Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep4: Bookshelfie: Bryony Gordon

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Journalist, author and mental health campaigner Bryony Gordon discusses the journey to writing about her own mental health, why we need political balance, and her aversion to misery books.   Bryony has written six Sunday Times bestselling books, including the number one bestsellers Mad Girl and You Got This. Her latest book Mad Woman is the eagerly anticipated follow-up which explores a crucial question: what if our notion of what makes us happy is the very thing that’s making us so sad? And her debut novel People Pleaser will be published in 2026. Her work as a mental health campaigner has been widely recognised; she founded Mental Health Mates, a peer support group that encourages people to move for their mental health, and in 2023 she was awarded the President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She wrote for the Telegraph for 24 years, and is now a columnist at the Daily Mail, and hosts a weekly podcast, The Life of Bryony. Bryony is also a judge for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction.  Bryony’s  book choices are: ** The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy ** Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood ** American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld ** Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny **  Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt 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. 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.  Don’t want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

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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 joined by Brianie Gordon.

Brianie Gordon is an author, journalist and mental health campaigner. She's written six Sunday Times bestselling books. including the number one bestsellers, Mad Girl, and You Got This. Her work as a mental health campaign has been widely recognised. She founded mental health mates, a peer support group that encourages people to move for their mental health. And in 2023, she was awarded the President's Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She wrote for the Telegraph for 24 years and is now a columnist at The Daily Mail and hosts a weekly podcast, The Life of Brynie.

Brianne's latest book, Mad Woman, is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Mad Girl and explores a crucial question. What if our notion of what makes us happy is the very thing that's making us so sad. She's also a judge for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction. Brynie, welcome. It is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. We began minutes ago and we set the record going, but listen, we're in now. Thanks for having me. It's very comfortable.

It's nice. I always find it. When I listen to those intros, I'm like, I did that. Yeah, oh, that must be that someone else. And my brain is so critical. It's like, you got that medal in 2023, but what have you got to show for yourself since, Gordon? The thing is, right, we do think like this. It's like, if you did a thing, but it's too far down your Instagram, people to see it when they open it, you think, well, I'm going to have to do something fresher that's in the top three squares.

Otherwise, it doesn't count. It's exhausting. What pressure to put on ourselves? It's like dopamine. It's, yeah, it's sort of validation. Yeah, addiction. I don't know. Yeah.

Anyway, it's lovely to be here. Well, you've left your phone outside. You think, or you're not entirely sure where it is, and it's a nice way to feel. I like putting my phone. I like leaving my phone. Like my favorite part of the day is the end of it, and that sounds really bleak.

But about 6, 7 o'clock, where I do just put my phone into the charger and then I don't look at it until the next morning. And then I spend hours reading. Reading books? Yeah, not my phone. Yeah, reading books. And that's why it's such a thrill to be a judge

on the World's Prize for Fiction. How have you found the experience? I absolutely loved it. It's amazing. But I start, okay, I've started to like, I've definitely, I realize there's like a roller coaster of feelings, you know. Like I started off really. really keen. I'm like, oh my God. And every book I was like, I need to, you know, this is,

and then, and then I definitely reached a point in the autumn where I was a bit like, oh my God, I have a lot of books still to read. And, and then I started to question my judgment and whether, and I was like, who says I should be judging this thing? You know, what right do I have? It's that validation thing again. It comes into even this. No, I remember feeling that. I mean, I was on the panel alongside Bernardine Everisto, Elizabeth Day, like, Nezreemelich, all these amazing women. And I remember feeling a little nervous and worried that my judgment could not stand up to theirs. And if they disagreed, then I would clearly be wrong. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly how I feel. Like I, I'm definitely going to the little spreadsheet. Yeah. And like,

checking what everyone else thinks of, you know, and it's, it's interesting. Because I have to go, I have to really remind myself, no, you've been asked to do it. Just do it. And trust, and you just need to trust your judgment, you know, because everyone's there for a different reason. And it's why you know it's why you each book gets judged by a couple of judges and you know so nothing kind of falls through the cracks so to speak and you're allowed to like what you like yes that's valid yeah yeah yeah and i mean there's a lot i really like i mean i'm not going to spoil it spoiler anything but there's one book that i will i will take to the long list meeting and i won't let it go yeah until it's on there. And you know what, that's the whole point because you each represent different readers.

And that's what the women's prize is all about. It's spreading the message of all of these books, of all of these authors as far and as wide as possible to readers who are going to want them and need them. And you fight for that book, whatever it is. I'm excited to know which one it is. But you can't say. I can't say. I think I'll get, yeah, I'd get taken out and I don't know. I was going to say shot. No, you are. I can promise you. It's a lovely team, the women's prize. We're not going to do that. They'd get very gross with me. They take away my books. How have you found the experience of reading alongside writing?

Very interesting because I have actually been writing a novel at the same time, which was not ideal timing, but I just think that I also just see it as a real privilege. And I think the best sort of like preparation for writing is reading, you know. sort of writing during the day, reading at night, you know, and they sort of complement one another. And also because it's been so varied the stuff, you know, I think because a lot of it is very literary fiction, it's, you know, I'm not, I'm not writing literary fiction, you know, mine is much more sort of lowbrow commercial stuff, hopefully. And so it's a different thing, but I don't feel like being a judge on the women's prize is a job. No. It feels like a, it

feels like a total pleasure. What a privilege. Yeah, totally. Like, I just, I'm like, it hasn't at any point felt like a job. It's like, oh my God, you know, my holiday, the holidays I've had in the last six months have just been like just so much joy, just being able to kind of stuff my Kindle with all the latest.

But, you know, the latest amazing fiction by women and then in the evenings I read it. So it's just, it's what I would be doing anyway. But almost with greatest scope because you find yourself. delving into words that you maybe wouldn't usually. I think that's totally true and I love that. It does, like I have this kind of visceral resistance to historical fiction. Oh yeah. I don't know why, but I've had that completely removed.

Yeah, you think things aren't for you, but actually, it could be if they're right, if they're good. Yeah, I definitely veer towards, I mostly read like dystopian, sci-fi-ish kind of stuff. and I don't know why, what that says about me. I don't mostly, but I love, that's my kind of thing that I'm drawn to. And this is kind of completely refreshed my point of view. Well, we're going to talk about the books that you really do delve into, that you really do love, that you do gravitate towards. As well as your newest writing project,

I read a quote from me saying, I wanted to make the leap from being a fiction reader to a writer for a long time. So we'll talk about people-pleaser in just a bit. But first, let's get stuck into your first book-shelphie book today. which is the god of small things by Arundati Roy. Essa and Rahel, seven-year-old twins, are growing up amidst vats of banana jam, mountains of peppercorns,

and scenes of political turbulence in Kerala. But when their beautiful young cousin, Sophie, arrives, the world is irrevocably shaken. An illicit liaison and tragedies, both accidental and intentional, expose things that lurk unsaid in a country drifting dangerously towards unrest. Now you said you finished reading this book

as the clock struck midnight on your 18th birthday. I mean, it must have made quite an impact on you, quite an impression on you for you to remember that moment so clearly. What was it about this book that stayed with you? I really remember that. I was the first sort of epic book by a woman that I'd read that was quite dark. I think it came out in 19. Well, it won the Book Prize in 1997, and I turned 18 in 1998.

and definitely, you know, the curriculum of female writers was very, you know, up into that point as a girl growing up in the UK, it was very, you know, there was a bit of Jane Austen. There was, but it was, you know, most of the books I'd read were, you know, the most of the stuff that I'd been taught was very male. And what, what female literature I had read was quite safe. And this was definitely, I, you know, there's a scene where one of the twins is. molested in a cinema I think and I remember being totally shocked you know like it was just it was so but the whole thing the whole book is just epically you know I know that she the author was you know she came under all sorts of you know in India it was very controversial book because it's so openly doubt with like women women and sex which was like what and um I just guess it was the first time that I

I read a book by a woman and realized that, you know, we were capable of all sorts of different things. You know, we didn't just have to be pigeonholed into one genre, so to speak, you know. We do so often find that female writers are put in a box and expected to stick to writing a particular sort of fiction, perhaps more domestic, perhaps more commercial fiction, perhaps more easy to read. And it is one of the reasons why the Women's Prize for Fiction exists. To challenge that notion, what was it about? about this book that challenged the stereotypes of you? Why is it so important to you?

Well, I think it was also, you know, you have that moment, don't you, as a human, where you read your first, like, big, important book, you know? I remember at, like, 13, I'd read Lord of the Flies, and I'd just love, you know, it was like, I remember reading something that Stephen King said about it, which totally, I know this is a women's prize, but, you know, but it totally spoke to me. It was that how it kind of reached. It was like a book with fingers,

and it reached through the pages and grabbed me, and I totally felt that about that. But this was like the first book. You know, it was like a, it was a book that I had chosen. You know, it's really weird. As an author and as a writer, I wish that I read more as a child,

and weirdly I didn't read that much as a child. And it was only as an adult. You know, that was when I first started, really, really hungrily reading, you know. And I don't know why that was. You know, you hear a lot of, there's also sort of a shame as a writer that I wasn't reading, you know, from the age of sort of four or five, you know,

and I knew then that was what I wanted to do. But for me, yeah, it wasn't until I hit sort of 18. And it was definitely that book that made me see the possibilities of what was out there, you know, and you could escape into these other worlds. and I could learn about the caste system in India. And, you know, it was just, it was, it was really powerful for me. And I, it really set me down this kind of path of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, a, to, to, to a whole new world. I wonder what changed?

When you were younger, what were you gravitating towards? What did you love? I don't know. It's really difficult. I don't have massive memories of my childhood, which is really weird. I mean, I was very kind of unwell. I had a really bad obsessive compulsive disorder and was, I look back now and see that I was, you know, I was, yeah, it was very mentally unwell. And so I think I blocked out quite a lot of it.

But I also felt like I wasn't, I didn't think I was very clever. I didn't think I was, I don't know, like I didn't feel like a person who had, it's difficult to kind of explain, really, but I didn't think I had a right to have those sort of hobbies and interests that other children did. Does that make sense? No, it does. I think when you're very young, you don't always know that you deserve to have your story told. You don't always know that your story is valid. Yeah, yeah, or interesting to anyone.

And the world of books can feel alien and it shouldn't because every child has the right deserves to be able to get lost in those stories, to have that feeling that you had at 18 when you had that awakening that these worlds are open to you and that you are a part of them and they are a part of you. But not every kid does. And I don't know what we can do to change that. Yeah, it's like feeling like it doesn't, it's not for you. It's not for me. I'm not clever enough. And yeah, I guess that book was a moment of realizing that it's not, it's for everyone. Yeah. This is for you.

And so that's, it was, that was a kind of really, that was a really life-changing moment for me. And knowing that you can deal with these big topics, you know, throughout your career, you've strived to discuss topics that others might have shied away from in the name of mental health advocacy. And reframing stigma as well. because it's important. So for those that might not know, can you just tell us a little bit about why this is so important to you? I spent a lot of my life struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder,

with depression, with eating disorders. I always say that, you know, the thing about mental illness is that it's sort of, you know, a lot of it's very treatable, but if you don't treat it, it sort of snowballs and it becomes like a sort of magnet picking up. metal shaving. So I, when I was very young, I, I suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and I also had sort of what I now see were kind of delusions really where I thought I was pregnant with an alien. And it was just, you know, it's like really difficult to explain in a way that is, but it was,

it was really hard and really dark, but I didn't know I was unwell. I just thought I was a freak, you know, and when you don't have any treatment and there was no, you know, like, you know, we talk about how bad things are for children in terms of mental health provision now, but if you think back to the 90s, there was no awareness, you didn't even get to the stage of like looking for treatment, you know, and I was just a difficult child. And that sort of carried with me, I guess, through my life. And, you know, as soon as I was, and I developed eating disorders. And then, you know, in my 20s, I discovered alcohol and drugs. They were my way of making myself feel like a normal person. But of course, that, that backfired. And, but, you know, the other.

thing was that at the same time, and this is, I was sort of managing to kind of maintain a very successful life as a journalist, you know, I was holding it together, which I think is the case for lots of people, you know, and sort of the kind of mad perfectionism of the very mentally unwell, which is often dressed up as something good, but it's not, you know, but it does drive people to, to sort of, you know, I guess mask. you know, and pretend that everything's okay. And I definitely got to a stage in my early 30s where I was like, I can't do this anymore. I had my baby.

I, you know, I was like, for her sake, I can't do this anymore. And I started writing in The Telegraph about my experience of mental illness and it completely changed my life actually. And sort of so many people got. in touch and it sort of set me down this slightly different path of mental health campaigning and using my journalism to sort of, yeah, talk about those kind of shine a light on the things that people don't usually shine a light on. And I suppose I always describe it as like writing about the things that have made me feel bad about myself and the hope that it makes others

feel good about themselves. And I found my kind of tribe and my people and I am, I sit here talking to you, I'm a pretty well person. You know, I'm nearly 80s. So, I, you know, I hold it together. I don't, my life isn't dominated by those things in the way. And that's because of the work I've done connecting with people. And I'm incredibly grateful for that. But yeah, I think of that little girl who didn't think, you know, I guess I didn't have the ability to read.

I mean, I could read. But like I, and, you know, it sounds ridiculous. I didn't have the concentration sometimes to read. read because I was so unwell. You know, it's difficult to read when you're really depressed, you know, and concentrate on things and focus on things. So, yeah, I don't know if that makes any sense. It makes perfect sense.

And I said before, oh, I don't know what it is that we can do, you know, if there are children who feel that they don't belong or they can't get involved in getting lost in these worlds and reading these books, but there is something we can do. We have a responsibility doing exactly what you do because you've helped innumerable people I know people who felt they've been helped by your words, by your podcast, by your writing. So thank you. And I'm so happy to hear that you're doing so well now. Well, I mean, on any given day, it's a...

It's questionable. But we move. We move. Well, we move now onto your second book-shelfy book, which is Oryx and Crake by a little gasp, a little intake about it. Margaret Atwood, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2004. Oh, was it? It was over 20 years ago. Orix and Crake is the first book in Atwood's critically acclaimed dystopian Mad Adam trilogy of novels.

Described by Atwood as a speculative fiction and adventure romance. The novel tells the story of Snowman, previously known as Jimmy, who's believed to be the only human survivor left in a post-apocalyptic world, along with genetically modified creatures called Crakers. I just fucking love this book. It's a big one. You know, everyone, no, but everyone talks about the house. Handmaid's Tale, obviously not going to poo-poo it.

It's a very good book. But I think this like Mad Adam trilogy of hers, like it is, in a way it's like as prescient, I think, to where we live. Like in terms of all of those, Malcourt, she always took, I love her because she's a woman writing science fiction dystopia, which is very often not, it more now. we've got, you know, there's Emily St. John Mandel and there's Julia Armfield. There's lots of different writers who are exploring it, but it's largely quite a male-dominated genre, right? And Margaret Atwood has always sort of been quite, I think, quite unusual in occupying it.

But she always says that she doesn't actually see what she does as science fiction. She does it. She sees it as science faction. so she's sort of taking where we are and she moves it on a little bit, 10 years and imagines. And that's what Oryx and Craig is to me. Because there's this, you know,

she was like really, she kind of predicted the Kardashians in this book, I think. Didn't she? Yes. How we all sort of download ourselves. I can't, like, there's just all sorts of, there's so many fantastical, you know, like women who are basically exist just,

just, I'm not saying that that's what the Cardassians. are. But, you know, it's very much that thing of, I guess it's, I guess you predicted kind of only fans culture and so much of what we live in now, which is where actually more than ever women are seen as sexual objects, you know, like in many ways we've gone backwards because of the rise in sort of cosmetic surgery and, you know, and the world and the digital world in which we live in. Well, I would say even with the current discourse and the restrictions on women's bodily autonomy in the world right now, which is going backwards. We feel that very, very potently at the moment.

This is actually one of the most banned books in the United States, which would suggest that to. Really? So it feels like it's more relevant than ever. It's funny, when you're very banned, it makes you very relevant. It does. The more bound you are, the more relevant you are. The more needed you are, most likely.

Yeah, but that's, you know what? I think that anyone listening now who, you know, you don't have to, You don't have to be Margaret Atwood to feel that. Like, the older I get, the more I realize, the more I realize that the more feathers I ruffle, the more important the work is. Definitely. You know? Definitely. When did you read this book, though?

Why was it so important? I read it when it came out. So I was, so when did it come out? 2004. So I was 24. It was very easy to remember how old I was at any given time. And I just love, I just think it's, look, it's just. is not any critical kind of like terribly good.

My critical faculties are not amazing, but I just thought it was a banging book. And it, you know, it frightened me, but it frightened me because it felt, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in it that is kind of fantastical. And, you know, is, but it's, you know, I think I need to, I really do, when I finished judging this prize, I need to go back and read it.

You know, I think now, more than ever, it'll, feel even more sort of true. Unfortunately. Because also the kind of obsession with wellness. Like the whole thing, isn't it? It's about a world that everyone's obsessed with being well. The consumption of health. Yeah.

The overconsumption of health. And they're obsessed with like taking pills to kind of take away all of their kind of ills or whatever. And that actually in the end ends up wiping out much of the human population, doesn't it? I think that's the sort of vaguely, that's the kind of vague, you know, there's a sort of, there's something wrong with one of the medicines. And I think that our kind of obsession with wellness culture now, you know, is just insane. And wellness doesn't necessarily mean health.

No. Which is the confusing thing or the thing that were being fed in quite an agendered way. But it's disordered eating in a different, repackaged. repackaged as a blood sugar monitor or, you know, weight loss injections or whatever, which are, you know, which are transformative for people who have struggled with food addiction and obesity. But, you know, when I hear about, you know, normal shaped, normal BMIed women kind of lying about their weight and, you know, to get hold of prescriptions, I just think this is nuts.

It's really scary. This is like this is really, really dystopia. on the subject actually of health. I know your latest book, Mad Women, is the successor to the widely successful Mad Girl and delves into the health inequalities that women face. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, so Mad Woman I wrote because it was a kind of period in my life

where I realized that actually I suddenly came, well, during the pandemic, well, I felt really depressed, and it was the first time that I'd felt depressed and everyone else that was to felt, I realized that everyone else felt depressed too, because usually you feel quite alone in your feelings. And I realised I was like, wow, actually it's really appropriate that I'm feeling depressed right now because we're all disconnected and locked away. And I started to think, well, Brian, what if all of your mental illness over your entire life

has been really fucking appropriate? And what if actually you're not mad, you're perfectly fucking sane? And the most mad of us are actually the people that go through life and are like, yeah, this is all fine. You know, it is hard to be a woman. It is fucking hard to be a woman in the Western, in the world, in the world. Why am I saying the Western world? In the world in the year 2025, you know.

And I discovered, I started to discover, I started to like piece all this stuff together about my health, which was that I, I had these palpitations on and off. And I just thought they were stress and they'd just been dismissed as stress. And it turned out I had an actual arrhythmia. I had like, I was diagnosed with like, I was, I was like, blue. And it had been ongoing for, no. And I still, you know, yeah. And I just thought I was being a drama queen, you know, like, oh, it's just your, you know, whatever.

And then I went through a really early menopause. And I knew that was happening because, again, the effect of my mental health. And I started to see the link between my hormones and how I could cope with OCD on any given day. Now, I don't want to blame the OCD on my hormones, but my ability to deal with it is drastically altered by, you know, where my progesterone is and my body and, you know, in the estrogen and all of that. And I started to think of menopause as like, you know, when people are like, oh, she's metapause or she's having a breakdown. I'm like, no, maybe she's having a breakthrough. Because a lot of the things that came up for me in my, you know, I'm only 44 now. So I'm quite grateful that.

But I didn't even know. Like, I didn't know that my mom, my grandmother, had gone through menopause at like 40. They hadn't thought to tell them, that that might be relevant to my experiences. You know, again, it's like we don't, we don't have these conversations. And anyway, I just, I was like all of the stuff that menopause brought up for me emotionally. It was like my brain saying, are you going to deal with this shit now, Gordon? Because if you don't, the next 40 years of your life are going to be unbearable as well. I'm not the whole of my last 40 years

have been unbearable. That's a bit. But anyway, so I just wanted to write a book that kind of almost reframed that whole experience because Mad Girl for me had been about writing about OCD and reclaiming what OCD is. You know, this is not like a little cleanliness, illness

that celebrities have, you know, this is really dark and really awful and has really impacted my life in many different ways. And, and, but, yeah, with Mad Woman, I kind of wanted to widen that out a bit, but also to go, yeah, what if all of this stuff is quite appropriate? You know, like, of course women, there are such, there are such discrepancies between the way women's health is doubt with and men's health is doubt with. So yeah, sorry, I just, I just literally sent myself into atrial fibrillation with that run.

For those of you listening, Bernie's got a hand on her chest now. It's just checking. I'm fine. But I'm fine. I'm not fine, Vic. I'm a woman. I'm not fine. I'm furious.

As you should be, as we should be. Yeah, no, but I am and I get more and more furious. And I think that's entirely appropriate. It's appropriate. I think, like, you know, people big up estrogen. But I think estrogen, like, kind of just, it sort of takes the edge off. The reality of being a woman, you know, in the 21st century. And it plummets and you're like, what the fuck?

What is this? Like, you know, what have I been putting up with for so long? So yeah. So that was what I wanted to do with Mad Woman. I don't know whether I've, you know, managed it. But I get, you know, lots of messages from, I just, the way I think about mental health has changed quite a lot since I wrote Mad Girl. And in what sort of way?

Just that I definitely thought it was very much, I was like, mental illness is, you know, mental health is, you know, we all have it. And, you know, we all have it. you know it's it's just a chemical reaction in your brain and take a pill for it and now I'm like no I don't think that's what it is I think it's a very sophisticated

way of your brain telling you that something isn't right in your life and that you have every right to be furious and I think yeah and I think instead of numbing which is what we do we should be leaning in and listening to like why are our children more depressed than ever do you know what I mean Why are we more depressed than ever?

You know, what is going on? I don't think that we live our lives in the way that we're supposed to as humans anymore. You know, we're very disconnected. Life is really overwhelming. On the subject of life being overwhelming, let's talk about your third book-shabby book, which is American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld.

In the year 2000, in the closest election in American history. history, Alice Blackwell's husband becomes president of the United States. Their time in the White House proves to be a heady, tumultuous and controversial period. But it is Alice's own story that of a kind, bookish, only child born in the 1940s Midwest, who comes to inhabit a life of dizzying wealth and power that is itself remarkable. Now, another one here, this was long listed for the Women's Prize in Fiction, 2009. Was it?

Yep. And you told me that you read this in your late 20s. Can you tell us who you were at this time, why this book resonated with you? I was an absolutely mess in my late 20s. I don't know. Do you know what? Okay, so I again need to reread American wife. I just love Curtis Sittenfeld.

I love everything she writes. And for me, this was like it was a love story. And I found, I just, her and him falling in love. Like he's taking her to the country, you know, his country club. and the cookouts and all of that stuff, I found quite sexy. Just on a very basic level. I was like, oh, I'm swooning.

I'm falling in love for this with George W. Bush. But what I like about it as well is, so it's based on Laura Bush. And so it, you know, it's, I mean, it's, again, we look back and I think we thought that George W. Bush was a piece of work, but bloody hell, we had it. It was all, you know, it was all... It wasn't so bad, was it?

But I like this whole thing of Alice, you know, she is a Democrat. She is kind of like, she's ideologically quite opposed to her husband, but she still falls in love with him. And I like that, I find that quite fascinating. And I think nowadays as well, we're so kind of black and white binary, you know, we silo ourselves off into our sort of groups of, you know, I like this. I don't like that. So I'm not going to talk to you and all of that kind of stuff. And I quite like the idea, you know, as someone who's quite left wing and has to spend quite a lot of their time with quite right wing people.

At the Daily Mail. Well, yeah, just generally in life. Like, I always have, I worked at the Telegraph before, you know. But, you know, my dad's a card carrying labour member. You know, like, it's always interested me because I just think that, I think that, I think that, We are too quick to judge. And I think connection is really key to contentment and to living happy lives. And it worries me how we sort of cut ourselves off from other points of view now.

In our echo chambers. Yeah. And it means we're so surprised when someone spouts an opinion that is the opposite to our own is that we didn't know they exist. But of course they do. And I think, you know, and I think it is, look, I'm not going to be like, oh, yeah, it's, you know, I think it's frightening that Donald Trump is president again. And I think it's frightening that Elon Musk and, you know, all of these like, all of these like crow bros are basically running the world.

Like I find that terrifying. But I think it's because we are so kind of, I think the reality is most of us are somewhere around the middle. And, you know, some things were left or some things were right, you know. And yet we sort of live in this world where we think everyone is one extreme or the other. And so I kind of like that element of it as well as a book. You know, yeah, it's kind of fascinating. It really is. I'm completely with you.

I constantly have my mind blown by the fact that we aren't in these two camps and that we just need to sometimes listen to each other. And we're not actually so divided, it turns out. What's also fascinating and, you know, you touched on the Kardashians and these kind of public personas. This book is about a fictional First Lady of the USA, right? a position that is, how can I put it, both shrouded in secrecy, but also very exposed to public scrutiny. And this is something that I think about a lot.

In a lot of your own books, as well as your journalism, you, and obviously your podcast as well, Life Brining, you delve into your personal experiences, anecdotes from your real life. But how do you navigate what you feel comfortable with sharing and what you keep private, or do you keep anything private? I definitely do keep some things private. I mean, I don't talk about my daughter or my, you know, or my husband, really. You know, it's not there. That's not fair on them.

My rule is, is that as long as the person I'm being most horrid about is myself, it's kind of like, that's okay. Like, I don't, you know, like, if I'm, my husband's like, you literally describe me, like, some sort of, like, night and shining armour. And, you know, this perfect, man, everyone's like, oh, Harry sounds so amazing. and I'm like, and I do that purposely because I just, it's, I don't know, there are some things I don't talk about because, I don't know, like, I guess my thing is, is like, is talking about this going to, is it going to improve my life? Is it going to improve other people's lives? Is it going to help anyone? Is it going to help me?

Right, let's do it. Is it going to cause more problems and upset people, then no, we're not going to do it. I think that's a good message. It's actually very helpful. I'm making note of it right now. Yeah, because I'm like, you know, and like, and sometimes, you know, like, listen, I wrote, the book I wrote, Glorious Rock Bottom about getting sober, that had some, that, there was some really dark stuff in that. And I, that didn't make everyone really happy.

It didn't make my mom happy, you know. She was like, I don't think that you should have written this because it's really, it's kind of, you know, stuff about things that happened when I was really, you know, high, drunk that were not cool, you know. but the reason I decide, you know, her reaction was why I decided I needed to, because these things do happen to women, you know, who are in the late stages of addiction, do you know what I mean? And either we want people to get better, by which, in which case we need to kind of eradicate the shame and let people know that they are not, they are not bad people,

they're just ill people who sometimes do bad things because of those illnesses, you know. Do you feel more able to share in some, certain mediums over others. For example, does the context feel like it's more intertwined with the subject matter when it's a book, for example? I feel much more able to share via book or via a column than I do via social media. I find it much more frightening to share on social media because social media is so immediately about validation and about like people liking. and it kind of it makes me edit myself a lot more.

Does that make sense? I completely agree. I find it very, very difficult to be too personal on social media. Also because context is stripped away so quickly. And people, it feels that you're very open and you're opening yourself up sometimes purely to criticism. Yeah, and I find it, and I sort of guess I'm quite, not suspicious, but I'm quite, when I see people like sobbing openly on social media,

I don't know. I just, I don't, like makes me feel uncomfortable. That'll say more about me, though, than it does about the person doing it. You know, I can't think of any,

and I can't think of someone I've seen doing it recently anyway. So it's like, but I definitely, I would rather sit down and consider what is going on in my life and why that thing is going on

and what the context of it might have been. And how can, how by sharing this is this, how can I make it helpful to someone, do you know what I mean? Like I don't think if I'm in crisis and I suddenly do like a reel or something, it's like, I don't know, it's a bit, it's not, it's not going to necessarily help people. Whereas if I can sort of consider things and do it after the event.

It's like, how can I tell you how I feel when I don't know? Yeah, exactly. I don't know. When you look back over your life in writing, Is there anything that you would have done differently looking at it now? No, because it's done. So it's just no point. There are things I wouldn't write, I wouldn't have written now, do you know what I mean?

But you've just got to trust that what was meant to come out was meant to come out and let it be and then just let go of it. Because you can't, otherwise you drive yourself mad. I think that's the healthiest way to do it. I can't like, it's like even the things that I might not like love to read that I've written. in the past, do you know what I mean? Like, they're part of me and that was what was supposed to happen at the time. That's part of your story.

Yeah, so even if it makes me cringe now, it's like, okay, well, that's fine, but we all have bits of ourselves that make ourselves cringe. Like, I'm not going to, you know, like, I, you know, I'm a recovering perfectionist as well as a recovering alcoholic. Do you know what I mean?

And these are all just chapters and then we move on to the next chapter. Exactly, exactly. And I'm sure that there'll be things I'm doing right now, Vic, that I look back and go, oh my God, I cannot believe you did that. What were you thinking, you know, in two years' time? But that's fine. That's part of life as well.

Prione, you and me both. We make mistakes, you know? Like, great. I just, I tend to make mistakes much more publicly than others. And that's fine, too. It's absolutely fine. And we're in this together. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize of 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 baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes. It's time to talk about your fourth book. I don't even know. I can't remember what my fourth book is. I'm going to tell you. It's standard deviation by Catherine Heiney.

Graham Kavanaugh's second wife, Audra, is everything his first wife was not. She is charming and spontaneous and fun, but life with her can be exhausting. In the midst of the day-to-day difficulties and delights of marriage and raising a child with Asperger's. His first wife, Elspeth, re-enters Graham's life. Former spouses are hard to categorize. Are they friends? Are they enemies? Old flames? Or just people who know you really, really well? Graham starts to wonder, how can anyone love to such?

different women. Did he make the right choice? Is there a right choice? Tell us why you chose this book. Oh my God. This is, can I just say, Catherine Hiney, she started following me on Instagram recently and I nearly died. I think she is like the funniest writer in the world ever, ever in the history of all time. This book, honestly, like just even when you just said, the word standard deviation, I started to laugh. Like, it is the funniest book I have ever read. Like, laugh out loud, funny. Like, I remember reading it on holiday in France and just, my husband was like,

are you okay? And I'm like, I am fine. I am reading the funniest book ever. It is, I just can't, I can't do it any more justice than that and just say, and I just love it. I just love it and I love a book that makes me laugh. It's just, oh, what magic, what magic to be able to make people laugh. It's a huge skill.

It really is. It's really, you know, especially in novel form. I just think, wow, I dream of being as funny as Catherine Heine. You're very funny. You're very funny. You inject a lot of humor into your work. But I think it's really important because I think also this is also, you know, it's a serious book as an autistic child and like I think sometimes you cannot like oh my god misery books you know like just

endless misery you can't like you sometimes you've got to deliver the you've got to deliver the vitamins in the ice cream someone said that to me it's like sometimes you've got to like sometimes you got to just you got to go in there and try and deliver the message in a different way well you know you explore serious topics in your work but you do inject a lot of humor into what you Right. Has this been helpful in your own journey for yourself understanding? Well, my therapist, if my therapist was here right now, he would have some words about that. Because he says like, Brian, it's very entertaining talking to you. But sometimes I'm like, what's happening here?

And I'm like, of course you think that. You're my therapist. I don't know. I just think life's much easier when you're laughing, especially when you're like, and I had these terrible delusions when I was a child that I was pregnant with an alien. Like, let's laugh about this because otherwise, what are we going to do? We'll cry. We will cry. And I just, I like, crying is important. Okay, so I'm much better at like, take it,

at allowing myself to be sad and allowing myself to be all of those things. But essentially, like most people, I don't like being sad. I don't like being upset. I don't like being depressed, you know, and I would much rather be laughing. And I do. love, I do, like even just, I just love that, that energy of just being a bit silly. Like, and that book, that book, there is so much silliness in that book. And I think silliness is a really underrated quality. Totally agree. We need more silliness in our lives. Are you naturally an optimist,

do you think, or do you have to work hard to cultivate that disposition? So it's a really, it's a really interesting question. And I don't know, because I think that I'm naturally very depressive, pessimist. The world is awful. Like, I think that's. me, but I think most people around me will be like, no, you're a natural optimist. But that's them looking in. Yeah, I mean, I'm naturally quite like, it's a funny mixture, you know, like I'm on the one hand, I'm wildly paranoid and think everyone's out to get me. And on the other hand, I know that absolutely they're not and no one's thinking about me. And, you know, it's like life is a mixture of things, isn't it?

And fundamentally, I know that everything is going to turn out all right in the end. And then, but also I lie awake in terror at night thinking, oh my God, what are we doing? How are we all still alive? So it's, you know, you can be both. Both things can be true at the same time. I mean, I spend, I would say, okay, here's what I would say, 50, I spend 50% of my time howling with laughter. and 50% of my time in absolute terror. And there's nothing really in between those things.

I would say. I, I, yeah. Righty. And we're laughing now. But we're laughing now. Catherine Haney writes essays and long-form journalism as well as her fiction. And he wrote for The Telegraph, like you said, for over 20 years. before last year

before last year moving to write for the mail what was that move like for you has it been a different readership or no it's interesting like it was quite terrifying

because because A I'd been at the telegraph for 700 years I was actually born there basically but B I it was really interesting when I left lots of people were like I can't believe you're going to write for the right wing

newspaper the mail and I was like you do know I've been writing for the telegraph for 800 years. And I think something, I don't know, I somehow managed to convince people I was working for the Guardian. I don't know why.

They were like, they were like, they were like, I liked you better when you were at the Guardian. I was like, I've literally never written for the Guardian, never written for the Guardian. And I'm probably,

am more, like, politically at home there. But I love that juxtaposition of, you know, like, people are people, actually.

This is the thing, regardless of their political opinions, we all, like, you know, male readers are alcoholics too. Do you know what I mean? Guardian readers are, you know, people that read the telegraph, people like, we are all, you know, all of us get depressed. And my view on this is let's just go right about the human stuff, do you know what I mean?

And get it out there because we're all better off when we're all, you know, when we're all understanding the human condition more. That's my opinion. And, you know, frankly, I think one has far more impact working at a paper like the male that is actually read by people. It's true. It's a huge readership. And I, you know, I've been delighted by the way they are just like, they're just like, yeah. You write what you want.

You just go for it, babes. You know, they, so I've, it's been really fun. And I needed to, I needed to challenge myself and change it up a bit, you know. You know, I think you just got to trust the universe and like go with where it sends you. And it was not on my bingo card. like I didn't I was like oh and they came for me and I was like okay let's do it let's go for it let's go let's like just let's life like yolo yolo let's do it and they're all really nice I'm enjoying it well talking of changing things up a bit let's talk about your debut novel people pleaser

which is due to be published next year can you tell us a little bit about what we have to look forward to I've read that you describe it and you've described a few things today actually as fun therapy So I'm telling more about that. It has been, honestly, this book is, like, there's something has existentially happened to me while writing this book. Like, I have almost broken down writing it. Okay, so it's called People Pleaser, and it's about a woman called Olivia Greenwood, who wakes up one morning and she can no longer people please. Everything that comes out of her mouth is truth. I would like that for us all.

And her life, obviously, predictably, turns into utter fucking chaos as a result of it. So Olivia Greenwood is basically me. So it's not really a fictional novel. It's basically memoir, but I've just couched it as fiction. Because I wanted to say some really truthful things, but I couldn't. And Olivia Greenwood is like she's got to that age where she thinks, what the fuck am I doing? Like, I thought that if I tried to be all the things that everyone told me.

me I needed to be, then, you know, and I got to those things. I became successful in my job and I did what they told me to do at work and I had children and I got married and I injected Botox into my head and I, you know, and I looked nice and I wore the right clothes from Zara and, you know, then I'll be happy. And she's like, what? I'm fucking miserable. I spent my whole life trying to make other people happy and it has only made me miserable. So she has a bit of a night out with a Gen Z colleague who gives her something that turns her life upside down or does it. It's like totally random. I just loved writing this book.

I really feel so affectionate. So yeah, so that's what people police are about really. It's basically just a big excuse for therapy. Because it's not you. You don't have to people police as much. So I do feel like, okay, so in my mind, I feel, I think that I am like shiv from succession, you know, in my responses. Whereas in reality, I'm actually cousin Greg. And this has enabled me to be shift from succession.

That's basically what I'm doing. And Olivia, and Olivia, well, she's like, what the fuck am I saying in like these big, you know, like work meetings and her husband? And like her sex life with her husband, like it has all sorts of like unexpected bonuses of this. You know, like so in some ways it's really bad, but in other ways it's really good. Like she starts telling her husband what she actually wants in the bedroom. And he starts like going down on her.

And, you know, they have this incredible. So like in some ways a lot of her relationships really improve. In other ways, she loses people that, you know, that she shouldn't been trying to please in the first place. Yeah. It's been so. much fun to write. So out next year.

I literally, yeah, I finished it on Sunday. Great. Amazing. So I'm like feeling quite, yeah. I'm feeling quite like excited about it. I'm buzzing. We are running out of time, so we have to talk about your fifth and final book-shelphi book today, which is, do you know what it is? No.

It's loved and missed by Susie Boyce. Oh. It's such a good book. It's a beautiful book. When your beloved daughter is lost in the fog of addiction, and you make off, with her baby in order to save the day, can willpower and a daring creative zeal carry you through? That is the question of this book.

This deals with addiction, which we've talked about. Today, this is something you've experienced yourself. And you speak about it so openly. Did any of this book speak to your experience? The whole book spoke, I mean, you know, my mum didn't ever have to run off with my baby, but the whole... This book, I think, is one of the most incredible pieces of writing about addiction.

and I don't hear it spoken about enough and I just wanted to really kind of highlight it because it just, it's the most incredible book and it just nails that female experience of addiction and the powerlessness, the utter powerlessness in such a brilliant, empathetic way and I was just blown away by it, I was blown away by it.

I read it when I was about four, years sober maybe and it's yeah it's sort of it's like I don't know it reminds me a bit of it reminded me not it's not the same thing but you know if you think of like shaggy bane which won the booker prize i think this is absolutely on a level with it absolutely on a level with that well like shaggy bain it's also a story about parenting and all of the joys and and challenges that come with it it sort of adds another layer to that narrative of what addiction looks like Has your own perspective on parenting change at all after reading it? Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely, I think what addiction,

what being in recovery from addiction teaches you is that, you know, there's a lot more empathy for my own parents and for myself as a parent, but also a lot less attempt to control the well-being of your own child, if that makes sense. Like so much as parents, we look at how our children are and we see their well-being as a reflection of our own parenting. And of course it is to a certain extent.

But then our parenting is only a reflection of the parenting we had and so on and so forth. And at some point you have to allow your child to have their own experiences and not make it all about you. It's a scary thought, but it's true. Yeah. There's a whole world. out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's my responsibility as a parent to, like,

help my child learn their, you know, emotional cues and needs and tend to that until she's 18. But after that, it's like, I'm going to have to sit back and, you know, and watch, and maybe sometimes it will be in horror, just as my mother had to watch, often in horror, how I behaved, you know, in active addiction. So, yeah, anyway, It's a beautiful piece of writing, very, like, powerful. Just on that, the sort of the generational shift in those perceptions of addiction. Since your work, since you first started Mad World in 2017, since your podcast, where you've had all these incredible guests, including Prince Harry,

opening up about their struggles, how much have you noticed a change in the perceptions in mental health conversations stigma and treatment. It's so interesting. And I mean, we could almost record another podcast on it. So in many ways it's got much better and in many ways it's got worse and gone backwards. And I think, you know, we talk about mental health a lot more. You know, we talk about neurodiversity a lot more, which is brilliant.

But neurodiversity, I think, is very different to mental illness. And I feel we still haven't quite, you know, managed to separate that out. and the conversation about mental well-being has sort of in a way we talk about mental well-being so much that has come actually at the expense of mental illness so you see that when you see people like Tony Blair being interviewed and saying that we spend too much money on mental health now and you know and it's like in a way I think there's been a bit of a backlash

against it you know so definitely 2017 there was a huge I mean it was an amazing time to be part of the mental health conversation. And it was really one of the most hopeful times of my life. And it was when I got sober. And I think that was part of that. I thought, right, actually, you can do this. You can be brave. Brian, you can do this.

I never thought of that before until now. And I think the pendulum has swung back the other way. But that maybe is what happens. You know, we go from one extreme to the other. And then eventually we come back to somewhere in the middle. And I think that's maybe what we're seeing in all sorts of terms, politically, do you know what I mean? It definitely feels that way.

Yeah. And so I hope that this will kind of, there's a definite, I can, I definitely feel a backlash, but I hope that that is something that will eventually level out, you know. And I think we just need to have more conversations about the way we live our lives. I think we're sort of moving into this stage where we realize it doesn't matter how much money a government spends on mental health provision. It's about how we live our lives and how can we live our lives. and how can we live our lives in more connected ways, more empathetic, compassionate ways.

Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense. I think with a lot of things where we feel like we're making progress, often those terms like mental health or feminism or woke, they can get weaponised and used in opposition to the purpose, the whole point, which is empathy and helping people. And I do think mental health has actually been co-opted and sort of been subsumed into the culture war.

And I'm like, why? This is just bonkers. Because it's people at the heart of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it troubles me, but lots of things trouble me. And I think at the end of the day, you just got to keep moving.

You've got to keep trying to get the message out there in whatever way you can. And it may not be that one is writing sort of like tub-thumping polemics about the lack of mental health provision, that you try and get the vitamins in with the ice cream. That's the mantra. That's what we're doing. That's what you've done. done this podcast. Thank you so much. I have one more question for you. Oh yeah. And it's if you had to choose one book from your list as a favourite, which would it be in why? Standard deviation, because it would just brighten my mood. And that's what life's about. We've got to laugh as well.

Yeah, it's definitely, definitely standard deviation. In fact, I want to, I can't, I mean, I've got another, I think I've got another three or four books left on my judging list before we get to the long list meeting, then I'm going to have a little like palate cleanser. Because you're going to have to go back and read the whole long list before the short list. I know, I know, I know. But I just, I think I can treat myself to a little like, you know, a little like reset. Little Catherine Hiney reset.

And like you said, we all need to laugh, which I've done a lot to this podcast. So thank you so much for Annie Gordon. Thank you for having me. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Price of Fiction, Boot Shelfy, 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.