she'd written about three books in the same period. But I just said, oh, I've had this idea, but I don't know. And she said, send it to me. And I sent her 20,000 words. And she just messaged me back the next day saying, carry on. It's great. You've got to do this. And I think it's really easy to lose confidence when you're a writer because it's just you and the story in your head and it's really hard to explain what you're trying to achieve before it's out there on the page. And to have women that you trust just say, yes, do this. Or sometimes not. I remember writing the end to a book and giving it to Lisa Jewell, who's another friend of mine and she just went, it doesn't really work. And she was

absolutely right. And I went back and rewrote the ending and it was better. And I think the support and honest opinion of other women writers have been absolutely crucial for my whole career. Well, on that note, I'm going to ask you to uplift one of your five books that you've brought today. Which of these would you pick as a favourite if you had to? It's got to be National Velvet. It's so old, and I know that it's really hard to persuade people to write a book that might feel dated, but I just want to say, you know, give it to your daughters. you might be surprised by the modernity of the story,

especially when the press get involved at the end. But, you know, a story about two women achieving something physically extraordinary, come on. Come on. What's not to love? Jojo, it's been such an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, I've enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me.

It's been so lovely to see you again. I'm Vic Hope, and you've been listening to the Women's Price for Fiction Bootshellphy 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.