Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Intermezzo by Sally Rooney with Aisling Bea

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

This week's book guest is Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.Sadly James Joyce and Michael Fassbender were not available to chat so Sara and Cariad are joined by Ireland's premier Bono impersonator, writer and star of This Way Up, Living With Yourself and Get Away - it's Aisling Bea!In this episode they discuss sex scenes, James Joyce, Dublin, Maeve Binchy and life's winners.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Intermezzo is available to buy here.You can find Aisling on Instagram @weemissbeaCariad’s children's book The Christmas Wish-tastrophe is available to buy now.Sara’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.Tickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukFollow 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.

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 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. What's it about? Grieving brothers and their complicated love lives. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, there's a lot of chess.

Does Sarah being mean about chess people? What? As if they're weirdos. No, I'm not. It's weird to have a book. There's loads of chess in it. Intermezzo is a... And there's not a chess book.

Intermezzo is a chess move which I didn't, I wanted to bring up, but I didn't get a chance. Say it with your chess. In this episode, we discuss. Sex scenes. Maeve Binchie. Diblings. James Joyce. Dublin.

And life's winners. And joining us this week is Ashling B. Ashley, what will people know you from? Well, they probably wouldn't know me from my modelling, but they should because it's behind a paywall. This way up series one and two. Only available on Ony fans, but also Channel 4 on Demand and Hulu in America. and Canal Blues in France. You've got loads of movies out?

Oh, Get Away is a Nick Frost movie like comedy horror that's out on Sky Cinema on the 10th of January. It's very funny. It's got myself, Nick, Maisie Ayers, who's a new up-and-coming actress and is brilliant. And Sebastian Croft, who's my pure and utter angel baby and is a heartstopper. And on Netflix, you got loads of stuff. Oh, God, I suppose I'll call on QI with you or something, isn't it? No, we've all been on a QI. You've got the one where you're two, he's two guys.

Oh, living with yourself with Paul Rod. Oh, yeah, yeah. One were yourself with two guys. The one you did before Rudd. Very apt. Your brain word very quickly and that is literally it. And people can catch you live doing stand-up. Doing stand-up, yes, exactly.

Where can they follow you? They can follow me. Ideally not back to my house, Gowryan. That's my private space. But on Instagram and that I'm dabbling with leaving Twitter, I think we all are. But on Instagram at we miss B. Ashley, Big. It's me.

Hi. I'm mostly at the problem. It's me. Is it, Aschling, you're looking for? Yes. And I'm here, guys. I turned up at the allocated time. Yeah, you did.

So I'm here. Ashling Bee is here. I don't know what's happening. Ashling bees are guests. Ashley's B. Sorry, Sarah. It felt like you had an introduction that just crashed it. Because sometimes we say to people, so what brought you to this book?

But I think it's the opposite way around with this, where we knew we were going to have to talk about the new Sally Rooney. Have to talk about Rooney. And then we were like, who will we talk about it with before we've read it? What equal Irish legend should we talk about Rooney? And Michael Fassbender was not available today. He was not available. And James Joyce is dead.

James Joyce is dead. Ashling Bay. I am so happy to hoover up all of their work when they are not available. Does that happen too a lot? Is James Joyce? Should we get Ashling on? Because he's no longer. He has a special day. Bono's penciled.

Oh no, sorry. I can't make it guys. would love to talk about the new Sally Rune. Firstly, have you read the other Sally Rooney? Yes, of course, I am. All of them? If you want to get your passport renewed, you have to read all of Sally Rooney.

Do you consider yourself, because there are some people who violently really, really hate her writing. So are you someone in the camp of like or the camp of don't mind? If you read all of them, you must like. Yes, I adore her work. And the idea of violently hating to me is like that the violence comes from being annoyed at someone's success. It does. Agreed. And rather than, and you're like, oh, it's art.

Like, it wasn't made for you if you don't like it. You know that Beyonce is sorry and not sorry. Like, I didn't make it for you. You're fine. Because of her success. I think it's a thing about the literary world that definitely exists from my outside knowledge of it. It exists a small bit in comedy and acting, I think. But the idea of I don't think you deserve that success.

I don't understand it. I didn't have it from, and you seem to have it easily and young, which always sits badly with me because we all have that inside of us. I was thinking about it with books. I was thinking when people have it, say like cold play. Some people finally dislike cold play. I love cold play.

But with music, you don't choose when it's on. You might walk into a shop. It's playing yellow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then you go, oh, I need to go outside. They're playing cold play. But no one is ever reading a book out loud, didn't you? Yeah.

On the tube. And you're like, oh, God, I don't want to. Connell took his chain off. Oh, you're not supposed to read them out like. Well, that does change things slightly. Yeah. Why I got all those looks. Can I tell you why this book makes me so happy before we talk about this book?

Yes. It's because it's being so widely read and it is not an easy book. No. It's quite a stylized writing style and it gives me so much happiness that so many people are willing to read difficult books. Yes. But it's not just because of Rune. For the love of Rune. For the love of Rune.

Sally, for being part of a cultural movement. It's not Harry Potter. No. I definitely find my brain, and this is so the most like a run-of-the-mill opinion that everyone has in the world. But my brain, with Instagram and social media and my phone, and it's not like a baby brain. I've had this problem for a few years, really, and lights and the way everything's attention-grabbing, it's so much harder to read a book. And I devour books, I think the three of us are bookworms, and I love it.

And when some bit of paper takes me away enough to put. push through stuff my brain is happy for it my brain wants to do the work it's like when you kind of sit around all the time then you find an exercise that you actually enjoy doing it's still exercise but you enjoy it your body's thanking you for it yeah when you eat something very nourishing yes and your body's like oh that's a little oh that's good for me that is yeah yeah yeah now it would have been easier to have a cheese sandwich yeah but that you pushed through and that's what my brain was thanking me for was pushing through intermezzo and again that sounds like a backhand compliment because I really did adore it sounds like a compliment for the first

hundred pages, I thought, okay, it's broken my brain because I was finding some of the sentences so hard. And very different, especially, like, so the last one that people really were quite hard on her, beautiful world. Because after such huge success, I think that people wanted to round on her. I also loved it. We loved it. We were like the alone. Everyone was moaning about it. It means her like, also, I think even, even I liked the stuff that she was researching that she is a person who's clearly interested in, but also the idea of being so successful and trying to hide from it, Not that any of us are necessarily successful in books as Sally Rooney is, but that's something quite fascinating.

I also love the idea as an artist and I think we all get like, I definitely, oh my God, when people are mean about the stuff that you've made and they've loved something else of yours, you feel like a failure towards the critic or the audience. But like that is the process of being an artist, that you go and you make stuff and some of it people will like and adore and some of it won't. And the idea of trying to keep up or they have a preference. or they have a preference or something hits in a way,

like something like normal people, which then bled out into the world, which launched the two of the careers of two biggest young actors at the moment. And then you're following up with another bit of art. I love that she, in a very short amount of time, has pursued four books that all fit within a voice. And they are, they're different,

but they're all from the same voice. And to make a canon of work, never mind the TV show, just has four books that never made it to TV are a really impressive body of work that fit within a voice that she has and I would pick it up and know it was her.

And that is very... I watched an interview with her before I think I even knew I was doing this with you guys and it was all about like she doesn't see the need to suddenly do like and now we're on an action movie or we're on a planet far away

that this is all sits in within the same part of kind of sits adjacent to the same part of Dublin. I went to university at Trinity in Dublin and it's all kind of comes out from a lot of the locations come out from the bicycle wheel spokes of that being the sort of seen as the centre of Dublin, which is where she went to university.

And I sort of love that she's milking and squeezing all the juice out of an area that she knows really well. Like all of us do that. Like we do that with our stand-up as in work. We're not suddenly going, hey, boyfriends and children, oh, what's the deal with geography?

I mean, actually, Sarah, probably do lots of things about geography. That's an example. I'm like, I milk my life, my relationships, and that's my stand-up for the last. 15 years, especially I think as an Irish person and knowing, like, I'm probably about 10, 15 years older than her and like, but I really know the location and culture that she's referring to, even like Kildare where one of the characters, once we start talking about it, is from.

Like, that's where I'm from. I know the roots. I know the trains they're getting. I know. And it's really visceral. And that's the same in all of the books. So look, it's about two brothers, this one, which again, unusual for her to have like two male figures. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his 30s and then Ivan is a 22-year-old competitive chess player and we follow them just after their father has died kind of a couple of weeks after the funeral

and we're following Peter is in sort of two relationships with two different women one is a very, his sort of first love girlfriend, Sylvia, who's had an accident and he's not really with her but they're still involved in each other's lives. And they have similar jobs. Yeah, she's an academic. Their peers, they're equals.

And then Naomi is much younger and a college student. Ivan has sort of not had a girlfriend, it seems, and meets Margaret, who's an older woman. And that's really the world. Yeah, she's really old as well. She's an old hag. Yeah, she's like 36. When I was reading that, it was like, yeah. Yeah, so that's the world we set.

And as you said, it's sort of set between mainly in Dublin and then we go to slightly few other places with these two brothers. Lots of chess. Lots of chess and sex. She's done well to make chess. It's like for the horny nerds, baby. Lots of fingering. Oh yeah in both games

I'm always here to promote Rook to Bish for So yeah So Ashley What did you think of What was your general take on it I was incredibly moved By the book as a whole

I think I'm sorry to say whole After we mentioned fingering Because with rain still in both camps But I really was Incredibly moved by it I think what Sally Rooney does is our jobs as comedians and actors

is always try and find the most outwardly interesting people and that's what we all sell for living we're like are you interesting outwardly and that's what you see on TV and all of I said what we're supposed to be doing but you're kind of like hey guys you should listen to me

I've got like a personality that's on the surface and what Sally Rooney does is take people that are sort of maybe outwardly boring in the community. Normal people. Normal people. And they're people too guys. And they're having conversations with their friends. Oh, what a beautiful world. All of her books are spelling out a sentence. Oh my God, you can imagine. From the Bible. This book is full of nick sentences. So maybe that is what she's doing. Yeah, that's right. It's a whole ploy. But she gets involved in people

that you might not necessarily find interesting from the outwords and shows and displays and investigates their inner worlds as if they should be leading people. And then that's what happened with normal people, the TV show. They made megastars out of these people had so much inner lives going on. And everyone in this, I'm not sure

I would have looked at if I was just walking by these characters and met them in the street. And she goes in and talks about their innermost feelings and it's just a really beautiful investigation of what it is to be human in a life that just moves on and has ups and downs

but doesn't end up anywhere her dramatic. And I think there's a lot of, I think, in terms of the history of female writers and particularly female Irish writers, like Maeve Binchie, who was, you know, 40 years before Sally Rooney and I suppose all of us who write for living in our Irish walk in the wake of Mae Binchie's world because she gave women lives that were worth having books about at a time when women weren't allowed so many rights and stuff like that. And for me, the investigation, and Colm Thubin does this as well. Well, investigating, and I know here it's two brothers, which is very different, but investigating the small minutia of people's lives, I absolutely love it. And I feel like that's the only drama some people are allowed to have access to is their inner lives and the domestic part of their lives and their relationships. And I just love that that's given a platform. And so with this, the two brothers, also the fact that she's, she has had male leads, maybe through a female voice. I think everyone can write every type of background and everything.

But maybe giving a woman's perspective on the male's inner journey gave it so much more softness and resonance or something like that. It allowed it to explore it. Someone did argue that it, I've just read a thing saying it argues that it can't be accused of being autobiographical, which is what she gets accused of. Are you just writing about you and your mates? Yeah. That in this choice to make these two men. What a great thing to be accused of. I know.

Exactly. What I thought was so intriguing was literally a woman trying to make sense of men. trying to make sense of men. How do I make men still good when I know they still do these things? That's why I felt that she had to create such inner life for them because she had to make me believe as a reader that they were good people despite doing that.

I don't think she had to make them believe that they were good people. I think that it's almost like... I think she was allowing them... Because I thought it was more allowing the conversation expand and just be there that this exists, let's explore it, in the mess so it's not always like I'm going to go in here and use this person it's the mess of using in the

and that they were both engaging it. What I would love to have seen would have been the only inner life we get from a female point of view is Margaret's and I would have loved to have seen Naomi's. We got snippets of it from her dialogue same with her and Sylvia. But we never get in full Namy or Sylvia.

It's almost like I want the next book to be them. It made Naomi and Sylvia feel slightly to me like, but they were a bit perfect to Sylvia was a bit perfect. I actually thought everyone was a bit too perfect. No one ever went to the toilet. There's all these bed scenes.

No one farts. No one's disgusting. He's having to clear up after Naomi when she's living in his house. Having cleaned up after people, everyone's always got nice breath. It's always minty. Do you think that's because if she's writing from a male point of view, they care less? Like that. You know what I mean?

That's not what they see and it's from their POV. Yeah. Definitely, I think because of Peter's point of view, that's why. That's what we see. Sylvia and Naomi aren't fully rounded because they're both what they represent to him but they are, all of the men are so beautiful. She describes all the time the beauty of Margaret, Naomi, Sylvia.

They're just this incredibly beautiful women. Not all women are beautiful and that isn't our main sense of worth. That's not something I can understand. So that's why I really connected to those characters. She understands women so well. And I miss there not being that kind of, because I think in all the other books, when there's always a woman that you just like love hearing from.

And you're like, yes, I know you and I love you. And I did love hearing from Margaret. I was always like I wanted to hear Margaret's life. And I felt like I wanted a bit more from Margaret, a bit more from Naomi, bit more from Sylvia. And yeah, I found, I did think once you get into like her music, like your head drops in and it's amazing. Like she is absolutely amazing. I think it's the most jazzy of her writing she's had so far. Yeah, it's definitely.

It's definitely. It's definitely. But, yeah. Which, you know, makes sense for chess. And my problem definitely was towards the end. And we don't like to see spoilers, but I thought there was a couple of moves towards the end that I laughed out loud that she was attempting.

And I was like... In terms of trying to make it happy. Plot, no, plot. It's almost soap opera towards the end, but written in like Ulysses. So there's nothing wrong with that. But I felt like with her other book, she's never had to kind of...

I've never had a moment where I'm like, what? They're doing, they're meeting, what? Like bumping into each other types of plot moments. They're bumping twice. Yeah, yeah. There's twice bumping into each other. Normally her book is kind of just like full

and the characters like you said, it's just this minutia and they kind of organic. It sort of just happens. And this felt very plotted to me. And I read another thing saying, oh, it's very funny. And I have to say, I didn't, I didn't find it funny. Definitely don't find it funny.

People were like, oh, hilarious. And I was like, oh. I did love, though, back to Sarah's point about explaining men and maybe this is why, I grew up in an all female environment, as you know, and you guys did in your own ways as well. I loved that part about it, even someone trying to explain.

in almost like female language, the inner life of these men who I suppose were close to the men I grew up with and there's this lovely Irish book called The Spinning Wheel and for the love of God I can't remember who the Irish author was of it

and they're kind of connecting almost felt like short stories but they're connecting narratives and there's just one moment where the sort of kind of man kind of starts to have it like he has a wife and he takes a wife and then he says something along the lines

and I can't remember the quote but like God it's great having a wife like you can do all sorts of soft things you can't do with your male friends like the other day we went to a play a play God it was great like people were coming in and saying things and it's all these soft things you're going to

and I just loved that sounded so like Ardlo Hamler Oh really yeah there was an element of it being like a really deep version of Dougal Father Dougal from Father Ted that was really gorgeous to me in like allowing the softness of men

And like with this, this character isn't just Irish, he's second generation Polish, which is a whole new community in Ireland. So those things, especially if you're reading it as an Irish person, have a bit more weight in terms of like him even talking about his dad coming over as an immigrant. And I would know what age group and what years that kind of happened to Ireland culturally. And to come from like a Polish Irish background, which is very like don't speak about your feelings to have all of this like slow revelation of Peter. one of the older brother's inner sadness and how the other brother as a teenage boy didn't see or read it. That really felt so

that hit really hard and it was almost like worth the slower bits because I felt like that was the jewel in it all. That's the thing with really like that bit when Ivan realizes how he has let his brother down. Perfection. It was amazing. And you do have to create a lot of work to get there.

The agreement with the women at the end Can we discuss that? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was really shocked. I was like, are you, what? Yeah. This is a spoiler. So the two women, Naomi and Sylvia, kind of go,

hey, why don't you just fuck both of us? No, we're never the opposite because it's the angel whore. So you got her. She's going to fuck you, I won't. So I'll be your intellectually equal and I'll be in the bed. So just decide whether you want pizza or, you know, beef stew. And go to the corresponding flat. And you don't have to choose for us.

And as a vegan, I reward you on how far you. imagination took you to you there. You had to think of a really nice. What are all the lads like? Bees stew. Do you think it was an investigation into the idea of open relationships and sort of

showing that there are other ways to deal with sexuality? But what I wanted was consequences. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The whole book is like, he is tearing, Peter's tearing himself apart. I'm a bad person. I'm doing this, these two women.

Like, this is not okay. And then it's almost like she's saying, And yeah, you know what? Women don't mind you being like, we're open to it. And I was like, I want that man to have a consequence to his actions and for Sylvia to go, we can't, we can't do this. Like, I'm sorry. When you say consequence, like it was all a mutual decision that Sylvia, like, what I did like was the idea that Sylvia was in some way leading him on that he's like, here I am. And she was like, no, and holding him there. And I did think it was.

I thought that was very real, like how people can hold each other back. And also the idea of chronic pain as someone who I was in a car accident about four years ago and my life is often like ups and downs depending on chronic pain from it and it's in no way at the level of what our character is going through here but I did find it very interesting of someone going I'm into pain management now I can only have a certain type of life

here's what I'm willing to accept and of course anyone might go in and go but you should have therapy and see that you can do all sorts of different things but the amount of life pain takes up I loved it as a study from the outside of someone wanting to love her that he was like trying to say I will be there all the time he never left her he just had to leave her in a sense

well she she rejected him because she didn't believe he would stay with with this very limited life it was like the mirror she had was like no and she's probably right yes I thought that was amazing there's subtity of that is amazing but then for her to say well I don't mind if you just come around and see me when you're still I thought that about the male characters at the beginning

I thought this is the problem with women writing men. You're writing them better than men are. And then you have this, and then what you're telling them is this false narrative of. And then women will just go, I'm not possessive. Who, we never said this was monogamous. Maybe this is us saying the same thing. But there's more going on than you think on both sides as in like just talk to us and we'll understand. You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is more going on. And then she made the decision to be like, you can have both of us. But I wanted was like, look, this is going to be messy. And I don't, we're basically going to carry on as we are. Because,

that's life. No one really does change. And everyone's going to be broken-hearted no matter what happens because of this situation. But it felt a bit neat. It felt a bit like, oh, I don't, why have I been stressing?

I think, I'm trying to imagine if the book didn't have that end of them both going, you can have us both. Yeah. Would then we look backwards at the rest of it more interestingly because I love when someone

in any form of art comes in with like a cartoon stereotype trope. And then there's loads more going on in the background. Even the mother, for example, in this. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was great.

character has all of these qualities of someone who didn't really want her children. We hear just from the sons and we all talk about our parents like that about how they left us, they didn't leave us, they left us with these scars or they did this thing and they were amazing or they were the saint and the sinner of the parent, whatever. And then at the end she does still mother, she is still there

and she's a flawed human. It was like a different actor had come in to start playing her because one minute she's locking a dog in a cupboard all day and the next minute she's like, oh I don't want you to be by yourself at Christmas. I'm like, she's just had this complete change of personality because we need this positive ending. But for me the dog was like the complication of her next husband.

And she was still minding the dog. And also we're seeing Ivan's perspective. If he goes in, see it's a dog locked up and it's the worst thing in the world and he takes a dog. Rather than like this mother has had so much stress, she's also grieving her ex. She's got two children and another kid. And that's obviously not a good way to treat a dog guys.

But as in, that's the mess of there. But she still had the dog. She still took it. And then eventually, we all have that with her parents. I'm not holding on to this. I've got your university books here and your degree is all framed. And I can only have them

another two weeks in the house. You're like, why two weeks? It's time to move on. And you're like, well, it's true. I just kept thinking, I was worried that she was going to give him away because that's what my mum would have done. Can I tell you what my mum's done? Because no one's going around for Christmas. Remember because everyone's got their own kids? Yeah. Sold her table.

See? She said, what's the point? So this does happen. So my husband did it on the internet. She said she's taken up all that space and no one's coming around for Christmas. That is the most incredible piece of action of a character. But that's what I mean when someone has to do something, like I love that. It is a very mother quality. and maybe one day the three of us will do it where we're like,

look, I've had too much time sitting around and the children are living here more so I'm going to do something dramatic, something big. Something I've been thinking about for a while. Go on holiday, go on a cruise, learn more about yourself, go to therapy. No, I'm selling the table. Send the kitchen table,

which to you guys seems more worrying than me going on a cruise. But I didn't mind that I thought the mum, I agree with you, I felt like I kind of liked her, like that because I thought, yeah, that is quite mum-like. And also the mess of a person I quite enjoy. But it was, to me, that was,

the oddness of that felt real because it was like, that woman doesn't know what she's doing, that feels real. But then saying, you can have us both was like, whoa,

these are two really complicated women that have not been happy with either situation. He is tearing himself apart about it. He doesn't have anywhere to live. She had no money. She's homeless. I didn't believe that she,

you know this like, he kept saying, oh, is it transactional? And she was like, no, I thought, I don't believe you, Naomi. I feel like this is.

I did think there was a world where the ending would be him and Naomi together after. I thought he was going to get with Margaret. I thought he was about to ruin his brother's life. It was all set up. She really set that up.

They were the right age. She's so beautiful. She looks like a flower. Try and be a good person and then be the worst person he could be. See, for me, that's... I mean, it just shows like it's a good book and vested in characters. I was like, no, Sarah. That's how I felt when he met Margaret, because the character that Peter is is someone

who devours women without meaning to and pretends that he doesn't know what he's doing. And as soon as he clocked eyes on Margaret, I was like, Oh, here we go. This person has addiction issues. And Margaret wants someone of her own age. And they look very like each other. He's a solicitor. He's well known.

He's in place. Like her mother would be happy with him. Do you believe that Margaret and Ivan are going to last? No. Either do I, but I both feel they'll... I'm happy. I think they'll have a great year and a half. Yeah, yeah.

And they'll both have been very important to each other. But it'll be time to move on. Yes. She had done a lot for him. She never took the morning after pill. The second book is... Oh, Ivan's disaster. I also did that as well.

I was like, whoa, oh, and all the irony of him thinking, like, on her worrying that people would think she's only looking for a baby or whatever. And I'm like, oh, no. Yep. That was a little literal seed. Yeah. But I do think it's interesting about maybe it's that we don't expect a happy ending from a Sally Rooney book necessarily and then actually giving us a bit more of a movie-like ending. It's very movie or it's very like, you know, kind of romance. Well, also, I think, especially because Carad, it's.

you'll feel so much. Someone trying to say grief gets easier because I just thought it was a grief book and it was a grief book and it was a chess book and it was going to end sad

and start sad and that was fine. I thought she really described two people who didn't know they were grieving and I thought she captured that and other people keep checking in on them and they didn't know

and that's their decisions this is about your dad oh absolutely not by my dad although like I've never had a proper relationship life of media you found a 30-tie-shot woman and completely out of character slept with them and Pete's decisions

and really hating the person who comes to symbolise problems you can or conversations you can never have again. Yeah. It's all gone now because of the con. And also how, I'm sure this is something you'd know about Carriad, but like Peter's at the end

and so is Ivan, but Ivan is younger. I do think they play the naivety of a younger brother who doesn't understand the cost and sitting with medical expenses and having to look at the medicine which Peter was doing. And like being at the end of someone's life.

Yeah, yeah. A child, but not a child, they're supposed to be your sibling and you're supposed to be going through it together, but you're not. But also how knackering it is to be at the end of having helped someone be sick for so long. And it's a different type of grief to an accident or something like that. And you could see Peter was traumatised. Yeah.

Peter was in PTSD. Like he had been traumatised by his life. Everything's happened. And I thought that was amazing that bit at the end where he said, he kind of admits, like, I'm not okay. Yeah. And that's why the conclusion for me that these women agreed to allow him to continue his thing made me feel very sad.

Because I was like, I don't think that's what Peter needs. I don't think Peter needs these two women to go, yeah, let's carry on. I think Peter needs something bigger than this. And I was expecting something bigger for him. Who was that friend? I really loved the male friend when he was getting really drunk. Is it Glenn? At the end, I wanted him and Glenn to get together.

I love Glenn so much. The idea that, you know, a group of people to think, okay, that person's on one. Of course we're going home to 11, but one person goes. I love that scene. I know I can't leave you, even though I want to go home and everyone else. I often wonder it's very hard to, we were discussing the kneecap movie earlier on. It's been one of my favourite films that I've seen in ages and it's through Irish and English. And there are sub-but they've done it so amazing that there are subtitles, even sometimes Northern Irish, Irish is different to Southern Irish.

It's sometimes harder to understand with accents in different terms of phrases and stuff. So sometimes I did need the subtitles even though I speak Irish. And they just did it so well in between English and Irish. and I can't even imagine watching it as not an Irish person. And there was parts of this book in Sally Rooney's world where I'm like, I don't know, I see your tiny reference that's so specific and I don't know how, and it was so lovely to me. Should I tell you how it felt?

Yeah, well, I guess we would just miss it. We would just miss the reference. Even going to Trinity College, for example. Exactly. That means a third level of education. That's a hard one to get into. Yeah. I did French and philosophy, not like medicine.

like let's all chill out. Dropping your French and philosophy in there. What did you think of the Wittgenstein? I mean, I did. Casual question. I do like when it comes in from a character's point of view who would have gone to Trinity and probably done philosophy and it sits within that

and the block is the arts block that they meet up in in Trinity, which is where the arts like philosophy and stuff that is. So it does make sense. Sometimes, and I don't think Sally did this, but sometimes you know when someone puts in their opinions and it's not totally from... I thought the economics chat was that.

Yes, yeah, a little bit, yes. So the economics of work and knowing the value of each piece that Ivan has, that felt like something that Sally Rooney finds fascinating about capitalism because it felt like the conversations in... And then I wonder, do I only think that? Because I've watched interviews about her talking about socialism and stuff like that. And I don't know. I don't know if that's why I'm like, oh, Sally Rooney,

I know she also thinks that from interviews. Yeah. And I couldn't. And that is a problem. It's like when an actor becomes so famous as themselves, it's hard to imagine them transform. It is hard when a writer who's supposed to not almost have their face. Well, she's certainly good at hiding from it.

Actually, I think she really is. She really is. She really is. I've been interviewed or read anything. Just of late. So I've seen that. So that's maybe where I was like, oh, I can't tell. And, you know, it doesn't matter.

Because also that bit you can move through. But it did those bits. Sometimes when people stick in their opinions. And it's not saying that she's done this because I think it's more that she finds things fascinating and wants to discuss them. Of course, of course. It's just sometimes it's that

and I even had that sometimes when I was writing my show I would be like, I feel like this is Ashling trying to say this and when I was on set, I would find it hard to remember the lines because I knew it wasn't the character. In the living room they sit at the ugly glass dining table together

with her mouthful eating, she tells him she needs a new phone. He's peeling an orange onto a small white saucer. I can get you one. he says, she nods her head, swallowing, lifting another forkful to her lips. Cool, she says, nothing fancy, obviously. Just need to let people know I'm alive. The peel splits and he deposits it onto the saucer, begins peeling again. Ugly glass dining table.

Just for me, he was like, I know Peter and I know you're flat. Yeah, I really, I did not want to be in his flat. It felt cold and white with no wire to the walls. At that table, he's like, oh, got that ugly table. Can we talk about sex scenes then? Oh, yeah, sorry. Because I thought that was a way of really showing who the characters were. Yeah.

Or definitely with Margaret and Ivan. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what Margaret can't walk away from, that attraction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we haven't talked about Margaret enough, have we? Salking what she was from, Carrie. She trusts him so much.

So her body's relaxed, so she's really turned on by him. And all of that was like, yeah, a male writer. I love the surprise of that. It's a female writer. Yeah, how much she desired him. And also the amount of like, I'm just going to drive him. back to this house I work at the art centre

oh fuck it the life is short like I love that quality it's such a bad decision and his bravery asking her in because he's 22 year old

I know wonderful woman he just thinks we just ask her to come in and his braces and stuff like that and I'm kind of like oh my God

like that for me was a really messy and interesting dynamic it was messy and also she's in the middle of nowhere

it's that area where she is like an art centre is a big deal in towns around Ireland like they're the hub of like where people

go and you have to fight so hard to get funding for them in small towns. So once there's one in an area, it's like curating it is a big jot you're bringing, like any... Oh, I love that Margaret was trying to bring political Beckett in and hit the guy who her boss is like rolling her eyes, like, oh my God, really Margaret?

But also how people in the town feel and the issues around like alcoholism, marriage and stuff like that, I was like, oh God, that stuff still... That stuff still stings. and the idea that she's in a small way choosing her freedom. It felt a little bit 1940s Ireland, but also I can imagine I've been now living in cities for almost 20 years,

but that's the environment I came from. And I can imagine that probably still feels like that. And the idea that if you did need a morning after pill, you'd have to go to a different town. Yes, that someone that you know, completely and utterly. And just how quickly he was seen and it was two and two were put together

and gossiping and her mum found out because I was thinking her mum will never find out. There's nothing to tell her. Yeah, it's really. It's like that. But I did. love the wrongness of them. And maybe I just love showing like,

oh God, we don't know anyone at all in the mess of people. And being sort of like surprised by Ivan's bravery. I'm like, God, I love when someone surprises me in a way. They felt like a more interesting mix, because Peter and Naomi, it was like, yeah, I'm a hot 36-year-old, you're a hot 22-year-old, you're broke, I'm rich. We kind of get what this relationship is doing.

But Margaret and Ivan, you could hear Margaret the whole time being like, what am I doing? And you were like, I don't know Margaret, but do it. But she was also like her main thought was what will people think? Not really what am I doing. It was always like, I want to do this. What will people say? And I loved them constantly pursuing the relationship because his naivity, which, and from the outside you are like, this isn't going to last.

Yeah. But his optimism, but what if? I mean, look at Aaron Taylor Johnson. Yeah, exactly. So, like. What did you think of the sex scenes? Sarah Pascoe. I normally find sex scenes

so embarrassing and if there's any reason they shouldn't be there I'm like why have you put them in whereas I absolutely thought these should be there and I think she writes very good sex scenes

I think she writes very good sex scenes weird or like the moment they were like It's because it's bad sex I couldn't have put in like and they're all interesting they're all hot and erects for each other Oh but that's so good

his milky skin Someone starts orgasming all over the place left and right there's orgasm Yeah, splutting on the walls the neighbours saying, shut up! We can hear the splanks for miles around. The Airbnb he was in

sounded so depressing as well, like Margaret and Ivan's first, like it sounded so like the cottage she's in, just felt really, you could feel like the crap sheets and the horrible bed. You find you. Yeah, and just finding like, you know that Rihanna sound like, we found love in all this place. Yeah, that's kind of what it felt.

I felt the locations of everything were really visceral. Peter's flat. Like all fours, like all fours, the stuff they were doing to each other's bodies is part of showing you why they like each other. It's fitting for the characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's really important in terms of thinking one thing and then someone kissing you and you start to think something else.

I actually also, now that I think about it, so I was reading this book on the plane to Australia and while in Australia. And so I'm just like bringing myself back to when I was reading it now that I'm back in the way sometimes your brain compartmentalises like a time you're reading something and you can imagine the envirin around you and stuff. And you don't have to say around you if you say environment, I suppose. And I actually remember crying a few times during the sex scenes because I found them so moving to almost,

it's like the sex scenes, like when you're saying they're there for a reason, it's like the first one between her and Ivan is like hope for Margaret, this person, and you can feel her visceral loneliness post-divorce, not allowing herself to live out of respect for her ex or the sanctity of marriage or what. it was in her culture. Margaret and Ivan felt like losing their virginity. Yes.

Yeah. I loved that she, Margaret later admitted the complicated relationship she had with her husband, that she had got something out of being the saint in the addicts relationship. And I thought that honesty was really amazing to hear a character say like, yeah, he's an alcoholic, it was awful. Also, no one took me seriously. Also, no one believes why I should have broken up with him.

And I got something out of it. And that's what I'm not doing with you. And I thought made her such a brilliantly flawed, believable character. And maybe that's, maybe I almost got a sense of that from Naomi that she's getting something out with, but it doesn't mean she's purely transactional or she's being used. I just didn't get her POV. But maybe that's why I liked the slow raveling of Naomi and maybe at some point wanted to see her or sort of felt a bit like I did.

Because I love that like, no, this is working for me in a lot of relationships. For more time than not, that's how male-female relationships have existed and more, you know. Naomi, the description that Peter gives of her of this person who's just like always in the moment and always happy. And always wanting sex. Never, never known I'm not in the mood. Manic pixie dream girl. But I think that's, for me, I felt like that was his point of view

and then towards the end when we feel like, oh, she could be vulnerable, she likes him, which was a big surprise for me. That's when I was like, ah, we've had to think this is her because his self-hate is like, I pay her and that's why she stays with me. And it's coming from such a... And also that she's not damaged, but she wants me to spit in her mouth. And like, oh, I can't believe you never did that with anyone before.

Do you think we're too old for that? That's what I thought. Is this what the young people are doing, strangling and spitting? Because I'm too old. Well, then I'm glad I'm old. I'm saying. I'm not sad. I missed that.

I was like, God. Post COVID as well. It was just disrespectful. Get me a pan out. I only gave her two months. I only gave it two months. In the end, I bank me pots and pounds with my neighbors. The young people could spit in each other as a man in Dublin.

We'd last be bono. If we'd just put a couple of seconds of this on before. all of the videos. They only allude to things they've done with each other. And the same with the accident. They never say what happened. Because as I was like, they never said.

They never said. They never said. They never said. I found it hard to hold the book sometimes. And sometimes I'm like, really want to know like what the accident was. Yeah. It broke her vagina.

Well, pelvis fracture I was thinking. But also is that a choice of the two men, the two male characters to be unspecific. Never quite want to say what happened. Yes. And that does end up being like almost like the men don't even want to say it. to themselves via the reader, never mind.

But those are two things I thought were interesting choices to keep alluded to. Do you think it's because they wanted to, it clearly like did fracture her pelvis or something? And it's a very, it's like, oh, it's female parts got damaged by the accident. But she said she can't have penetrative sex. I thought it was the chronic pain. I thought she was in so much pain and it's just like. But from her vagina. She's quite specified.

And she can't have children. But that sits in a way of like, you know, and we still talk about people. like that generally were like, oh, they can't for, they had an accident. And it's not okay to ask or that really felt visceral to me. It's like, it's hard to explain. But after an accident, you're sometimes not living or dead. You're in this like pain management where it's like, it's all too sore and sometimes it's going to come in waves. And then other times, and you just aren't totally fixable. And that part of it is. But it was odd that they weren't specific. Like, again, I know, because I felt the same. I was like, oh, maybe it's pelvis or it's because

she's in pain. But it seemed to be that she could do everything, but she couldn't have said. Or she didn't want to have sex or that part of her life was over. So that felt like something that maybe Sally, the author, knows someone who went through something like that. And we maybe want more details, but she's like, we don't, yeah, because as you say, the endometriosis symptoms do come through like that, but we know it's not that. Yeah.

Because it's something that it was like there was before the accident and after the accident and everyone's lives changed because of it. I thought the description of what, that Peter had come home and no one had known what to say to him. Yeah. And that she had, she'd broken up with him. Yeah, young guy in a relationship from university. Yeah, this was his life.

She was supposed they were going to get married. They were going to have kids. The winners, the kind of like king and queen of, of Trinity type of thing. Yeah. And the arrogance of that. And there is something about interesting, I find about people whose lives, like an accident is such a thing that I suppose doesn't happen to everyone. and it's the life-changing transformation of something like an accident or an early death or something like that

and how that affected maybe one of life-seeming winners. Yeah, yeah. And then he almost had to be brought down to someone who hasn't been winning in life to understand other people that he probably otherwise would have gone through life without knowing how life is for a lot of different types of people, including his dad. Great book by a great author. Great sex scenes. I sadly enjoyed it and we're still members at the Sally Rooney fan club.

Rooney! What's the song right now? We're dancing in the Rooney fan club. I'm going to keep on dancing at the Rooney Fun Club. Rooney Fun Club. Sunny, Root, Rooney. Ashton, thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you for coming in.

We loved talking to you. I enjoyed it thoroughly and utterly. I imagine that we get to do this as our job. Just me hanging out with my two pals. Being sexy. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. You can follow Aschling on social media at We Miss Bee. and my book, The Christmas Wichastrophe,

a children's Christmas book, is available to buy now. I'm on tour next year. I've got a new show called I'm a Strange Group. It's on sale now from sarah pasco.com. You can find out about the upcoming books we are going to be reading if you head to our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club.

Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. That's our first threesome. It's appropriate for this book. Sarah Peresco, you all do.