Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - I'm Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait with Poorna Bell

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

This week's book guest is I'm Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait.Sara and Cariad are joined by award winning writer and journalist Poorna Bell to discuss family dynamics, happy endings, siblings and girls schools.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!I'm Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.This is Fine by Poorna Bell is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.You can find Poorna on Instagram: @poornabellSara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us! A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions. Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are.

Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is, I'm sorry you feel that way by Rebecca Wait. What's it about? Well, it's about a very dysfunctional family, siblings, Alice, Hannah and Michael and their mother, Celia. Crossing different generations,

we find out why Celia is the mother she is and the effect her childhood has had on her children. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, it's about a family. And all families are bloody weird. In this episode, we discuss, Happy endings, siblings, family dynamics, and girls' schools.

And joining us this week is Pornabelle. Pona is a writer and journalist who has published three non-fiction works, Chase the Rainbow in Search of Silence and Stronger, and in 2022, she published her first fiction novel to critical acclaim in case of emergency. And her brand new fiction, This Is Fine, is out and available to buy now. Welcome so much. Yeah, that's how I'm saying. Hello now. Welcome so much to the podcast. Welcome so much. I liked it. It was full of joy though.

Yeah. It's very positive. Welcome, Pornabelle to The Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going with that for her. Much more professional. Pona, you recommended that we read this book. Was it recommended to you? You read a review of it. It was everywhere for a bit, wasn't it? Was it? Yes. I didn't hear about it. Oh, it was one of those Instagram everywhere books because the cover's so good as well. I'm just following the wrong accounts. I know. So I don't know that I would have picked it up, like at an airport or in a bookshop necessarily.

And that's not for any terrible reason. It's just that I was sort of trying to figure out how to put together my own second fiction book. And I was trying to kind of look for people who were publishing in a similar space and look for what I wanted and what I didn't want. And someone recommended this book to me and said, oh, what about the book cover? I was trying to kind of figure out what the book cover was going to be and so on. And then I was alerted to it and also as it's heavily promoted as being is very close to sorrow and bliss. And I adored sorrow and bliss and I loved it. So for that reason, I picked it up.

But looking at the front cover of it, I don't know that I necessarily would have picked it up. And for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's sort of two women who I think are supposed to depict the sisters that are the twins that are in the book. just because the sort of type of fiction that I tend to read is quite weird and not actually necessarily in the genre that I tend to publish in. But the reason why I selected it, and thank you for trusting me, two things, which is number one, I had to download this on my Kindle, which is an act of desperation because I always would rather read an actual real book. But I consumed this book in about a day and a half,

and I really, there are some beautiful turn of phrases in there. There's just a lot of insight in that. And I just, yeah, and it's very unusual for me to inhale a book like that. Like, I'm still, I usually, you know, have to kind of have a book routine where I read every day before I go to bed. And very often that can be quite enforced rather than wanting to inhale something. Because reading is good in inverted commerce, is it? Yes. Yeah, I see.

Well, also, because if I was left to my own devices, I would just read, like, fairy soft porn. So I feel like I should probably broaden. I should start publishing in that space. So in terms of the book's construction, it's really interesting that it was recommended to you because in terms of how the story plays out because there's a very, very, the reason it's so compulsive is some information is withheld and given to us much later on. So we're seeing the ramifications of a family's. We're seeing a family's relationship.

We know they're reacting to big events, but we don't yet know what those events are. The reader is always slightly behind the characters of what's happened in that family. So even we begin at a funeral, we know it's a funeral, and it's a few pages till we know whose funeral it is. Yeah. And Rebecca Waite, the author, is really, really good at doing that. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we care so much and I want to know who's in the coffin. I think if you're interested in dysfunctional families. Who isn't? Who isn't interested in dysfunctional families? And also... It really, it really does catch a dysfunctional family. Who listening to this will be thinking, but my family is so functional. Not anyone who reads.

It's not anyone who's into writing or even. I don't think anyone in the world, unfortunately. I think some people don't think about it or they don't notice it. Do you know what I mean? They're not like that invested in like, but why are my family so weird? I think some people are like, no, everyone finds theirs fascinating. Everyone thinks theirs are weirder than everyone else is. I've met them and they've been like, oh, mom's mad.

She's got a bike. I tell you what, how you know your family is weird is if you don't tell people they're weird. Sometimes, though, when I try and tell people that my family are mad and then they meet them and they're like, oh my God they're amazing. I'm like, you don't know. You don't see the interior detail. And that's what I think this book does so well. It's two layers of family.

So you have the twins, Alice and Hannah, a brother Michael. And that's that sort of the most recent generation. And then we also get to understand their mother, Celia and her sister, Katie. And what has happened that made Celia become the mother she is, which has influenced the children that they are. It's basically rough hot line. It's the most incredible act of empathy from a writer. Because, I mean, she's not just a difficult mother, Celia.

No, she's toxic. I guess I would like me. Horrible. Horrible. She's not well. The title, I'm sorry you feel that way. Before I started reading, I thought it was genuine sympathy. Oh, no.

I'm sorry you feel that way. That's what my family used for not apologising. But it's passive aggression. Yeah. That's how my family get, if you have to apologize. Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I didn't intend to hurt you. You're wrong. Yeah.

You're being oversensitive. That's literally my attack me with your emotions. And it's very difficult. So she's a, yeah, she's a horrible mother. Yeah. And so it's a lot of stuff about mental health. So Celia is clearly not a great mom, very manipulative, very emotionally childish. But her sister Katie has schizophrenia, is diagnosed, has a breakdown, ends up living with

their parents up until she's an adult. So there's lots of mental health in the story. Because we go back to. to her early childhood. I actually felt sorry for Celia. That's what I was going to ask, Porn. Did you feel by the end of the book that you did like Celia? I don't know if I'd go, I think that's quite strong.

It's that strong, yeah. I wanted her to be okay. I think what you were saying about, I think that Rebecca is an incredibly gifted author. There are some characters in there that are depicted in quite an extreme way. So Michael the Brother, for me, is one of those. and Celia is for sure another. But she provides these kind of flashes of interior thought

that helps you to understand why they are the way that they are. And also, you know, Celia is a horrible, I think quite a horrible person and a horrible mother, but I can also understand what her motivations are. And there are elements of softness to her. So, for example, there are passages of where she's talking about, you know, her kids and how she felt about them, especially when they were quite little, you know, so before they kind of like came into their own personalities. And I can understand that, you know, for her, which is sometimes the case for some

people where there is such a lack of love in your life that your children then become a conduit or become an anchor, right, for that. So I could understand why when they then get older, things become so exaggerated for her. It's a really miniature tragedy that, like an unloved woman, a woman who doesn't even have friends. We know that she found it so difficult to even make a friend. A friend was a precious thing. Young children, you hang out with them constantly. They are your friends. Everything is sort of play and learning.

You are their entire world as a parent. And then they grow up and that dissipates. And the parent has to be in quite a healthy place emotionally to be able to let them go and let them do that rather than to feel it as rejection and to feel resentful of it, which Celia is not in a healthy place. And so she feels pushed away. Yeah.

I think we don't talk enough about sometimes with people. parenting that you can be a good parent at different stages. Like someone can be really good at like babies. Yeah. Like I think especially my dad like he was terrible when we were little. It was really crap. He just couldn't. It was like, what you're doing is boring.

Oh, people are uninterested. Yeah, but definitely as we got older and my brother had this more because he had more time with him as in he's four years older. I could see like, oh, you're quite a good dad late teens. Oh, or you get it now. Or you just had to desperately win your parent over this sounds like. No, I do think some people like, Like I hated the newborn bit.

I know other people who love it because they have this tiny little thing that does nothing. Which I was like, I've got a tiny little thing that does nothing. So I think that's what I think's interesting about Celia is like the danger of hanging on to the bit you were good at. So she has like you said, completely hung on to when they were children, that was the perfect bit. Rather than understanding that was one stage of childhood and they move and they become people. And she can't let them become people with Alice. She's completely controlled, manipulated here. Alice basically lives around the corner does everything her mother tells her.

And Hannah, the twin, has gone completely the other way and moved away and wants nothing to do with her and is free. So I thought, I thought you're right. What you're saying is, we saw the interior monologue. We know why Celia is doing things, but it doesn't mean that those things are nice. How she got married to her husband. Can we talk about it? This is a bit of a spoiler. If you don't, if you're one of those people who hates knowing anything.

It's fascinating. So she has one friend, Anne, this is the first woman who's ever been her friend. and has a long-term boyfriend, Paul, who comes to visit them at university. And works in a toy. Or works at a toy company. And so to begin with, Celia is jealous of their relationship because her friend has a boyfriend. And it's her friend that she's in the intimate relationship with. And, well, I thought that was so interesting that Celia has this obsession that someone has to be,

that's it, you're her friend, you don't need a, why would you need any other friends? You've got her, like that complete misunderstanding of what friendship is or how people work. Because in early childhood, having a sick sister, who then, who dominates the parents' attention, she hadn't learned how to share, she had learned intimacy, and then how to share intimacy and that it's not a zero-sum game.

You know, someone can spend time with other people. Please forgive me because I've been re-watching a lot of Buffy, the vampire slayer. But she reminds me of one of those parasites that, and I know that that's an awful word, but she's so terrified of being alone that she basically will latch on to the nearest person, even if they're maybe not a great person.

I mean, you know, her husband, any man who is in the process of buying an engagement ring for someone else and then who changes his mind and proposes to someone else's great day douchebag. Celia is choosing a ring for Anne and Celia says, marry me, don't marry her. And he goes, okay. Yeah. But that's what she reminds me of.

She reminds me of someone who is, and I'm fat, I know we might get into it later, but someone who struggles with connections so much and cannot really make friends. So the glimmer of opportunity or the softness in another person, she just like latches onto them and just doesn't want to let go. She uses a phrase, doesn't she, which I thought was, that scene is brilliant when they're choosing the ring. And Rebecca, Watt uses the phrase, like, she wasn't going to let this one go. Like, this was the one thing she would fight for, because she could see there's a life here. I can marry this person.

I can have kids, I can somehow make her life, even though he doesn't love me. Yeah, it wasn't, it's not about love or how he makes her feel. She's, it's theft. It's a parasite stealing someone else's proposal, partner, future. Oh, my God. But also, again, why it's such good writing is it was believable. Because she describes Paul as he's malleable. He's someone who, he knows he doesn't have enough of a person.

He needs someone to say who he is, and that's what lovely Anne has been doing. And she's lovely. And then someone comes along like a big, like, cuckoo and it's just like, I'm going to take you. Like, oh, it's like horrible. Paul's weakness is drawn really well. Yeah, yes, yes. Celia does this thing. It's a success in Verticomers.

She gets the man. She gets the children. And it's miserable. It's horrible. She has no connection with him. He has no connection with his kids. He's not great. He leaves them.

And you're like, what did you win? She won children. But even they constantly disappoint her and don't fulfill apart from Michael the son. This was one of my favorite details, that they have to move to a smaller house after divorce. There are two bedrooms for the kids, one massive, one small, and she makes the two girls have a bunk bed in the small room. And even though Michael has gone to university, that room is kept. And I was like, that sums up that mother for me completely. But that's what happened in my family as well.

So Cheryl and I shared a room, even though we were the eldest. And Christina, the youngest, had the big room by herself. Sometimes parents just have favour of them. they just have a preference and they don't care that you know about it Hannah says to her dad I know I'm the favourite like she knows the beginning

As I was saying I saw your face You were like no this year I'll been there Pona you've re-read it before the podcast so I imagine it's one of those books Did you find different things in it The second reading

What I would say about this book Is that even though you really want to know What happens And you're not told everything And it unfolds as you go along is that it didn't do that thing where I skipped stuff because I wanted to find out what was happening. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because I think, and I think that that to me is actually down to the quality of the writing and,

and I, because there are plenty of other books that I have for sure done that with, right? Yeah. But in this case, you know, also because the revelations in this book are softer. They're not, you know, nothing sort of, there are no real spoilers that if you were to reread it would impact your enjoyment of it. I think what I noticed on the second read were just some of the themes were a bit more pronounced. And so, and definitely some of the sort of turns of phrase in there, I just actually got to enjoy how beautiful some of those were and those observations. Because they're so detailed and they're so, I just want to know how she wrote it and I want to know the secret magic to it. Jokes, the wrong footing.

Yeah, it's very funny. It's really wonderful in terms of. So I'm going to pick a joke from. her sister arriving at the funeral. The funeral is so funny. This is Hannah. She lowers her voice. So, where is she?

Alice says, in the coffin at the front, they already brought her in. Hannah gives a sharp laugh. I meant our mother. Don't get my hopes up. So good, I know. It's so great. And also in terms of, so it's a joke that is drawing character. Yeah.

That is told third person. Yeah. The construct, the way that everything is constructed so that you're never on solid ground. So you're getting information while also having the rug pulled away from under feet. It's so clever. That funeral, another bit where she, so poor Alice is so nervous about getting the funeral right. And the guy turns up with the food.

And like she says, oh, he's really cheerful. Alice appreciates this. And his name on the website is James, but he asks her to call him Jimmy, which touches Alice, whilst also making her too shy to call him anything at all. Yeah. Immediately I know who Alice is. She can't even bring herself to say Jimmy because she's already made up in her head. He was James.

and now it's too much. On page four, this is when not only did I know who Alice is, I fell in love with her because she's a little bit like all of us, I think. So Alice watches him go. She's been thrown into one of her spirals of self-recrimination and spends the next few minutes trying to retrace her conversational steps with the woman in the blazer to decide what she should have done differently. It's a woman who's at the wrong funeral.

She doesn't realise until the end of the conversation. It seems likely that this will become one of those shame memories that haunts her in the middle of the night. It's an all human beings thing and we think it's a weird thing about us until we read someone writing and go oh it's human beings and when I got to the bit

where the man is giving the speech at the funeral then I was like oh I'm going to love this book yeah the drunk man who it turns out might not even have known auntie Katie it's so funny I love humour that comes from characters and I think she does that really well of like the jokes are often just people play

like that scene in the cafe where the pay they're trying to order all the pastries and her brother keeps getting eye rate that they bought the wrong pastry. Again, his reaction to something is funny. And the way that families are of, like, oh, the bit that killed me was when Michael, there's a bomb explosion on Michael's road, and he says, gosh, it could have been me on telly after he's interviewed, and his sister's teasing him for years.

That is such a sibling. That is such a sibling thing. Could have been you, Michael, you again. And I felt, I was like, of course Michael said that he was in shock, but his sisters are like, you fucking idiot. like just destroying him for years. And I love Hannah brings out right at the end, doesn't it? Like, oh, it could have been Michael and Alice, a bit where Alice is like, not today.

Like the sibling teasing, understanding and also the want, how much Alice wants Hannah to like her. And she doesn't like her. Her twin sister doesn't like her? And Alice says to Hannah, doesn't she? Like, did you ever not want to be a twin? And Hannah's like, I don't think of myself as a twin. And it's like, oh, you don't even consider me. You're like, you've removed even that.

Like, I was like, oh, Alice. like they potentially would have been closer had they had their characters not been etched when they were much younger as you know Hannah being the bad one and or the spirited one and it's horrible isn't it that troublesome because also to your point you know Alice when she goes to university doesn't have a problem and as an adult doesn't have a problem making friends did you find though that so this is the bit that I found really hard to read was that um the description of when they went to an all girl school and the bullying that Alice experiences and I was like that is what it's like Did you go to all girls?

I did go to an old girl school. And I was just like, oh, yes. They do, they isolate like, or there's usually a bully. They then isolate one person. They then get everyone else to, you know, that sort of, that constant noticing and pointing out and joke making. And I just thought, did this happen to someone that Rebecca knows? Because it was very accurate.

Oh, I see. Yeah. And it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of whatever it is that someone's saying, about you. I mean, this didn't happen to me, so I saw it happen to other girls and whatever they're saying about you isn't true, but it then becomes true. I didn't go to an all girls school, but my experience of friends who did is always like, oh, it's a, it's hideous. And I speak to so many parents who were like, oh yes, we want them to all girls because you know, girls do so much better in that environment, education. Statistically, girls always have higher exam grades. And I'm always like, what about the horrible stories about the horrible girls? I thought the

statistics have changed. They probably have these. days. That's the old myth, isn't it? The old myth was that girls wouldn't be distracted by boys in inverted commas. I think it's much more about parents worrying about boys. Girls just do better than boys, where are they? And my experience, having mixed primary, mixed secondary school and then get to university, and the ones who've been at all girls' school went nuts. And those who've been around boys for all that time were like, they're very annoying.

Yeah. Well, also, the idea that I went to both a Catholic school and a, uh, all girls grammar school. It is, boys are the only thing you are thinking about all the time, but like in deranged ways. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So it's not like just because they're not physically there, that you're not thinking about them.

Yeah. I find that hilarious. Because if they're in the classroom with you and they smell so bad and then they do fart jokes and they fart on each other's heads or they fart into a bag and then they put the person's head in there. Yeah, there's some funny stuff. They're so gross as teenagers and I think that's, the sheen is gone. Also, the misunderstanding I think is that girls might put makeup on for boys at school.

No! You know, it's for the other girls. You know, if there's hair stuff, if there's fashion stuff going around and it seems that the teenage girls are interested in those, it's not because they want to look nice for teenage boys. No. It's for the older men. It's for the teachers. No, no, no.

It's for other girls and it's because it's fun and it's because it's self-expression and all those kind of things. Or you feel cool, but yeah, it's very rarely to attract a teenage boy in your class. as much at an all-girls school. Yeah, and that's what I found when I got to uni and the girls who'd been at all-girls schools were like, yeah, there'd be boys there, right? They'd be boys there. And I was like, what is this?

Yeah, they will be. Or they brag about having had a mixed disco. Can I talk about the ending? Yes. Yeah, is that okay with everybody? I cried in the way here, rereading the ending. Did you? Yeah, I find it so moving.

I didn't like the ending. Oh, good. She goes again. She goes again. Carrie doesn't like an ending. I felt like the characters were so, complex the whole way through and the family dynamic was so way through I felt like she didn't give them a complex ending and I felt it like it was tied up and I was a bit surprised that that mother

is still involved in all three of those children's lives oh that's nice it's very very difficult to not have a parent in your lives unless they do something much bigger than what celia's done oh I disagree with that I disagree with that yeah because I think the small thing she's done throughout their life that have made Hannah like the way Hannah speaks to her she has tried to has had big, huge chunks without her sister and her mum in her life. The actual line that Rebecca chooses to use the end of book on it, so you don't know whether Hannah says yes or no to going to have food with her mother. Oh, that's interesting. But she does say to you, oh, but what's, it's a suggestive positivity. No, but she suggests that future thing when she's like, and Hannah has a baby

and Mike's there, and the grandma's there with the baby in the lap, and I was like, she makes everything okay. I think, I think she has to. I think what she just gives you as an ending is actually such a pathetically small amount to be positive about. But with family, sometimes that's enough. That's why I found it so emotional. And it's your parent, and probably you're going to be content with some little crumbs as a positive. That's interesting. I would say that it's not that I didn't like the ending. I just, I wanted more. And I think to your point, Carriad, I felt like we had learned so much about them that yeah I did because I thought well how would Celia have been at Alice's wedding and all of this stuff but then I thought well maybe we don't need to see the detail of that because

maybe seeing the detail of that we'd just raise more questions and make it sort of very unwieldy so or be depressing or depressing real life is depressing I'm okay with that I'm okay yeah I do have to stop a book somewhere I completely see what you're saying so about families that that that can happen so my parents weren't in the same room for like 15 years and then when my sister's got married, they just found this reprieve. They just suddenly were like, my dad asked my mum to dance at Cheryl's wedding.

He told, she told him to fuck off. And then she told everyone, she wanted to get back with me. And it was a moment for me where I was like, sometimes it could be real life. And if you write that, that's a story. And you would go, that's not realistic. But it's like, yeah, suddenly you're in the same room,

time really does change things. I think Celia's, I think sometimes, it's slightly because I felt like she really did go into the toxicity of Celia as a mother. and having what she had done to Hannah and Alice of that complete undermining your entire life of nothing is good enough, nothing will ever be good enough. And I felt slightly like I was like, wow, you know.

So I don't think that I was looking for the resolution from Celia because I think I'd sort of made my piece with the fact that she's just not going to change and this is who she is. I think what I would have really wanted to see was actually Alice asserting herself. And that's the thing that was missing for me where I wanted Alice to have her, Because she has like one line that she says to her mother about, oh, everything's not about you when her mother sort of turns up to this party

unannounced and it causes this whole kerfuffle between her and, between Alice and Hannah. But I wanted her to have more of a say. I wanted to know that she's created more of a boundary because actually I found Alice's relationship with her mother so stressful. Yeah, so stressful. I just wanted to say, just stop. Like, because Hannah does say it to her, you know, in terms of her being so amesh.

that's what I wanted to see. What I think is so well drawn by the author is doctors gave her daughter a diagnosis and she heard a different answer in her head. She assumed, because schizophrenia runs in families, that the doctor was, when Hannah confronts her about it, that the doctors were wrong. They don't know if you've got schizophrenia or not.

And Hannah says to have like, well, so who decides? You decide. I can see Hannah, I can see as a person in Hannah's situation going, this person can't be in my life. I'm not going to have her with my babies and be it, Michael's, like, baby's christening. That slightly, it felt to me like that plot line got dropped slightly

because I was like, the Hannah, we know. And actually I wanted Hannah, Alice, I can believe never confronting her mother. I can believe, like, maybe she never gets it. Or just that the battles are really small. But I thought Hannah, everything we've learned from Hannah, she's not hanging out with her mum after that. It felt to me like an author really trying to say

there will be moments that are positive. Yes. That this character doesn't know of now. I think if we're really, books for entertainment, which we are, it's all right for them to be slightly better than life is. Totally, but what she'd promised... Or everyone would stop reading even more than they had.

But what she'd promised with the character of Hannah wasn't that? That's what I think, the character of Hannah was so well drawn and so brilliant that I was like, I don't believe that character would accept that as an answer about her mother. Do you think, though, because I felt that there was a slight softening in Hannah towards the end? Yes, that's true. So, for example, when Alice, which was very proud of her, doesn't apologise. Yeah. And, you know, Hannah kind of finally admits that,

because Hannah's character by any means is not the kindest throughout the hair points. No, not at all. She's mean. Yeah. Yeah. But when Hannah kind of finally admits that, yeah, actually maybe, you know, she overreacted or whatever. And I kind of felt that the sort of the ending of it, not the epilogue, but the ending of it where she might be agreeing to dinner with her mother actually was part of that soft. Because I think that to your point, Sarah, I get the, and that felt more real to me,

whereas with, you know, with families, it is sometimes less dramatic and you acknowledge that your parents are deeply flawed. And I think that I definitely got that understanding from Hannah that she understood that her mother is deeply flawed. And also that maybe her mother's definition of her doesn't have to be something that she holds on to all the time because, you know, it's heavy. It's like a very heavy thing to carry. And I think that description of Celia towards the end of her is this like very worried kind of like old lady, really. I think you sort of see her as an old lady at the end. And I think Alice remarks of, you know, she doesn't ever remember seeing her mother look that old or something like that.

I felt that that's where things sort of started to turn. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You're very diplomatic saying we're both a bit right. Absolutely. Another very, very well-observed thing is that your fear that your parents will one day die does make you forgive stuff that they've done. Like the ageing process, you know, it doesn't outweigh or forgive the things that Celia has

done, but it might add for a softness of, you know, including them in huge family events or letting them hold your baby. I didn't feel like the author was trying to make me forget what the character had done. It was that despite all of that, with all of those flaws, with all of the history of it, families still then do get together for celebration. It's why Christmas is so shit. because it's that moment and actually that's what would happen

if you spend all day there with the comments and the sniping and they just get free today I know that kind of thing I think it's a really well written book to write about what she's writing about and be funny sometimes it reminds me a peep show

there's a peep show reference in it yeah there is a peep show Rebecca must like peep show because there's a moment that we can put pizza through the letterbox yeah there was another bit when Michael was talking and I was like that sounds like Mark Corrigan

and it had that obviously much more writerly version and sort of fictionalized version. But yeah, it's, it's, I really enjoyed it. Thank, like, thank you. Because I, it was one that I was like, oh, yeah, I should get around to. And I definitely recommend it. I'd highly recommend it. It was only that tiny bit. I was like, hmm. I never ever assume I've got any power. What do I mean? As a reader, I absolutely take the author as God. I should think it's why it annoys me when books aren't quite good enough. Because I'm like, but you're God right now. But I feel like it's like talking, it's like having a conversation with someone. You're like, yes, I agree with it. What? Why did you do that? I feel like Hannah's friend. You went to the christening. Why? Why did you go there, Hannah? Like, what happened? What did you

do? I think this is still an author's dream. Yeah, they still talk about it. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did enough to debate it rather than just going, oh, I didn't, I didn't finish it or whatever. Yes. You know, um, and also, I don't know that you can win. I think that sort of with my first fiction, I had people say, oh, well, why didn't so and so end up together and why wasn't neatly tied off in a bow? Yeah, exactly. And with my second one, it was like, oh, oh, oh, it might be slightly too, too, neatly to get off of her own. I was like you just you just have to do I think Rebecca I think wrote the ending that would make most sense yeah yeah um without sort of having to like labor it but also you know sort of not to get too meta about it you never really know what's going on behind the scenes in

terms of what the publisher wants from it. I know you that's yeah that's true because yeah something like that you do go was that an editor going it's whenever I watch how uh the book writing process or journalism is depicted specifically in an American show. and I'm like, I don't know that that's what it's like. It's really interesting, and I hope Rebecca Waite would be happy that we're still discussing it, I'm sure, because I felt like I knew them. And I ask what your new novel is about. Yes.

So my new novel, it's called This Is Fine. It is about families. But it is about a woman in her late 30s who's in a very long-term relationship with her boyfriend and they reached this sort of crisis point because her boyfriend really wants kids and she doesn't. And at the same time, she's got quite in a strange relationship with her younger sister who lives in this, you know, really posh, like Wimbledon Townhouse and has a 16-year-old. And her niece, the 16-year-old, sort of also reaches her own crisis point. And basically, the sister suggests, can the two of them go away for the summer? So kind of to remove her from, like, bad influences and take her away from London.

And both of them very reluctantly do this. and during that sort of period of them trying to kind of mesh their lives together my main character, Padma, kind of figures out some stuff around whether or not she wants to be in this relationship like, are you okay with putting up with the bare minimum? Also, one of the things is they had,

so the two sisters have a alcoholic mother who died when they were both quite young, sort of like early 20s. And the thing that I really wanted to look at, which does actually have overtones with this book, is when you are going through the same things as a family and how you interpret and remember things differently and how that actually shapes who you are as a person. So that is something that I really wanted to kind of unravel in that. And I think that's one of the things that makes sibling relationships so complex because you have the same childhood, but you didn't have the same childhood.

Also protective roles. So my main character is the older sibling and her younger sister not realizing, like how much she did and how much she shielded and how that's also come at the expense of certain things in her own life, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So that's something I really kind of wanted to explore in it. Well, we can't wait to read it.

Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. And I'm sorry you feel that way. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. This is Fine. He's Out now. Sarah's novel Weirdo and my book, You Are Not Alone, are both out on Paperback. and you can buy them now. You can find out all about the upcoming books

we're going to be discussing on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.