Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S9 Ep10: Bookshelfie x Hannah Murray

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Skins and Game of Thrones star Hannah Murray talks about the journey to writing her new memoir, early acting fame and why a love story with a merman had her spellbound to the end.Hannah worked as an actor for over a decade, cast as Cassie in E4’s Skins at the tender age of 16, and later as Gilly in HBO’s Game of Thrones, alongside numerous other roles for theatre, TV and film. During her early acting career, Hannah studied English at Cambridge University and later Creative Writing at UEA, and is about to release her first book, The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness – an autobiographical account of her involvement in a wellness cult, which will be published on 28th May.Hannah’s book choices are** The Secret History by Donna Tartt** How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti** In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado** The Pisces by Melissa Broder** Disappoint Me by Nicola DinanYou 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. Every week on Bookshelfie, Vick Hope is joined by inspirational women to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize for Fiction, the greatest celebration of female creativity in the world, is run by the Women’s Prize Trust, the charity building a better future by championing women’s writing. Don’t want to miss the rest of season nine? Follow or subscribe now!This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

Coming up on bookshelfy. I could never fully reconcile the success of the show with the fact that I was in it, if that makes sense. That I was like, yeah, there's this really successful TV show. It's called Skins and I was in a TV show that's called... But like the two couldn't be true in my head at the same time. It's like, it's not happening to you. Yeah.

A lot of people said they were like, I don't know if you realised. It's quite funny what you've written and I was like, obviously I realized I made it funny. But I think they were so nervous of saying it was funny, when it was also very serious. And I was like, no, that's... Yeah, I don't know if you realize... Like, you might have made a mistake and made it funny by accident.

And I was like, no, I do want it to be funny. It's really remarkable to think that so many people could potentially pick up this book and then know what happened to me. And I do feel there are certain passages, particularly in sort of the middle section of it, where I just think that's exactly how it happens. I know other people describe this too, that idea when you read something and you're like,

that's what I've been thinking, that's what I've been feeling, but I couldn't find the words for it. Thank you for articulating. Thank you for articulating. Yeah, thank you for putting my thoughts into words with me or my feelings into words for me. I'm less alone and I'm not weird. I'm not the only one. Hello, I'm Vic Hope and this is Bookshelfy, the podcast from the Women's Prize that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Now, before we begin, remember to subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode with thanks to our sponsor, Bailey's. Today, I'm joined by Hannah Murray. Hannah worked as an actor for over a decade, cast as Cassie and E4's skins at the tender age of 16 and later as Gilly in HBO's Game of Thrones alongside numerous other roles in theatre, TV and film.

During her early acting career, Hannah studied English at Cambridge University and later creative writing at UEA and is about to release her first book, The Make Believe, a memoir of magic and madness, an autobiographical account of her involvement in a wellness cult, which is about to be published on the 28th of May. Hannah, you've just told me this is your first podcast. It is my first ever podcast, and it's such a great one to be doing. I love this show. Yeah. Welcome, welcome. Thank you. How are you?

Yeah, it's a really weird. It's very exciting moment to be in knowing the book is coming out so soon. And it feels quite surreal. It's sort of can't quite imagine what being on the other side of that will be like. And so it feels like a very special moment to be in. Because you've been writing it for the last seven years? Seven years, yes. And then before that you were inside the story.

And then I was, yes, living it for three or two and a half three before I started writing. Yeah, it's. It just feels like this, it's sort of been my whole life for so long and to come to this kind of culmination of getting to publish it and share it with people. It's really special. Before we started recording, we were just talking about the fact that you knew you wanted to write even before the subject matter of this book, before you were living what has come to be the story. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I always, I think I was, I was always journaling and diarying, and I remember trying to kind of write novels as a kid. I could read books I loved and was like, I want to write one. Like that seems so fun and exciting. And could never really finish anything. Like could start lots and lots of things. Oh, we know the feeling. We all know the feeling. And then when I started writing this not that long after it happened, which originally was just for myself, really, I just thought, I have all these memories.

They're swimming around my head. I want to get them down. And then I just couldn't stop. And then it started to feel really urgent and important. important to tell this story. And now I just want to write like a million books. I'd love it. But yeah. After this one, the floor is yours. We'll see. When you were inside it, when this was happening to you, did you know then that this was the story? No, I was far too deep inside it to be thinking about writing about it. And I also, I mean, there are points in this experience where I really

thought I was kind of no longer human and had descended to an entirely different reality. And so that was not a world in which one writes books when one is queen of the universe and has saved the world. But it wasn't that long after that I started to think this is a remarkable experience I've had and very difficult and also just very rare and unusual. And I think it was the first time I really sort of confided in a friend about what had happened in more detail. I was of telling him the story and then went, this is an incredible story. And I think that was the first glimmer of thinking, you know, maybe I can write this down. But I thought I would fictionalize it for a long time because it felt really scary to share it as a true story and write

it as a memoir. And then, I've read written quite a lot. I read it back and I thought, oh, no, it is a memoir. How annoying. Yeah. And I think one of the most interesting things about what happened to me is that it actually happened in it's true. So I felt like I would be doing myself and the story a disservice if I tried to pretend it hadn't happened really. And the process of writing it, you said there was an urgency to it. You told me that it's cathartic, but it's a lot of other things as well. What things? So I think, I mean, yeah, people often ask me, was it cathartic to write this?

And it really was, especially in the early stages when it was just kind of coming out and just getting stuff down in quite a rough way. But over the course of these many years working on it, the main thing I feel it is, is really empowering to tell your story in your own words. And I feel like you can take ownership over that experience. And yeah, I guess cathartic implies a kind of messy release. And I think I needed that stage of it. But I think by the end I was just like, I've done this thing.

I've said it in exactly the way I want to say it. And that I'm so proud of that. And it has really helped me recover from what I went through. Well, looking through the list of books that you brought today, so many of them seem to have impacted you as a writer as well as a reader. Yes. And they've been quite formative in making you want to put pen to paper. Yes.

So let's get into the stories that you care about, that you've loved, that have shaped you. Your first book, Shelfy Book, is The Secret History by Donatart. Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college to discover a way of thoughts and life, a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path

beyond human constructs of morality. This cult classic is regarded as one of the most influential literary debuts of the 90s. You described being utterly obsessed with this book as a teenager. What made it so immersive? I think, yeah, I was completely obsessed with it from the, probably from the first page. And I just, I think the world that she creates and the characters she creates are so

vivid and so detailed and so sort of strange. And it also, it reads like a thriller. It's as page turning as a thriller, but it's kind of gorgeous and literary and dealing with this like ancient history and classical literature. And I just had never read anything like that. never found it so easy to read something so complex, I think, and I was about 15 when I read it and I thought, oh, I can read like grown-up books and I'm good at it. This is a grown-up book now. Yeah, yeah. And I love anything that you can just like, you know when you read a book and you

can't put it down, it's like the best feeling. And I don't think that has to sacrifice kind of big ideas or kind of gorgeous sentences or anything like that. And so it's kind of, it sort of taught me what I really want reading to feel like at its best. And I also just, I think quite misguidedly wanted to be like those students in the book. They're aspirational to me, which now I look back at it, I'm like, questionable. You were 15. Because there's multiple murders in that book that they are involved in. But yeah, it was just so glamorous and kind of dark and edgy.

And I didn't really understand any of the references to, sort of Greek tragedy and all the poetry they're reading. And then it made me want to read more and learn more as I was reading it as well. It's interesting that some of that subject matter, which is inherently very dark, was very seductive to you at 15. Paint me the picture of what you were like as a 15 year old when you were reading this book. And why might have those themes been seductive?

Yeah. I mean, I was quite a strange. teenager and I was very, I think I kind of lived a lot in my head and I read a lot of books and I watched a lot of films and I had a kind of, I felt like my childhood and my adolescence were very ordinary and I wanted some kind of big, grand, fantastical life. And so I'd sort of escape into stories and I'd always been very imaginative and I was an only child so I spent a lot of time on my own. and yeah, just kind of lived inside my head. And I think it was also just, you know, I mean, I think all teenagers do feel big emotions. And I think some of the things I was feeling felt sort of dark and edgy.

And so characters and stories that they appealed to me, they sort of spoke to a side of me that I didn't know how to articulate, perhaps otherwise. You said that the novel very naley influenced your academic path towards classics. Yes, which I, I'm really glad. I'm kind of really glad I didn't go down. Because I think I would have been disappointed that it wasn't the secret history.

You weren't murdering anyone. I was like, where's the murder and the incest? And, you know, yeah, I went to a state school and they didn't teach Latin or Greek. But I desperately wanted to learn those languages because I wanted to live in this novel that I loved so much. And so I signed up for, I think my mum found like an ancient Greek summer school and I signed up for it and then I got cast in skins and I couldn't go. And she sometimes says and I think about it occasionally too, this like diverging path. Yeah, what would have happened if I hadn't started acting and I might have studied classics

instead of English at university and everything could have been a bit different. But I think I prefer the path I ended up going down. But yeah, it was really, it was just this idea that that would give me access to the kind of life that the world of the novel sort of promised. But yeah, I haven't reread to the book in quite a long time and I don't know if I would find it so aspirational. Without that same naivety. Yeah, with a bit of maturity on my... Going back to that fork in the road, what could have been? And the trajectory that you took playing Cassie, and I could.

character in an iconic show that we all remember. What impact did that have on the education that you then went on to experience at Cambridge and then going into writing? Yeah, I mean, it was so incredible to start working in a creative field at quite a high level at like that, like before I even finished school. And I was still, I was filming that show while I was doing my air levels. And so missing a lot of school to kind of, go to set and it was a really strange really rich exciting time and I think having said earlier that you know I when I was younger I wanted this big amazing life suddenly it started happening and my life was like completely transformed and met all these amazing people a lot of whom are still really

dear friends of mine um but it made going to university really odd because um I sort of arrived and a lot of people knew who I was from I can imagine the telly And it made me very, it made that whole experience quite surreal. And I was, I could never fully reconcile the success of the show with the fact that I was in it, if that makes sense. That I was like, yeah, there's this really successful TV show. It's called Skins. And I was in a TV show that's called, but like the two couldn't be true in my head at the same time. It's like it's not happening to you.

Yeah. And so, I mean, I think it was really good that I went to university and had that experience when I did. but it was an odd time and I was working, I was acting the whole time I was there. I did three movies over the three years that I was at Cambridge. How was that? So I don't know how I did it. It was completely exhausting.

I also went to Cambridge and there is no way I could have fitted anything else in. No, I know. And I was going to London to audition like most weeks, like sometimes multiple times a week. And it's really embarrassing to live out. I just was really organized. Right. And I mean, I also was exhausted and like completely burnt out all the time and like crying a lot.

But I was very organised and I would hand my essays in early. I can't believe it. I needed, like I knew I always needed to kind of be ahead so I could take the time out to audition and sometimes to film. And everyone was sort of baffled by me. Like the teachers were baffled. They were like, the essays come in earth. Like a day before everyone else. And all my friends were like staying up all night, taking multiple shepherds.

hours to stay awake while they were having their essay crisis. And I was like, and I think it also actually, that was a really helpful education in like, sometimes you just have to get things done and you can't procrastinate and agonise over making it perfect. You just have to kind of finish things. And I think that was quite a good grounding in writing to deadlines and things like that. Yeah, that discipline is amazing. And I'd love it. I would love some of it back because I don't feel like quite after. I do look back on that time and go just, how on earth did you fit everything in? You write in your memoir that acting is something that you no longer wish to pursue. Yes.

However, you have imagined playing Camilla from this book, from The Secret History, if there was ever an adaptation. Are there any roles that would pull you back? I think it's highly unlikely. It's very, like, the only time since I've quit acting that anything has. made me go like, oh, that would have been fun, was when I saw everything I've were all at once. Yeah. And I just thought the opportunities those actors have to do so much and be kind of all these different things in their roles.

And I did think, oh, that looks like fun. But how often do people get to do the kind of things that those actors in that film got to do? I just, I think also in writing, I have the opportunity to be different characters. in a much more varied and rich and complex way. You know, there are, especially like I'm trying to write fiction now and there are people I can write about and inhabit that I would never be able to as an actor get to play.

So, yeah, I don't think, I, it's weird. There's obviously a never-say-never thing about, you know, anything. But I would be quite shocked if something pulled me back into acting for sure. And you can buy those sausage fingers if you want to. to just have a play at being those characters anyway. I can do that at home. Let's talk about your second book, Shelfy book now, which is How Should a Person Be?

By Sheila Hetty. Sheila's 20s were going to plan. She got married, she hosted parties, a theatre asked her to write a play, then she realised that she didn't know how to write a play, and that her marriage made her feel like she was banging into a brick wall. So, inspired by her free-spirited artist friend, she throws herself into making a series of recordings,

investigating how they live, desperate to know how should a person be? Part autobiography, part self-help book. This witty novel was long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2013. Now, I know you read this while you were beginning to write The Make Believe. Why was this so formative for you? I'd never read anything like it. And I don't think I've read anything like it since or ever will probably it's a very unusual book and i don't quite understand still the boundaries of kind of fiction and nonfiction within it um and i just i don't know i was yeah it was in it was 2020 it was the pandemic i was living in la still and i'd started because everything was on pause and i'd already kind of taken a break from acting but then it was really a long break yeah so i had

this time to write and I started writing every day and taking it very seriously like it was my job suddenly and I was also reading a lot and that book just it kind of lit me on fire I think partly as well because the main character is trying to write a play and she's having a really hard time with it and so it's sort of about the creative process as much as anything else and there's yeah there's one passage where she sort of finally sits down and like finally makes it happen. And it's just, I copied this passage out and pinned it on the wall because I just thought I need to remember this. It's about becoming real by sort of throwing everything you have, including the awful parts

of yourself at the writing. And I, yeah, it was also, it's funny and it's playful. And I realized that was something else I wanted reading to feel like, and I wanted to feel like, and I wanted my own writing to feel like. It gave me permission, I think, to try things out and realize you could do things I hadn't thought you were necessarily allowed to. That passage from the chapter, Sheila throws her shit. Sheila throws her shit, yeah.

Is it still Pinty Award? Does it still resonate? No, because I moved. So I don't know where it will happen to it in the transatlantic move, but I still remember it vividly. Like, yeah, it's just a great, like, intense paragraph of and the word shit is used over and over again which is good which feels good it feels powerful yeah how did this book change your perception of what

personal writing and auto fiction can be yeah i think i sort of was yeah it was just such a thing of like can you do this is this allowed and i think the the way she blends in these kind of recorded conversations with her best friend um and also writes about the sort of questionable ethics of doing that. Like there's, I feel like there are conversations she then has with her friend where her friend is like, what are you doing with these recordings? And I don't know if I feel great about this. It made me think about all the kind of material that I had access to from the experience,

from the time that I was trying to write about of sort of text messages and my own journals and the way that I might be able to weave in kind of found texts, I suppose. and that became quite an important part of my own work. You realise just how rich you are in terms of resources. Like you have so much to mine. Yes. Which is quite a scary prospect in some ways. It is a scary prospect.

Yeah. And actually one of the hardest things about writing this book was not letting it be ridiculously long. Because I had so many memories. I had these journals. I had these mostly WhatsApp conversations to draw on. and it could have been easily three or four times as long if I'd not, A, been more disciplined and B, had very good editors. I was going to say, what was the editing process like?

Oh, it was actually incredible. I love both my editors so much. They're really wonderful human beings. And I was, yeah, I was getting the first kind of round of feedback was terrified because you don't. And I had to wait for quite a long time and had no idea what they were going to say. and then kind of took it in and was like, oh, they had big notes and they had a lot of cuts because my first draft was way too long. But I was like, oh, they see this, the way I see it, I think was the most. Like having a similar vision was really key and made me feel very supported.

And I realized I was going to be allowed to tell the story the way I wanted to tell it, which was so validating. You highlighted she Lizzie's of humour and playfulness. How important is it to be able to lean on those things when you're being introspective? How does it help you? I think for me it feels really, really vital to have humour in particular. I think if you're telling an emotionally heavy story, if you're telling a kind of harrowing story, I remembered the humour of those experiences. Like, yes, they were very dark, but there were moments where there was laughter

and there was incredible release and relief in being able to laugh in the kind of darkest moments as well. And I also, I just like funny writing. And I don't think humor has to be contained within specifically comic writing alone. And I think it is exciting to put a joke in where you can see one. It was when I was at UEA and I was workshopping, like some of the early chapters with people, and they knew it was very serious subject matter. and they would say a lot of people said they were like, I don't know if you realize,

but it's quite funny what you've written. And I was like, obviously I realized I made it funny. But I think they were so nervous of saying it was funny when it was also very serious. And I was like, no, that's, yeah, I don't know if you realize. Like you might have made a mistake and made it funny by accident. And I was like, no, I do want it to be funny.

This episode of Bookshelfy is sponsored by Bayleys. Bayleys is proudly supporting the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction. 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. You mentioned the way that this novel really dissolves the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, experimentation with form is absolutely prevalent in your third book, Shelfy Pick, which is in the Dreamhouse by Carmen Maria Machado. This is an engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic, but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of psychological abuse. Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and examines

them from distinct angles. The result is a powerful book that explodes our ideas of what a memoir can do and be. You described it as unlike anything you read before, one of the greatest examples of a memoir. What makes it so original to you? Why do you love it so much? I, it's, I think it's really, it can be really hard to do kind of big, bold, formal experimentation and it not end up feeling gimmicky potentially. And the things she does in this book, which some of which are so unexpected and risky, you know,

there's a choose your own adventure section in the middle of this memoir about emotional abuse in relationship. Like it's wild. It's wild. But when you read that section, it's all about you can never get out of the relationship through the, you're always,

like it's about how you're trapped in that relationship and whatever choice you make, you remain trapped. And I read that and thought, this is so clever because it's such an accurate depiction of what she experienced. Through this kind of quite playful structure, you actually understand more deeply what she was going through. And I think I don't know if many people can pull that off as well as she does. And it's, I remember again, like reading it in a couple of days. And it's these short chapters that you just want to read the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one.

And you realize you've taken in this heavy, like brutal, harrowing story. And yet you just like gulped it down because the writing is that good. And there's all these weird angles about like, I think there's a chapter on Disney villains. And it's, I don't know, yeah, it just kind of blew my mind. Yeah, she has these, I guess quite unconventional blendings of. of pop culture and it's a way of evoking that period in her life as well as offering sort of broader cultural context and critique and you do this as well yourself in the make believe you draw in these elements from Kanye West to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it's it's really exquisite way of writing

and it like you say it creates this page turning effect it makes you so engulfed in it because you know that time especially if you are from the same sort of period of time. you're in it. Tell me a little bit more about this technique and honing it. Yeah, I think it sort of felt like it wasn't a choice to consciously like, oh, I'm going to bring in these other elements. It was more that things like the Kanye show that I went to in the middle of this experience or my long-held obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer or kind of another thing that feels really key to me is the kind of Harry Potter generation of people that grew up thinking

we were going to get letters from Hogwarts and then, yeah, very sad that we didn't. I think that I felt like there was this kind of that was a huge part of my mental and emotional landscape was these this music or TV shows or books that I had loved had fed into my understanding of magic. And so then when I thought

I was encountering real magic through this organisation that I got involved in, I couldn't really separate it from the fictional magic that I had grown up, obsessed with, particularly as a child and a teenager. Because that's what magic was for you. Because that's what magic was. That's how I kind of envisioned it very much

was through storytelling. And so I just kind of, because when I, you know, the original drafts of this book were very much like, I want to chuck everything in there, everything that could possibly be associated with this experience. And so those things just obviously were they had to be part of it. And I like that. I like the kind of,

I like books that have that kind of texture to them of other cultural references. And I don't think things can exist in a vacuum, I suppose, either. And you read in The Dreamhouse while you were studying for your creative writing MA. I did, yes. Do you think that was kind of a factor in it having an impact on how you write? Yeah, I think the books that I was reading, once I started the course, I was reading very intentionally of like what can I learn from this. And definitely in The Dreamhouse was the one that sort of made the biggest impact on me.

Because we were reading all. I mean, I was doing a course in creative nonfiction. But we were so we were reading memoirs. We were also reading biographies and more kind of research driven nonfiction. And in the Dreamhouse just, I think we only were assigned like an extract from it in a seminar. and I was like, I have to read the whole thing. This is too good not to find out more about. Yeah, but yeah, I think when you start,

I think in some ways, like, all my reading has contributed to how I write because you're always, you're picking stuff up even if it's just by osmosis. But I think once I was really working on this book, it was always like every book I read. It's like, what can I learn from this? What can I pick up and what are the tools that this writer is using that might be useful for me? Once you've gone into that very active, what can I? learn mode was it tiring because I don't know how you read before did did you read purely for pleasure

before or you say you always sort of through osmosis learning new techniques but did it make it hard to relax when you read I mean I don't I would say I don't find reading relaxing right and I don't mean that's a bad thing I find it incredibly stimulating and whether that and I read very widely but I don't see it ever as like if I'm reading like a romance novel or I don't see that as any less of an education for me than reading like highbrow literary fiction. Like I think it's you can learn from any book even if it's a book you don't like. You learn why you don't like it. So I don't, yeah, I don't read in the evenings because it doesn't like calm me down and sort of soothes me.

Because your mind will just be firing. Your synaps is a good. Yeah. But I think was, I think actually the other way I was, you know, taught to read was I did English at university. and so I had read in this incredibly like close way and like mining stuff for things I could use in essays and that was in some I think it took me a while to sort of recover from that type of reading and read in a more pleasurable way and read things that I was really drawn to and wanted to read for myself rather than like a canon of classics that I felt I should read.

I think so many of us can relate to that. that learning to read again, learning to love reading, reading and knowing that it's because you want to, absolutely after having studied, it was languages, but it was, you know, lots of literature within languages and only really ever doing so critically or analytically, it was such a big thing to unlearn and then to know I could relax when I read that it had the capacity to do that. Yeah, definitely. But it's a nice feeling when you remember that. And when you can get back to what you mentioned at the very beginning, that page turning excitement of being inside a book.

Yeah. Even when the book is heavy. I mean, this memoir explores under-examined subjects of abuse in queer relationships. It's a disturbing portrait of power and isolation between the author and her fellow student and girlfriend, Val. Do you think there's a cost for the writer when you are documenting pain? That's a really interesting question. I don't think I'd ever thought about it in terms of cost. I maybe had thought about it more in terms of a gain,

in terms of what I had said before about the kind of the empowerment piece of like putting this experience into your own words, sharing it with people in the hope that they might feel like they can relate to it or feel seen. And I think vulnerability can be very powerful. and so I've never thought of the painful things I've written about as yeah a loss or a cost to me I've always thought about it as very much a gain. The only thing I think you maybe lose in, and this isn't specific to painful experiences, I think just in writing about experiences, is that the memories that live in your head, I think once you write them down and I've heard other writers say this too, you sort of lose the memory in the same vivid way.

And there are bits of this book that I now read back where I think I do remember that, but I wouldn't be able to write that again. I don't have access to the same level of memory that I did before I wrote it down. Now you've got it on the paper. Yeah. It does put it out of your head and into something else.

And then into the hands of others and into their heads, which is a crazy thought and that's what's happening this summer. I know. No, it's really remarkable to think that so many people could potentially pick up this book and then know what happened to me. And I do feel there are certain passages, particularly in sort of the middle section of it, where I just think that's exactly how it happened. And I can't, not to say it's perfectly written, but to say that I could not express more clearly what I went through. and I feel like if people read it they will understand, I hope,

and be able to imagine what I experienced. And that feels so meaningful to me. And what about the idea, the notion that those experiences, once they're read by someone else, they sort of belong to others too? Yeah, that's quite a strange and daunting thought in a way. But also quite beautiful. in a way to be able to make the personal something bigger than just something I live through and that yeah it lives inside other people's heads and they might although I say like I think I've

expressed very clearly what I went through people will probably imagine things differently and they'll see the people I've written about as looking at a certain way that isn't how they you know and all kinds of things will will I guess what I love about reading about books specifically more than any other form of storytelling is it's such an intimate private thing and everyone has their own version of how they imagine things in their head. And to think that I have offered up a version of my life to be in other people's heads is really strange and really wonderful, I think. Well, on the subject of the imagination taking us in all directions, let's talk about your fourth pick, which is the Pisces by Melissa Broder. This sharp satire on capitalist America was long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019.

It follows Lucy, who, after a dramatic breakup, ends up dog sitting in a dream house on Venice Beach for the summer. It's here she meets an eerily attractive swimmer. But when she learns the truth about his identity, everything takes an unexpected turn. Eye-openingly graphic and full of dark humour, the Pisces is a masterful blend of vivid realism and giddy fantasy. You describe this book as taking over your life when you read it and needing to share it with everyone immediately. Did you? Did you share it? Yeah, I really did. I think I've given it to people as a gift, but I also, I finished it in a coffee shop and had to, I think I was the only person in there, and I started talking to the barista about it. And then I, she's like, oh, that sounds interesting.

Maybe I'll get out of the library. I was like, no, take this. You have to read it now. And then I left. And I was like, I don't know this woman very well. And I've just given her a book about explicit sex with a merman. Yeah. I still go in there and get coffee and she seems so. I've actually learned her other books since, and we now have a little book exchange, which is very cute. But, yeah, no, it did. I just couldn't stop reading it,

and I couldn't believe someone had written such a convincing depiction of a relationship with a Murman. I'd read Milkfed before her second novel. I read that one first, and I really loved that one too. but something about it was because it's not magical realism like it's not a fantasy world it's very much feels like our world and like i have lived in l a and it's set in l a and i sort of recognized the the setting as very contemporary and realistic and then this merman pops up and you completely believe in him as much as you believe in the kind of tinder dates she's going on and it's it just feels like so true and at the same time i think i think it's very cleverly sort of positioned that you never quite know if it's in Lucy's head or not. There's never a definitive

like this is reality or this is her fantasy. I found it so funny. I found it quite shocking in wonderful ways and then the ending of it which I will not spoil is so heartbreaking and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days and days. This handling of such a strange premise but doing so completely believingly, completely convincingly, it's a mastery to achieve. Yeah. How does she do it in a way that's so compelling throughout? I think, I mean, there's so many, I think partly it's just like, it's really specifically detailed. Like, she's really thought everything through. And, like, his anatomy, she has thought through so that they can have sex in terms of, like, where the tail starts.

You've got to think about these things. You've got to think about these things. And like it's, yeah, and it feels sort of gritty and very bodily. And there's a lot of like, like, I think she gets a UTI and it's really bad. She, they have like period sex. And there's this beautiful character of the dog that she's taking care of, which it doesn't end well for him. But I just, I don't know. And yeah, I think it's really grounded in detail.

And just this character feels so believable and recognizable. and it's in first person you sort of go on this journey with her, you completely kind of are taken along into Lucy's headspace and her world. And so you believe everything that she believes, I guess. You said that the ending of the book still haunts you, it stayed with you. Do you crave a neat, satisfying resolution, or do you tend to prefer ambiguity or a more nuanced ending? I think I probably prefer nuanced ending.

nuance and ambiguity. I always think it's, I think it's quite brave not to give people neat answers. And I think it's more honest not to give people like a tie, like, oh, we've tied everything up in a bow, and that's how, if everything's neat and clean. Life is not like that. Life is not like that.

No. And I also think, I mean, like, you know, usually our lives are ongoing and chapters don't close and kind of with a finality. And I found that writing the make-believes, that it was really hard to know where to end it and how to end it for a long time because I was like it's a memoir, but I'm still, my life is ongoing and will go on after this book is published.

For a long time. Hopefully for a long time. So that sense of, yeah, when does the story stop? And so I like, yeah, I like things that leave you wandering and questioning rather than saying here's the answer, here's the kind of neat end point. It's really interesting looking through your picks. There is a tendency to fantasy elements and the otherworldly, but it's always rooted in a reality that we can recognize, I think.

That's something that you've sought in the literature that you love. And also, you know, in your choice of roles, something like Game of Thrones, for example, is taking us to another world, but there's so much that is recognizable. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think that tension between sort of fantasy and reality is really at the heart of my memoir and was, I think was something that I was interested in for a long time before I had a kind of experience to write about that was really about those themes. And I think so many people are fascinated by those kind of blurred lines and want certain

things to be real that aren't real and live in make-believe worlds in their heads. And then obviously, yeah, having been an actor for so long, it's all about fantasy and imagination. And it was, you know, it was a really strange way to kind of grow up, particularly like my whole 20s I was working on Game of Thrones. And my job was involved like dragons and giant wolves and these incredible sets that were like completely immersive worlds. And it was an odd, it's an odd job to do like acting as a really weird job. to pretend to be other people. And it's an amazing job in lots of ways. But I think you have to be a bit strange to be able to go there

and invest so much in that fantasy world. I think you could say the same for writing as well. Yes, you're getting good. With all these fantastical books. Yeah, probably equally odd, maybe even weirder. But yeah. Yeah. So I'll just talk about your fifth and final bookshelfy book,

which has Disappoint Me by Nicola D'nanan. Max didn't mean to fall for Vincent, a corporate lawyer and hobby baker whose trad friendship group are a world away from her life as a trans woman. But after years of bad dates and dysphoria, he's a breath of fresh air. Their connection seems genuine.

His care feels real. But Vincent is carrying his own baggage. Is he really the new face of the enlightened man or will the ghosts of his past sabotage their happiness? In this ambitious follow-up to her, acclaimed debut Bellies, Nicola Danan explores modern relationships, queerness, race, gender and toxic masculinity. Now you've highlighted in your notes the empathy in Danan's portrayal of characters.

How does she make her characters feel so fully inhabited for you? I think what I loved about Disappoint Me and also Bellies does the same thing is you have two narrators, you have two first person, people telling you their story and they're very different characters Max and Vincent and they're telling their stories from different timelines so I think Vincent's is about

is when he's in his late teens and Max is 30 when she's meeting him for the first time and you're just getting to know these different sides of people and I just feel like it's so they're so fully inhabited and they're what we were saying just now about nuance and not giving easy answers. This is a book that has so much moral complexity in it.

And I think to be truly empathetic, you have to kind of hold space for that complexity. You said that you strongly relate to the protagonist's life stage. So not just their life, but that particular time of their life. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, so I think, so it's the beginning of the book, Max is 30 and it's a New Year's Eve. party she falls down the stairs.

Yes, it's that I think, well, it's Max at 30. Max at 30, yeah. And that kind of, you know, sends her on this decision to sort of go on dating apps, find a boyfriend, find a kind of, and she finds a man who has, as I say, this kind of trad friendship group and most of his friends are married. And I think, and that's very at odds with her sort of more queer community, her friendship group. And I think I just feel like, I mean, I'm now in my mid-30s, but I just see this tension

in all the people I know and whether people have chosen it does feel like there are kind of two paths and one is quite traditional and involves generally marriage and babies and if you're not choosing that what does your life look like and I can sort of

see this tension at play in this novel of that both are very seductive to Max and I thought that was really honest to show someone grappling with what kind of life do you want and what should a life look like and what will your friends think of you if you make certain choices. How does fiction help us navigate these transitions or these moments when you're reading

that and you see yourself reflected back or at least you relate to it? What can that do for you? I think it's an incredible feeling when you feel kind of seen by a book and I think I know other people describe this too that idea when you read something and you're like that's what I've been thinking that's what I've been feeling

but I couldn't find the words for it thank you for articulating thank you for articulating yeah thank you for putting my thoughts into words with me or my feelings into words with me I'm less alone and I'm not weird I'm not the only one yeah I just think it gives it gives voice to things you cannot necessarily put into words yourself

and I think that's such a beautiful feeling and it's a point of connection between you and the writer So whether they were writing a very long time ago or they're writing now. Yeah, and I love the sheer variety of human experience that you can read in fiction or nonfiction. And I just think, yeah, it's such a beautiful thing to feel, to encounter characters that feel relatable in some way or other. And like you say, giving us these dual narrations, these different POVs in this story, it really enhances the authenticity and the empathy that we have for these characters

and kind of as an extension for one another. In your book, you do kind of rewind a couple of years from being 30. You talk about the 27 Club. Yes. And I sort of collective, morbid fascination with this group and how you felt like your old self died at this age. Can you just tell me a bit more about this? Yeah.

So I, so I mean, I was 27 when the experiences I have in this book took place. and 20, like people talk a lot about that age and, you know, there are these very famous people, like a number of people who died at that age. There are obviously people who died at different ages who were equally famous and died under tragic circumstances. But there's this kind of sinister feeling that there's something to do with that number. There's also, I guess, that whole kind of Saturn returns thing. I'm not into astrology, but I know a lot of people are. and the idea that at certain points in your life you will have these big changes occur.

And I think 27, 28 is around when that's supposed to be. But I just, yeah, I was in hospital and I'd been sectioned and I was 27. And I just couldn't stop thinking about Janice Joplin and Amy Winehouse and Jimmy Hendricks and Jim Morrison. And I just thought, I'm in that club now. I'm 27 and maybe I'm dead. And I really wanted to write about that because it's such a strange experience to have had. And I do, I guess strangely now still feel like there, you know, obviously I was not dead and did not die at 27, but that some version of myself was shed through that experience and a new version of myself sort of appeared.

And so, yeah, it felt like an important thing to include in the book. because it really shifted my understanding of who I was, I guess, and how I was growing through this very, very difficult experience. I think I became a different person and I hope a better person because of it. And I think empathy is key to that. I think that it made me profoundly more empathetic to go through something so difficult. And I was kind of one of the big pieces I hope readers of this book can experience is sort of going, well, could that have happened to me under those circumstances? And what would I have

done if I was in that place that she was in? And I think, yeah, I think it's one of the great things about storytelling is how it encourages people to empathise, maybe outside of the realms of their own lived experience. With that version of yourself shared and looking to the future now with a book just about to be in the hands of other people as well and your story being told, you've told stories for acting now, you're telling stories with the pen. How does the future look? What are your hopes?

I think hopefully just loads more books is what I would really like. And I definitely really want to write fiction. And I kind of, in my dream world, would just be able to jump back and force between fiction and nonfiction and just write lots and lots and lots of things. Lots more writing, lots more reading. Lots more reading. From the books that we have talked about that you have read today, which would you say was your favourite? If you had to pick just one.

Yeah. It's hard enough to pick five. I know. Like to narrow it down to five. No, I think if I had to pick one, it would probably be Sheila Hetty. I think just because that, I feel like that. book changed me the most and excited me the most and drove me on as a writer the most. I can really tell from your choices how important these books have all been to you and I've

really loved speaking about them and how they've impacted you. So thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. With it coming out, it's exciting. It's exciting. And I hope your first podcast has been all right. It's been good. It's been lovely. Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm Vic Hope and that was Bookshelfy from the Women's Prize, supported by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thanks for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books that we discussed in our show notes. There's also a link to our bookshop.org shelf

where every purchase supports independent bookshops and the work of the Women's Prize Trust, a charity helping build a better future by championing women's writing. Now remember to hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you liked this one, then leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women. I'll see you next time.