Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Novel Writing, Men Who Won't Grow Up & Sally Rooney with Jem Calder

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Happy Wednesday EICrickets! In today's episode we're joined by writer and novelist Jem Calder, whose debut novel I Want You To Be Happy was released last month. The three of us all separately recommended the book on the pod, and we're in good company as fans. Andrew O'Hagan called Jem his "new favourite writer" and Sally Rooney said it was an "irresistible novel that asks complex questions about contemporary life and refuses easy answers. I couldn't stop reading." The book follows the unfurling, complicated relationship between Chuck, a 35-year-old copywriter working at a large ad agency, and Joey, a 23-year-old barista living payday to payday who nurtures a quiet ambition of becoming a poet. We talk to Jem about the themes of his novel- don't worry, no spoilers- plus the writing process, what he thinks about modern dating, dating apps, men who refuse to grow up and being "discovered" by Sally Rooney. Plus plenty of book recs & writing advice. Thanks so much for listening! See you Friday! B, O, R x-------- Penguin - Switzy by Emma Cline Waterstones - I Want You To Be Happy by Jem Calder Faber & Faber - Reward System by Jem CalderDazed Digital - I Want You to Be Happy: The Sally Rooney-approved book of the summer by Roisin Lanigan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Ruchera. I'm Anoni. And I'm Gem. And this is Everything in Conversation. The flirty text before you arrive for our date on Friday. In today's episode, we are speaking to Gem Calder. Gem is an author who lives in London,

and you will have heard all of us raving about his debut novel, I Want You to Be Happy. And he also has a collection of short stories titled Reward System, which was published in 2022. How are you enjoying this kind of like honeymoon of book release? It's been good to be honest. And I, so I had a short story collection out a few years before this. And like that came out and it was very hyped before it came.

You know, people were giving me very generous views saying really nice things. And then obviously it came out and it was short story collection. So there's just like an inbuilt limit to the audience for that. So that was a pretty good way of getting my head around the fact that, okay, you're going to put loads of effort into this book. everybody might not read it and be in love with it. And not to say that that's what's happened with this book, but it has been a much more widely read and, yeah, widely reviewed. I've seen multiple people reading it in, like, public, which is really crazy.

That's wild. That's so fun. I mean, everyone is reading it. Yeah. I guess it's like that thing of like, it's quite good because it tempers you. It's like, you know, people that have a really good baby first, and then their second baby's awful. And then they're like, oh, my God, I wasn't prepared.

Whereas you've had it the good way around where the first time it was a bit like, oh, okay. And then now you're having. a baby that sleeps really well. Yeah, no, I feel, I feel like I've earned it a bit more as well by like having a release that was, yeah, things went much slower. But this has been kind of crazy. Okay. So before we get into it, Gem, we always ask our guests, what is one piece of pop culture that you have been loving this week? You know what? There's a book that's coming out later this year, which I got a copy of called Switzie by Emma Klein, who wrote the guest. She's, she's a great American writer. That's been like my big, I read it once and I've been

going back through it. I want to try and review it for somewhere actually because I just thought it was so brilliant. Yeah, that's been, has anyone here read the guest? Read and loved the guests. Love the girls as well. I think girls have re-read multiple times and the guest I'm due a reread and I've been waiting. I am really, really jealous that you have got this proof. I had this jealousy early with an only show

that I wanted. I get lots of proofs. I'm very, very lucky, but right now I'm sitting here, see you, oh, did you? Did you like it? Yeah, it's great. I don't know whether that helped or I don't know whether that makes your jealousy worse or but yeah. I'm so excited now. Can we get a parted synopsis because I don't know about this book? I mean, I really like when writers make things hard on themselves and she's done a really good job of that.

It's an older guy, a rich American guy who's traveling to Switzerland to undergo the dignitas procedure because he's suffering from what seems like Alzheimer's. And it's just a real feat of writing because by setting something within those confines and following him in the close third person, she kind of foregoes a lot of what make novels structurally the same and kind of, I think, has chosen a really difficult path by like, he's this guy who's not particularly sympathetic. His relationships with the family members and people around him he goes to see

before he undergoes this procedure are like really ill-defined. You know, like nothing is really, that there's not a lot of closure and you kind of know going into it that it's like, all right, this guy's going to die in about two days. So like, there's only so much she can do. And you also know exactly how it's going to end. But it's just like, yeah, on a sentence level, the writing is just, it really, really pops.

I just absolutely loved her. Oh, that sounds so good. I really need to read more Emma Klein. She's on my list. So this is the sway that I absolutely needed. She's the best. She's great. So we're obviously here for a reason. Congratulations on your debut novel.

We all loved it. We all separately recommended it on previous episodes. So this is really the trifecta of everything is content recommendations. Before we get into it, could you give our listeners a bit of a summary of the book and some of the themes in it as well? So the novel is I want you to be happy. It's about a, I always introduce it as an older guy, but he's 35. And what I mean is he's older relatively than the 23-year-old young Joey, who he sort of starts this semi-relationship with. they meet on a night out in London, kind of hit it off, but the novel follows them over a few

months. And it's a kind of will, they, won't they, should they, shouldn't they? Because we start to get the feeling that these two people might not have been telling the truth about themselves in their first meeting and there might be more about themselves than they're holding back. It's got, you know, all the good themes, dating, loneliness, living in the city, digital communication, the way we work now. The way we love now. I think. like my agent is going to be really happy with me for saying it like that. But yeah, I think that's a, that's a good summer. Something that I, when I was reading this book, I was like, they're sort of in this situation ship, which is such, I think we lack the verbiage for this kind

of like romantic entanglement. And I was reading it. I was like, okay, I'm recognizing some of my 20s in there, even some of my 30s in this. And it did kind of make me nostalgic in a way, weirdly for parts of my early 20s, but also like, this is such a 32 year old thing to say, like, you could not pay me again to be the age that Joey is in this. book, you know, the kind of like, we were talking earlier and only went off to a wedding and like you're still recovering from some late nights, but Joey gets up, she goes to work. One because she has two, but also she's 22. She can have a hangover, no sleep and she can go. She can also have that kind of hopefulness. But again, no, I will not go back there with a gun

to my head. Having written this, how do you feel now about your early 20s or that time in life? Does it have that sort of magical scene to it? Or are you like, yeah, no, hell, horror, hell and horror. Damn. Yeah. I would definitely say the same. I would definitely say the same. kind of cliche about like how you couldn't pay me to go back and do it again you probably could to be honest with you i spent a lot of time in my early 20s trying to break into publishing and um sort of like and actually what that consisted of was just like me trying and failing to write stories and like not finishing anything and also if i'm honestly to myself not really trying that hard as well but i do think yeah i do think being in your early 20s particularly being in a big city in your early 20s is like quite a i don't know

it's quite like a literary romantic experience in in my opinion and I always look at people who are that age and I'm like wow that really is kind of like you do have just like unparalleled freedom you know and it's a very tough period in your life as well because it's also when you really start to confront reality and it's like all the dreams that you've kind of been harboring kind of come to a head and it's like you get to this point where it's like okay I have to go I have to like really seriously try and pursue this kind of stuff or not I I mean, probably that's not true. You probably could do it at any point in your life. But I think for a lot of people,

that's where kind of like the rubber meets your road in terms of pursuing the dreams. I mean, maybe for the three of us as well, having been in London and doing those things. And your characters obviously two generations of people who have one trying to approach an industry, Genzi in this modern day, and someone who has had that road into writing,

is not kind of working in copyright. It is those two diverging paths. And I think having done, did you kind of do that, like the, I did the copyright, I've done the proofreading, as well as writing books. It's like it was a very familiar path reading that kind of Chuck's career and also Joey's career. Yeah, pretty much all of their employment history is something I've had like direct experience of,

particularly the sensation that Joey has of like she's 23 and working in the service industry and kind of wants to change, but doesn't know how that was that was something I was going through at that point in my life as well, trying to, and I think I have a lot of, you know, like if you can make that kind of job work, that's absolutely brilliant. but I think it can be really hard if you do want to kind of like transition into something a bit more like not even necessarily a creative field but kind of like office job with a bit more security and things like that that can be a really hard transition to make yeah and in terms of having the two characters be different ages as well I just thought yeah so I am closer to I'll be 35 this year I have been 23 and I yeah I did really like the idea of kind of putting those two life experiences next to each other because there are things that I'm that I've really shared between the two characters, particularly because Chuck has kind of been living in this like crystallized adolescence and kind of has refused to grow up in certain ways that make him actually weirdly kind of well suited to the 23 year old he's going out with, which is not a compliment really. But yeah, there are also ways that they're just like completely

on different wavelengths and like can't really relate to each other at all. And to be honest with you, the biggest thing for me with with writing characters like that of having a kind of innocence and experience thing. More than anything, I viewed it as like a vehicle for comedy. Like, I was just like, I do just think that's quite a funny dynamic. And it's also one that people have really strong feelings about. I like the kind of central plot element of my work to be something that is going to be a bit like dicey and thorny and is going to have a bit of like friction to it.

And I think readers like that as well. Like I'm always writing with like a really close eye on what my readers' experience is going to be. And I think it's really important to give them something that can't be, you know, like if I could have written this all in one page and being like, oh, age gap relationships are kind of like this. Then like, I would have done that. But it's like, I have to have something that I can sort of contend with. And I think their relationship is quite difficult to read. It's so funny. You took the words up my mouth. We love talking about age gap relationships. In fact, it's a subject that we keep

coming back to because it's so in the cultural zeit guys. There was this amazing piece in the cut. I think it must have been a couple of years ago now that was called like the case for marrying an older man. Did you ever read it? I haven't. It went so viral. But it was kind of, that piece actually was more specifically, sort of actually about like a money gap relationship with this woman's basically dating a rich man. It wasn't really nasty about the age thing. And more recently, there was a show on Netflix called The Age of Attraction, which was specifically about like couples of different ages. But I was wondering, was that one of the things that drew you to it? Because it either has people sort of like quite puritanical and clutching their pals. But at the same time, it's quite a normal thing. And as you say,

with Joey and Chuck, there is that power imbalance there, but it does kind of mutate throughout the story as we kind of understand them better. Do you know what I hadn't read that. the cut piece. There's a bit in the novels somewhere where I think it's literally just one line where it's about her reading an article about wage gap relationships. And I wonder if that was something I had seen that I filtered through. Because I'm wondering where that came from otherwise. So yeah, in terms of the age gap relationship, yeah, it is just really interesting to me. And I know this sounds like such an obvious thing, but like I'm always really amazed when some writers, particularly other writers of my like age group and cohort, when they kind of tell you,

what the plot synopsis is of their novel and there's just kind of like nothing there in terms of like conflict i really feel like you might as well start with a subject that is like just spontaneously interesting where kind of like as soon as you hear about it it's like okay i kind i'm always amazed by how many writers don't try and write about subjects like that i think it is really worth you know putting something out there that the reader is going to that there is a question that the reader is going to have interest in in terms of the actual question of Gatch relationships themselves. I suppose I'm kind of agnostic.

I see it. Kind of what's funny is that every relationship is different. And, you know, it's probably not the best idea to do too much inferring of what goes on in people's relationships. I like to give them that everyone that benefit of the doubt. Having said that, I think some of the, as you said, the kind of pearl clutching probably comes from a good place where it's like people don't want to see others, particularly younger women being taken advantage of, which I think probably happens more often than not in

those types of relationships. The economic side of it is actually kind of what I'm most interested in. And especially with trying to write this as a sort of like, I don't really know how to pigeonhole it in terms of genre. Like there's some romantic comedy in there, literary fiction, romantic drama. I'm fine with all of those labels. But I think historically, especially if you think of like the kind of Jane Austen style of romantic comedy. So when you're young and you read those books, you're like, oh my God, why can't you just go with the guy she really loves? But then when you're older and you read it and you see like the parents perspective and they're like, no, I have to like sort out your economic life for the rest of your life. Like you have to marry this guy with a huge inheritance because otherwise like you're just completely economically screwed.

And I think that that is sort of like a little bit of the tension that's going on in this novel as well. It's like he is just that much. I try not to be too on the nose about it. But you know, like there's definitely like class differences between them and like the amount he's currently earning is is a lot different to where she has and probably where she would. end up by the time she's Chuck's age as well. So yeah, there's all these kinds of different elements to it. I suppose as well, I don't know, I'd be interested to hear your opinion on it as well, but there's also the kind of like biological imperative,

and they also start families within a kind of like particular age bracket. I think part of the big thing that's going on in the, in this novel, that's kind of like makes everyone kind of hate the main character from the off, hate the main male character from the off, is that he's broken up with his girlfriend of 10 years, who's like a similarly appropriately aged woman to him and has started going out with his 23-year-old. And I suppose that's the part to me, especially like thinking of starting a family myself, that's the part that I find the most kind of like troubling.

But again, like, I don't want to just turn it into like within the novel, I don't want to just turn it into rage bait or whatever and like just draw that out too fully. But it's a kind of like unsaid part where, you know, you kind of like the presence of the family and the presence of children is kind of like present in the background, but not bought forth to. much but I think in terms of the in terms of the dynamic I do think that's probably a bigger part of it than people want to say yeah I definitely think I felt that I definitely felt some of the rage of this and however right or wrong it is this feeling of like wow he really wasted her time his ex-girlfriends I think it is because of that I hate it I hate that we all are conditioned to feel it but that like sense of you put your time into a relationship and the biological clock is there and I don't feel like I subscribe to it in my personal life but reading the book I really felt that on behalf of her and yeah I do think that was kind of lingering in the background this feeling of like maybe having robbed somebody else's opportunity as easily to start the life they thought that they had begun with you and that felt like quite a painful topic

that was kind of lingering in the background of his choices we also had a question and I really would love to hear your thoughts on this from Lauren who said I love the book I'd love to know does gem think the novel is optimistic about people's capacity to change or do you think most of us spend our lives circling the same patterns, was the hope that the reader would feel optimistic at the end or just sad? I'm still deciding. And the reason I also love this question is because it almost feels like Chuck has all the power to kind of decide if he wants to change his patterns. And it's kind of hopeful, but it's also kind of positioning him as he's always had the power and he has been stuck for most of the book. And then when he, the minute he decides when he wants to kind of choose a different

path, it's always down to him and he can do that. And he might do that. Yeah. Thank you. Lauren, that's a really good question. Yeah, to me it's definitely an optimistic ending, speaking very broadly. And in terms of do people change, or do they kind of keep circling the same patterns? I, in a not to be a cop-out, but I think it's kind of both, where it's like people do change in response to things that are going on in their lives, but those kind of like main themes continue to reassert themselves as you get older, that's how it's gone for me anyway. But you kind of mature as a person and deal with things in different ways. Towards the end of the novel without spoiling anything, like both the characters are given very big signs from the universe,

which I guess is actually just signs from me because I'm kind of like running their universe. But they're basically like really hit on the head with like opportunities to change and grow and become different people. And the question of whether they take those opportunities and sort of the extent to which I think, I think that's why I ended the novel where I did is because it kind of, the reader gets to sit with, okay, like, you know, with the novel form, there is this structural expectation that it's like people are going to kind of, you know, to some extent, maybe not get there just desserts, but like, you know, there's going to be consequences for the things that people do in the novel, and there's going to be some level of kind of

evening out in terms of their fortunes, you know, like, I think it would be a completely unsatisfying reading experience if that didn't happen. But equally, I wanted it to be really mirroring real life and I wanted to get the feeling that kind of like these are the things that do happen to people that we know that are in our lives. Without kind of like breaking that realism, I think, I'll say for one of the characters, I think it's an optimistic ending. And for one of the other characters, I think it's a kind of continued circling. Just to hark back to the kind of the economic background of the novel,

because I think maybe it's because I read them back to back. I read your novel. And then I read, I want to go home, but I'm already there by Rishin Lanigan, which is like horror romance. The horror background is the current rental market in London. fantastic. Hers is like a romance under the umbrella of horror, but also the economy. And yours is, I mean, yours is not horror apart from the bits where I went, oh, this is horrible how much it reminds me with my life. Both books are sort of about what it means to try and do anything,

live, laugh, love, thrive in this very particular economy, this job market, this rental market. And the kind of fiscal reality of Joey and Chuck is impossible to separate. But reading it, neither yours nor Rashine's, they didn't feel like polemics on, it didn't feel like a call to action or a sort of like, and this is why we need this reform, it was just very passive? I don't know. Is it, was it important to you, or was it quite difficult,

to write a novel where you did separate whatever your own opinions and your own reality from the reality of this novel and these two characters who are moving through? I mean, money has, as I'm sure Sally Rooney wrote, you know, money kind of defines your reality, but it did not feel that your hand was in that

you didn't feel heavy-handed with you telling me the reader and you must be angry, etc. Yeah, I take that as a real compliment because I do have very strong feelings. feelings about those issues. But yeah, it was really important to me that I just really hate feeling lectured to. And I think as well, this is, I kind of got a sense quite early on that this novel is going to find its readership and they're probably going to be fairly like-minded. So I just really didn't see the point in kind of wasting the reader's time by telling them things they already know.

Also, just in terms of trying to like represent people's actual lives, the reality is that most people aren't able to affect huge amounts of change by themselves. I think actually in Sally's last novel, she did a really smart thing by making one of the characters a lawyer who actually is able to kind of like participate in the conversation around renting in Dublin, which was like yet another genius move by her. And it flows so well and fits so well into the novel.

But I kind of, I knew I wanted the people that the characters in this novel to kind of like be suffering from their relative lack, of agency. So that kind of let me off the hook in some sense. But yeah, in terms of having my own political views inserted in that, I think the implication hits a lot heavier than kind of like going or kind of like delivering a long kind of speech in the middle of it where someone kind of lays out precisely what they think. I don't know. Yeah, I think it is also kind of a, not that this was really the intention, but I do, I'm kind of always amazed when like my parents' friends talk to me after like having read the novel and they're like, oh, we had like no idea that, you know, some of what

it's like to live in London is like this. And I think they think it's basically just like this huge like living in East London. It's just like this absolute like 24-7 like festival like experience where you're just like reveling all the time. And it's really not like that for most people. Obviously it's an exceptionally nice part of love to live in. But yeah, you really do pay a price for it. Yeah, I think to me it's it's more about representation than trying to then trying to kind of like deliver any final point. I like worry hugely about whether the reader is going to be entertained and kind of will enjoy, you know, the kind of scene they're currently in. And like, I work pretty hard to like make sure that every line has like something memorable or funny or if neither of those,

then like it will be advancing the story. Like I've really tried not to have any wasted space in my book. So I think I think that was kind of like an easy one to not really push forward on. I think as well that there's there's sort of yeah some of that stuff is implied and I think the more it kind of sits with you I think the way yeah the way I've kind of represented certain things about living in the city will kind of probably could only lead you in one direction in terms of my views and in terms of like not wasting space we all said of your like you were saying earlier about line by line when text is amazing we all felt that about this book like you just write so deafly and it's so impressive and I really agreed agreed with the lovely guardian review that said what makes this love story

fresh is the precise attention to the contemporary environment, the way the characters live both in and out of the physical world. And it's interesting to me because I sometimes find it quite draining or difficult when books bring the internet or phones in too much because I spend so much time on my phone that when I'm then in a novel, I'm like, please don't make me go on my phone. But I really didn't feel that reading this book. And I think that is a really incredible skill to be able to kind of manage the absolute truth that we are all on our phones all of the time. But you didn't make it kind of clunky or jarring, which I think actually is an incredible feat. Was that something that you found complicated or really had to think about or were you just

naturally brilliant? Thank you for the compliment. Yeah, I always knew, again, I always knew that I wanted the, this sort of like internet use and sort of mobile phone app use. I always wanted to be kind of like in service of the characters or the plot and to be kind of advancing things some way. So I wasn't going to kind of like ambiently just keep falling back on the presence of the phone. Also, yeah, again, that's another thing where like I think everyone's pretty much aligned by now that like, okay, we all know that like phone use is like absolutely just destroying our brains, but we all just do it anyway. So I didn't really have anything particularly original to say that other than, and I think like originality is one of the big things I try and go for where it's like if I can see something about the way people engage with

the devices that I haven't seen in a novel before, that is kind of the sign that it's like worth moving into. I try and keep the line between phone use and kind of dialogue pretty fluid. Like I like to just kind of treat the phone like it's just another character and the way in which characters interact through the phone like it's just regular dialogue because I think by now there's real slippage between people's even sense. You know, like I'll have conversations with people And I'm like, I'm not sure if I spoke to you about this as a message or like in person. It's now just so the same thing. Yeah, it's funny.

One thing I think about a lot as well is like older novels, they'll spend a lot of time talking about architecture. Like I'm particularly like 19th, 20th century, early 20th century novels. Architecture was like a big theme because that was where a lot of the innovation was. And it was like quite exciting to see how different economic periods, cultural periods, were kind of affecting the houses people lived in and kind of like the big country houses people went to visit. There's not a, there is a big country house people go to visit in my novel, but other than that, I like to think that kind of like digital architecture has kind of taken

the place of that. So I spend very little time describing places because I think that gets quite tiresome and everyone kind of, probably what people are imagining in their heads is better than what I could present to them. And I try and repurpose some of that descriptive weight in the novel towards talking about online platforms. And I think it can just be a funny moment of recognition for the reader as well, or you're like, damn, that is literally like the exact same way that I interact with this thing. Because even though we use smartphones all the time, they are like, they're just inherently like a very isolating technology. To some extent, so is the novel. But I think the novel, like, in the novel, like, in the novel, you know,

you're in kind of like sustained, God, I'm going to use such a bizarre word here. I wish I could think of a better word, but like, I don't even want to use that word. Communion, I suppose, with like the mind of the author. Just to put everyone I use, like, that's definitely not how I actually think about it when I'm going about it. I thought you were going to say, what was I thinking you were going to say, what's it called when you go and have sex with someone in prison? Like a conjugal, is it? Yeah, I thought you were going to love to say that. I mean like a conjugal.

I don't know why I thought convenience is better than that. Definitely. It could have been worse. It could have been worse. Yeah. There's nothing conjugal about this. But yeah, I suppose like the novel as technology, you know, there's a weird sameness to the smartphone and the novel. But yeah, again, it really just comes down to like me.

stressing over whether the reader will kind of have had some experience of this themselves and whether they'll find it entertaining but that's yeah i'm really glad to hear that you did i really want to know what it was about modern dating that you felt compelled and interested and fascinated about and wanted to capture in the novel because we did an episode recently on heteropessimism and obviously it's such a polarizing time to be dating at the minute you know online dating is the trenches. You spoke about, you know, this feeling of like we're constantly talking to people, but we also feel atomized and isolated all the time. And I definitely felt that in the book that despite the fact that they're talking constantly, there's such a deep loneliness

that is, you know, going alongside both of them connecting with each other. It's so interesting to feel that and it's so poignant. So I was wondering what about modern dating do you think interests or fascinates you or you wanted to capture in the book? Funnily enough, last night I did an event. It was a speed dating event and they did it. It's called the Art Dating Club and they reached out to my publisher and I did, I like kind of helped compare the event and like told people what so. It was truly insane. Not something that I would ever have the confidence to do myself.

But I was, I was really blown away to see it. And the people who were participating in it all seemed really lovely. And I was really heartened to see people like sort of making a connection to real world. And I suppose that is a big part of why relationships are so interesting. is because they're kind of this inevitable part of your life where you are called upon to be there for someone. And I think just on a personal level, it's just really interesting to see the way people conduct themselves in relationships. Again, talking about the things that like one of the things that I'm always trying to focus on is, yeah, the things that are just like interesting to you despite like, if I'm like on the overground or something and I hear two people like having like a proper chat about like one of their relationships, I'm definitely just keeping my headphones in but not playing any music. that's just so, and I'm never going to meet these people.

I don't know these people, but it's always just involuntarily. There's just like a part of myself that is always straining to hear more about like other people's personal lives. I think it's just so interesting. I think as well, historically, the romantic comedy or romantic drama is also just a really good way to talk about larger themes and address things that are going on right now, but very specifically channeled them to through people. And I hope that doesn't, that doesn't mean that like, I think these

characters are like kind of chess pieces that I'm using to like kind of play out this like big thing that I see going on. But I think that is my personal best way of encountering. I don't even want to say social issues because like I fundamentally don't think that novels have to address any issue. I think all they have to do is be interesting. And like it's cool if someone does want to kind of like educate you or kind of like talk about something. But fun, that's not the purpose of fiction to me. That's not the purpose of reading. Reading should just be fun and interesting. but having said that, yeah, I do think it's a kind of like really good way to kind of, you know, like I would never be so bigheaded as to like write an essay about like my feelings about the

world. And actually since I've written the novel, I've had a couple of opportunities to like write for newspapers and stuff like that. And I've done a couple of nonfiction pieces and I found it like absolutely excruciating to kind of like have to sit and kind of like think about what my thoughts are about things. But I think through the novel is like, it's just a really great way to kind of engage with the world as it is, how we operate within the world as it is. And I do think novels are kind of like the best art form for representing people's internal monologue, people's psychologies. And that's kind of like where my interest lies the most. You said earlier about friends of your parents or that generation reading the book and be like,

you know, God, I just didn't realize it was that bad in the context of living in London and that economic situation. I sort of feel like there's something like this or this exact book, required reading for one a certain generation of daters and also people that just managed to, you know, got together at university missed all the online dating. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's the thing where parents go, oh, just go on, take your CV in and hope for the best. You're like, it doesn't work like that. Same with dating, I think.

It's like, what could go wrong? And you're like, well, read this person you can tell me. It's like, liminal relationships, this completely indefinable relationships, digital rejections, great and small. Not to suggest, you know, this is a totally bleak, hopeless novel on the, on the subject, not at all, but it's quite real. It's very real. You know, kind of writing this, why do you think it is that there is such a disconnect? Like, I don't think it's willful ignorance on anyone's part, but there really is,

oh, it can't be that bad. Surely there was a kind of lost generation, if I feel like, of daters. Maybe it is just, maybe it's an easy answer and it's just dating apps, but I feel like it's not that simple, especially in London. It feels like a particular case, and it's very bad. Yeah, I think one of the big things, particularly speaking to a slightly older generation that they just don't really understand, is that, yeah, what on the outside seems like an enormous liberation where people can kind of like live this like responsibility, free life, just date other similar people.

And if you're living in the city, there's enough of a group of these people that you're kind of not going to have to encounter the same person twice that often. I think rather than a kind of liberation, actually that a big part of that is a response to people's economic circumstances and people's kind of like personalities have kind of been formed backwardly from you know things like not being able to afford to have a house not being able to afford to have a family very easily and I think because of that those things now which were like really standard gate posts through which one would pass on their kind of journey into adulthood now that's kind of like this almost luxury outcome that you you can only really get if you

have your shit like exceptionally together obviously i'm i'm kind of exaggerating a bit that that's not like always the case but i think just the fact even if we can concede that like those milestones in people's lives have been just the affordability of them has been moved back you know a decade in people's lives well then what are people going to spend that decade doing you know it's half-heartedly pursuing things and kind of like being in a bit of confusion that's also not me trying to say that like there is this only one way to grow up and like you know only one way to be an adult quite the opposite it. But I do just think, given how 50, 40, even like 30 years ago, how much that was the norm, I do feel like we're living in this kind of like experimental period that not everyone has

really, I think people were sold an idea of liberation. And, you know, it is liberating on the one hand. But I think like the fact that you can just kind of be this essentially like replaceable node in other people's lives is like quite a nightmarish reality that other people don't understand. and that like if you're found to have yeah i mean not to make it all about dating apps but like well i i think probably dating apps have changed have kind of like infected people's non dating app thinking enough now as well where they know this constant alternative is always going to be out there yeah it just feels like a complete guessing game as to how you fit in other people's lives but i think people being people being completely replaceable neoliberal order of kind of the way you know like the the society we live in

is structured, I think has had a huge effect on the way in which people are replaceable in one another's lives. And I think that living through that is just like a complete nightmare. And like, yeah, to anyone out there who's like currently going through this horrifying experience, like you have my absolute sympathy. But I do recommend the art dating club based in East London because everyone there did seem really nice. So that's certainly one one viable option. I completely, we've spoken about it before this idea of like we've got this arrested development, not because we want it, but because we have no money. So I remember there was like a piece it was like, why young people not having dinner parties anymore?

And we were like, because we don't have a house. For sure. Where are we supposed to have a dinner party? No one can afford a house. And it's like everything really does come back down to that. So you're so right. It is like, it's so many different things. But part of it is the fact that our parents could buy a house on quite shitty salaries at

21, whereas we're all like in our 30s scrambling to think whether or not we'd ever be able to afford that unless you have like bank of mom and dad, rich partner or you're like the one person that's managed to make a million pounds in your friendship. So yeah, that is really hard. hard and the dating apps were all. I mean, we, we reached out to our listeners and we were asking those questions and someone was saying that like, you know, dating apps feel like ASOS for men, which is such a common conception that, you know, men just go on there, they can shop around. There's like a million gorgeous models for them to pick from. And then for women, it's like a very

different thing. Someone else just said that like, yeah, the infinite choice paralyzes us. And so you just constantly feel that way. But the avoidance, I mean, and Chuck, this is what I found so triggering is he just terminally cannot commit or name what it is. And it's something that I've seen and experience in my life and you're thinking, you want to shake him and be like, babe, now's the time. Just commit. But it does feel, and every woman that I speak to who's my age, that there is sort of an epidemic, a pandemic of men, especially in London, who simply cannot face diving into a relationship, even though it feels like that's what they want. So they sort of like microdose it with lots of other women. I found, I found Chuck very triggering to be found, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I've heard that from quite a lot of people. That's really funny, the thing about my crediting relationships. I like that. I do wonder what that is. I see that in probably about like half of my male friends, I would say, like, probably about half are kind of like in relationships now that they've been in for a long time or in like fairly new relationships, but that seem really positive. And then like, yeah, there's still, there are quite a few who are like my age who just

continue to kind of like bat away adulthood. I think it's really interesting. And yeah, I don't quite know. what to make of it. Yeah, it definitely is, as we were saying before, like a kind of reaction to this economic reality. But it is quite staggering how there's this kind of like weird complacency about being in that position. And yeah, I really don't know what it comes from. But I did really enjoy. And there were kind of like parts while I was writing a novel where like I knew this was kind of like I was kind of writing a bit of a villain in some sense. And I knew that it was going to

really annoy people. But again, in a way that I think, like, is the point of a novel, right? Like, you know, I didn't really want people to be able to kind of, like, fall asleep as they're reading it. Like, I wanted there to be some kind of like, of a caffeinating feeling like like reading someone who can be that frustrating. I also, one of the things I've really tried to do with his character as well was like, I tried to kind of like perfectly show the logic of his thinking. But you also know as you're reading it, that it's like, he's completely wrong. He's about to make, like, the exact opposite decision that he should. But we've kind of like, followed the like in a way there is this kind of like weird rigor to his logic is just that like

we can't see any of it because his kind of base assumptions about reality are so profound. I think it also has to do with this kind of addictive type behavior. Limbic capitalism is the thing I've heard people refer to it as where it's where it's basically like you you know like the phone is part of it. You kind of live in this state of like this is the name of my short story collection but the reward system of your brain is kind of like, we're so used to it kind of constantly being hijacked. People are kind of like quite willing to gamify life itself

and kind of treat everything like it's this slot machine type reality. And it's like, well, unless I can kind of like fully extract like as much immediate gratification out of this as I can, like, why would I bother doing it? And I think with that has a horrible implication for relationships because relationships do, you know, there's obviously always a pretty amazing couple of months up front where like you don't have to deal with anyone's like problems and they're probably like hiding those problems from you somewhat but then yeah you kind of have to make this decision as things go on am i going to stay with this person despite their flaws which everyone has and i think that probably speaks to the heteropessimism thing you

were speaking about earlier where it's like i think partly that heteropessimism may be coming from people being people having just kind of lost sight of how normal it is for relationships to be a little bit I don't necessarily want to say difficult, but like for sacrifice to come into relationships. And it's like you do kind of like have to exchange one thing in order to get another. And I think people are so well served in terms of like just kind of being pretty constantly entertained or like, and they might not actually feel entertained, but there are like things out there in the world that can kind of like give you this sensation of like, you know, you're, you're able to kind of experience whatever you want when you want it.

I think that has kind of like pretty bad implications for the way people treat one another. I'm just going to take this opportunity to say that the novel is funny and fun. Yeah. It's very funny. It's really funny. I really, yeah, I feel like we're getting quite heavy right now, which I really love to do. But yeah. Also, he's, Chuck is triggering, but also I could kind of, like, in destructive periods,

I could also be Chuck. So it wasn't just because I've been chucked by Chuck. He also just quickly, I just realized he kind of reminds me, is he called Chuck in the corrections, Jonathan Franzen's Chuck? Oh. I have. I love that. No, I think Chip, Chip is the character. Oh, Chip. That's like I said. He has got, they've got some like sim, that kind of like brooding. Yeah. No, I mean, I absolutely love that. That's like one of the greatest. It is. Yeah. We will assure listeners it's incredibly funny. I mean, as someone who I'm trying to write a funny novel for children at the moment or young people at the moment, I much prefer actually mining my soul and spilling my guts on like humiliating things I've done than trying to make people off. It's really, I think it's really exposing. But, um, absolutely pulls it off. It is funny.

Sorry, it really is. Thank you. Yeah, we got a bit dark there. We did get a bit dark. Cheers, cheers. We will sell the hell out of this book because we absolutely loved it. Thank you. Because we spoke about Vans and just then,

I would actually love to know who are your literary influences and who do you feel like you're pulling from in a writing. Obviously, you have your quote from Sally Rune and we've spoken about Sally Bitt, and I know that she was the one that received one of your short stories to her literary magazine. But yeah, we all loved your start of writing. It's something we all really spoke about. It's very funny. It's really a sub. It's very witty. But yeah, where do you pull from and where where do you get your great ideas? Well, that is definitely the right formation where like I do read a lot. I actually went through a period where like when my writing was worse in my

like early 20s, I wasn't reading that much and I wasn't reading very widely. So if there are people out there who are like, you know, at any stage of like their journey with like writing, trying to write, trying to get published. I would definitely say that just like reading widely is like two thirds of the job in my opinion. You have to know what's out there. I also think you have to know what the cliches are. Like you have to know what other people are saying so that you don't restate it. In terms of my influences, yeah, obviously I can't overstate enough how much of an influence Sally is. She's, I mean, probably the best living novelist. I can't, there are like vanishingly few who come to mind who are really like serious

competitors, especially who are at like this phase in their career. She's also like an exceptionally lovely person and has really, yeah, received one of my short stories when she was guest editing a literary magazine and was very generous with her with editing that and then also putting me in touch with people in publishing. It was really great. In terms of other, yeah, Franzen, I'm like an enormous fan of. And I think actually, just to go back to what we were saying about, like, the humor, I think it's lost on some people, because Franzen has this reputation as being, like, an extremely boring, like, self-indulgent, middle-aged, white guy. He, I mean, he is those last parts. Actually, I guess he is, he's kind of a bit older than. Damn. In fact, no, like, that's so

like, I'm basically middle-aged. Like, that's so terrifying that I think of things. No, we're going to live for a really long time. We're not mid-aged till we're like, we'll be like, we're basically children. Okay. People are living for, like, hundreds of years. 50 is middle age now. No, I think 60. 50's young. Oh, God. But he's extremely funny on the page.

And, like, again, he's one of those guys who's, like, pretty much every sentence is, like, trying to keep you invested and trying to make you laugh. So I really recommend his novels. The two who I kind of, like, kept going back to for this, one is Richard Yates, who wrote Revolutionary Road and Easter Parade. He, among other, like, brilliant novels, he's just so great. I love, he's a real minimalist as well. And I think I got into period earlier in my career where like I really, I loved the run on

sentence. I loved the kind of, I loved like some bizarre punctuation. And rereading Richard Yates, I was actually so struck by like how much you can deliver to someone while like not having to break that many laws of like grammar or syntax and kind of like keeping your writing. You know, just like if you're like one of the lessons I kind of took from his writing, is like if you're describing something that's really interesting, adding more words in the sentence than pretty much the bare minimum

is actually just slowing you down. And I think that's really something that I try to keep in mind. And I'm like, okay, if this is interesting enough, me kind of like inserting like brilliant bits of description, no matter how much I love them, is actually kind of like just holding the reader back from what they want to experience. I've seen some nods of recognition out there.

That's... Adding me, it's just, you know, earlier that was like this, obviously isn't a horror. just remember when it is a horror, which is when Chuck is writing. Yeah. Because I'm also working a piece twice a minute. And that is literally my fit because I have so much fun just being really flowery for hours. For sure.

I mean, yeah. I mean, the great, like, I said, okay, so there's a bit of like push and pull with this where it's like, I also don't think that everyone should write in the exact same way and should just be going for minimalism. But I think what you can pull from kind of like having a foot in both camps, which is what I try and do is it's like, if there is something that like you're so, you so. know is good and you can't bring yourself to delete, then include that. But it's just, all it means is that like those moments will really hit when you arrive at them. And I think when you read stuff, you know, when you go back and read some of your own old stuff and you're embarrassed by it, chances are that it's because you've kind of like indulged yourself a little bit too much and

kind of spent too long on some of the description. The one last writer who I want to shout out who I think people in your audience might like is a writer called Elizabeth Taylor, who was writing from the 1930s to the 1970s. She just has a bunch of novels that are just like all hit so well. She has one novel I really love called Angel, which is about an author of kind of like romance novels that are seen as a bit of a joke in the publishing industry, but they're also really successful. And she's just like this really kind of monstrous character. But Elizabeth Taylor, she's just, you get the feeling. And it's like kind of my, the thing that pulls me back into the novel form over and over again, you know, even if I've read a book, so like I haven't

enjoyed so much. It's those moments where you read something and it's like, oh, this is like describing experiences I've had like so perfectly. And she manages to do it from like having lived a life that I have very, very little in common with. But she just like her, the attention she gives to kind of like mundane human experience, it just makes everything. It's just, she's an incredibly brilliant and very funny writer. And yeah, I really recommend people check out her stuff. I mean, I've got Elizabeth Taylor around here. Something about a hotel, I think. But you know when you're just like, well, I will get to that.

Someone said that was brilliant. So, yeah, so that that's Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, I think, which is like her most well-known novel. The only thing I would say about that is like, it has this name, like that title, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, it's like, it sounds so sleepy. And like, and like, it sounds. I think that's what I thought, cozy crime, but I'm obviously mistaken. I remember that was the first one I've read of hers, and it was kind of when I was going through a little bit of a tough time. My, my mum had recommended that, actually. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to pick this up and this will be kind of like a chill.

It is really harrowing because it's about old age and kind of like not having people around you when you're old. So like I would really caution people that like she sometimes does get pretty dark. But she's, yeah, very funny. Your mum chose violence recommending that to you. She really did. Yeah, yeah. You're having a hard time. I'll make it worse.

Thank you so much for listening this week. And for all of your takes on the same. topic. Please do give us a follow at Everything is Content Pod on Instagram and TikTok and please give us a review wherever you're listening if you haven't done already. We'll see you as always on Friday. Bye. Bye.