Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy with Katherine May

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

This week's book guest is Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy.Sara and Cariad are joined by New York Times bestselling author Katherine May to discuss sentences, South Africa, greasy spoons, sheds, divorce and fridges. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you! Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.You can buy Katherine's books including Enchantment and Wintering here or on Apple Books here.Follow Katherine on Instagram: @katherinemay_Tickets for the live show on Thu 25 Jan at Foyles, Tottenham Court Road are available to buy here.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.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.

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 Weirdos 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 Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy. What's it about? It's a living memoir about remembering the past, going on holiday and moving to England. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, it explores unique and utterly subjective life experiences.

It's weirdly personal. In this episode, all we discuss. Sentences, South Africa. greasy spoons, sheds, divorce and fridges. And joining us this week is Catherine May. Catherine is a New York Times bestselling author of many books, including the electricity of every living thing, wintering and enchantment. And if you are into writing, she has an incredible newsletter called The Clearing,

which you can sign up to as well, which I would thoroughly recommend. Catherine, thank you so much for being here. It is such an honour to have you here. Thank you for having you. I'm very excited to have you because you're an incredibly brilliant. Proper writer. Proper writer. I do want to say it because I felt like I didn't want to insult the other guest, but I was like, we've got a real writer.

A lot of trash they are. I always think, though, that just means I can only do one thing and everyone else is like multitasking. But that makes me think, the trouble with the multi-hyphen thing is that many hats or many trades, whatever the... Jack of all trade, master of nuns. Whereas when someone has one thing, it's like, because they're very good at him.

They're the best at it. Yeah, so they're allowed. That's their job. Well, I just thought, I was multi-hyphen, And then as you know, I got diagnosed with ADHD. And I thought, oh, no, it's not like, oh, I'm just doing those things. You've got it. I was like, oh, no, I just can't stay doing one thing without being bored.

I'm a little like that, too. But I'm just not very good at anything other than writing. I really have tried. But you're very good at writing. So that's handy. Your books are amazing. And I'm very excited to talk about the book we're going to talk about because Catherine recommended this book to me.

Well, that's what I was going to ask about. So how did that happen? How do you know each other? Set up the scene. I didn't know you had other friends can't react. It's fine. Sorry, Sarah. This was at a book festival.

Oh, guys. Because I've written a book, so now I'm not to go to places at Catherine is. And did you get introduced to each other? Did you just find each other? No, we already knew each other at this book festival. And we were excited to see each other because it was one of those walking into a green room and you don't know anybody. It was really nice because I really, I hate that green room thing when you're just sitting there and there's all the proper writer. I always feel like they're a club and I'm not.

I don't know why. But you are one of the proper writers. I don't know anyone. I don't go to the parties. I think probably every single person in that room feels like everyone else belongs and they don't. I think that is... She's doing a good big sister job there. And then I got set...

I read Wintering, which I loved. Then Catherine did the podcast. And then I got sent inchartment, early copy of enchantment. And I was like, fucking hell, this is a good book. And I gave a quote. Well, your quote was about, this is the book that everyone's soul needs right now. Yeah. Because I felt it.

That was such a good quote. Thank you for that quote. Well, I felt it. And then I realized, someone explained to me there's, when you get asked to give a quote, there's a bit of quote hierarchy. Is there? And like, as in like, because what you put, like, as in, and I didn't know that. I had just genuinely meant that.

Like, I thought, God, this is the book your soul reads right now. It was like, like, after the pandemic and trying to reconnect. And I was like, oh, everybody needs to read enchantment. And then someone was like, oh, yeah, it's a bit of a, because it's like if you write a nice, you know, the way you express yourself. You have to. And then when they said, oh, yes, I saw you on the front. Yeah, it's a good quote.

It is a good quote. But I didn't mean it in a cynical way is what I mean. I mean. I wasn't writing it like, oh, that'll get on the front. I didn't take it like that. But sometimes it's just about how famous the person is. So they give a rubbish quote. So they just pull one word. It's just dazzling, Stephen Fry.

Yeah, that's a different kind of quote. He does a lot of dazzlings. He does a lot of dazzling. I think he's probably a really good friend to have. He's not a stamp. Dazzling. Another one. Dazzling.

Anyway, can we get back to the literary festival because we spent some time together standing in a fridge? Oh, we did because it was so hot. And they let us into a fridge to cool down. down. It was this summer and it was one of those boiling, boiling, like you couldn't breathe. It was a big fridge. They said, do you want to come in the fridge for a bit? And we said, yes, and we went into the fridge. And then you sort of thought, who are you reading? No, Camper, we were, this is such a long way I'm saying it. We were talking in the green room and then

Catherine said to me, oh, you must read things. Have you heard of things I don't want to know? And I wrote down on my phone, Debilevy things I don't want to know. And had you heard of Debriliev at No, I hadn't heard of her at all. I hadn't heard of this book. And then I had a bit of a gap in our reading schedule for the show. And I was like, oh, I know, I want to read that one that Kaffa recommended. Read it. Mind was blown.

Could not believe it. However, I never heard of her. Then I immediately bought Cost of Living, which is the second in this installation. Then I bought Hot Milk, read that. Then I read the third real estate. And I will tell you, I got to, I over-leavied. I was like You reached Levy

saturation Oh I actually did You condensed to Levy That's the thing When someone writes so well I think you appreciate it more If you go off And I have to say

Having read all three I still think this is I think this is my favourite I think the one you read first Oh you're cross of living first Oh interesting I wouldn't want to choose No

That was my first of her nonfiction That I'd read So that's how I heard of this book I'd never heard of her before Catherine recommended it and then I was like oh my God and then we said we should get Katha on the show and then I was like we should talk about the one that Catherine Catherine how did you find it? Yes how did you find it?

I had for so many years heard people talk about her and you know I don't know maybe this is just me but you get into a headspace where you're like I'm not going to read that woman that everyone's going on about that's not just you that's not just you. I don't know why I finally picked them up but I think I realised they were short and I love short books like they are light it's a this especially this one real estate is heavier this is such a

light delightful book. I really have got a thing for short books. I think we've really lost something in this race to have longer and longer books, which is about Waterstone's appearance, isn't it? Like they want a certain width of spine. Do they? Waterstones? A sizest about literature. It's shocking. It's really shocking. And so particularly for commercial fiction now, it has to be over, it used to be 70,000 words and now it's 85 because people buy fatter books. And so the bookstores demand for books. What to stand on to get to things? I know.

Do you know what it is? It's so that your Instagram post probably. You have the books in the background and people can see what the spine is, whereas there's a small book. Perhaps it's why they made this such a stunning blue so that you can really see it from afar. Is it Eve's Climb Blue? It does look like it, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so I love, I'm really passionate about short books.

I think they really matter and I think you can swallow them whole. And when I realized that she wrote short books. My feelings changed and then obviously I just raced through them. Yeah. I did them in order though. I don't want to sound smug. So you hadn't read her fiction? I still haven't.

Oh, it hasn't. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I think it's a really good, I'd recommend it's such a good compliment. Okay. Because the themes that come up come up in the fiction but in a completely different way. And I felt like I felt like a friend that you know quite well. And then you read their book and you're like, oh yes, I see you. You've gone into that.

Have you, Deborah? Yes, very interesting. So I've only read. hot milk but a lot of the stuff that she's referencing a lot of time. But for me this is, this one is past. It's about her past. Deep past, isn't it? Deep past.

It's like the kind of origin story. Cost of living is much more present and real estate is future and what she's doing. And really literally taking it from the title, things I don't want to know. Because I found this book so, not just moving, like upsetting. I was very sad for her and about the human truth. she's sort of. The life that she did. We should say she was asked to write it by a small publisher

as a response to George Orwell's essay, Why I Write, which was written in 1946. Yeah, and the answer is, to afford fags by George Orwell. Much shorter. A really short book, that one, Catherine. The trouble with how good she is at writing is that it feels like you're learning

about humanity at points, and that's really conflicting because some of it's so, I don't know how we change it. I don't know how we protect people from pain. There was a... Oh, the pain. The pain that she described. There's a tiny example of this is towards the end,

and it's a policeman. I mean, it's awful, but policemen assaulting a child. Oh, God. And it was so real. And so the power, the witch, the power that's everybody has with language, to not just make me feel like I have seen something, but I've experienced it.

I have been both characters. Yeah. And afterwards, to be existing in a world where I just want to protect little boys, protect all boys, and it's a racist attack as well. And so you've got an older white woman reflecting back on a memory

of something that she did see. No, that somebody else was described to her. Oh, it's the Chinese chokie lover. Yeah, had told to her, and she somehow reanimates it so vibrantly that you feel like you're there. Yes, there. and wondering about that person now

and whether they're okay and the ramifications of it and it just being just too upsetting. But even as we're talking about it, it's hard to convey how lightly she handles those things. Yes, I was going to say her writing. She doesn't freight it with anything. She doesn't tragedise it. She just shows you it and she knows that you'll understand, I think.

It's really, it's so intelligent. The whole thing is so intelligent. And she's deaf. isn't she? And I think that's the thing about all of the hyperbole is the exceptionalness of the spareness of her writing. The spareness, what she covers, like had the amount of stuff she covers in a small book that someone else would take you know, 1,500 pages to tell you their life story. And it would still be brilliant.

Yeah. She writes this one of my favourite bits. An example of how light she is with everything. When happiness is happening, it feels as if nothing else happened before it. It is a sensation that happens only in the present tense. Yeah. What a sentence? It's so good. It's so good. At sentence level, she's so kind of precise and crisp and gorgeous.

And then this is just a very quick... When I opened the doors of the Worm Eaton Wardrobe and saw the same four bent wire clothes hangers on the rail, they seem to mimic the shape of forlorn human shoulders. What's the point? What's the point of writing? I don't worry about it. But you know when someone...

You look at all of the words in the sentence go, these are all normal words. Yes. These aren't fancy writing words. Yes, she's not writing like, it's not over the top. Yeah. And that's the point I kept thinking. It's like, so I know, Catherine, because you write about your own experiences as well.

Is there a temptation when someone can write to make the truth more beautiful? When you're trying to write truly what happened, there's a writer part of you, where it must be tempting to kind of write through it up. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the discipline that I always try and practice is to like almost cut off before you land the whole the whole scene and to almost kind of give people a glimpse into it and then pull away because otherwise it begins to feel really heavy and I think I always I'm always trying to avoid telling my readers how to feel almost and so often if I get right through to the conclusion of a scene I'm I'm giving the whole

response and I don't want to do that so I think it's about those glimpses for me and I'd always write the whole thing when I'm doing my first draft but then I edit loads of notes out I'd love to know what her process is because it feels very edited. It feels very edited because it is so sparse

and I think what you're describing sounds almost like it's like filmmaking isn't it? It's like the shot has to show you what's happening and then cut away you can't like zoom in on too much or be overwhelming the reader but that's what when you're starting writing

that's what you write because you're like I want to tell you everything and it's smelled like this and they look like this, and then they said this, and then they said this. And the maturity of this writing, that it's like, I don't need to tell you. You're taking a reader somewhere, and then you're letting them respond for themselves because you're not guiding their response.

Trying to give them some agency, I think, within the process, because I always think that as soon as I've finished a book, I've handed it over to my readers. Like, I don't have control over that text anymore. And so I want them to actually do something with it. I don't want to dictate that too hard. I really want them to be able to feel like they've had some part in kind of co-making the story almost. I'm going to ask another question now. This is sort of for myself.

I feel like that's a little writing letter. Because I would like to, and everyone who reads me sit in their house and tell them what I meant. I have to stop thinking other things? Have you ever had reader responses or, you know, people write online reviews and those kind of things now where you've gone, no, no, no, not that. Oh, so many. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like, wintering continues to surprise me with that because people will come and say, well, of course, it's a book about X.

And I'll be like, it's a book about winter. Yes. But by winter, you meant when you stood in the fridge with Carrier. Yeah, that was a very wintry moment. But they'll say, like, it's a book about grief. It's a book about my divorce. And in fact, there was someone who came up to me the other day and said, oh, you got divorced during wintering. And I was like, no.

News to me and him. Yeah. And she said, but that's. what it's about, isn't it? And I was like, no, there's absolutely nothing anywhere in that book that would suggest that. That is so interesting, because it is about winter and it is about wintering yourself, that it's such a, that's such a huge human experience that everyone can place whatever they want to on it. It's like a big bucket full of snow and people just dunk their thing in it, which used to bother me and now I find that kind of cool actually.

Having read wintering and enchantment, that I feel like you can see your writing in enchantment moving towards that even more. And it does remind me of this of like the gaps it leaves for the reader, which I think you need a confidence as a writer to do that to be like, I am going to tell you something and I'm going to trust that you're going to have another thought. I think when you start writing, you're like, no, no, you won't understand. You won't get it.

I need to tell you everything. And that's, especially in this book, the gaps she leaves in these stories are like the, especially, no, so she grows up in South Africa, it's apartheid, her father is imprisoned. for working for the ANC. And the gap she leaves sometimes of like, oh, well, we called our maid Dandewe, but everyone else called her this. And the gap of like,

I don't need to say now. But you know, you understand. Like, I just think that's such confident writing. There's a sentence when her father is sort of arrested by the secret police in the night. And this is so evocative. She's describing the suitcase her father is packing

and the men have coming, doodda, the policeman smoking. Dad is trying to smoke. That is trying to smile at me. You don't need to go into chapters of like what he felt in his head or what she felt. That is trying to smile at me, his five-year-old daughter. Such good writing.

Yeah, you could write an essay about what is said by that line, unexplicitly. She says as well, this is just a bit about her writing, about writing. She says, her other message was that emotion, which always terrifies the avant-garde stiff upper lip, is better conveyed in a voice that is like ice. As for the strategies, a writer of fiction might employ to unfold the ways in which her characters attempt to defeat a long-held wish. For myself, it is the story of this hesitation

that is the point of writing. Before you try and do something, that's what she's writing about, that hesitation. And that just blew my mind as well. She's talking about gaps, space. Beckett had this theory that there's this sort of blankness that happens where you're almost staring into space,

but it's a moment where you're completely sort of frozen, just in a moment, thinking about nothing, and that's what he was trying to create with his writing, because he was so frustrated, but in that moment you couldn't actually describe how and what you were feeling. And he thought it was such an important thing, because again, that gap, that space, he was like, that's where the humanity lives.

That's where the actual human experience is, not the destruction. Yeah, well, you're processing something in silence, aren't you? Like, yeah, dad tried to smile at me. It's like you can hear the child, what she's understanding, what she's not understanding, what the dad is being. Like, there's so much in that. It's just... It's incredibly done because it could have been such a melodramatic moment.

Like my dad was taken by the police in apartheid South Africa. Wow. It could be noisy. It could be stomping and screams and crying and... But it's like 100 pages into the book, into 150 page book. I mean, she doesn't reveal that to us for the longest time. And it is so important to the answer of like, the Chinese shopkeeper has asked

he said oh you're a writer yeah and where are you from that's the question where are you from that everyone knows she's not English but she sounds she came over as a teenager so she sounds English and obviously English is her first language but trying to answer that question of where are you from when she knows she's from Africa

and that's you know describing like moving to Finchley there's that bit where she talks about like I miss flowers I don't know the name of and bird song that I don't know how to name the bird you know and yeah there's another gap it's all about the gaps of those things.

We should talk about the incredible way she describes motherhood. She is astonishing on motherhood. That's the bit, I think, when I really fell in love with this book, when I was just like, oh shit. I was, a moment ago, I was hunting frantically for the bit in the playground. Oh, I think I'm going to read it. Yeah, she says, I found myself thinking about some of the women, the mothers who had waited with me in the school playground while we collected our children.

Now that we were mothers, we were all shadows of our families. former selves, chased by the women we used to be before we had children. Oh, I found that bit like piercing of like the shadow of yourself. We didn't really know what to do with her, this fierce independent young women who followed us about shouting and pointing the finger while we wheeled our buggies in the English rain. We tried to answer her back, but we did not have the language to explain we were not women who had merely acquired some children. We had metamorphosed, new heavy bodies, milk in our breasts, hormonally programmed to run to our babies when they cried, into someone we did not entirely understand.

Like, if you're, if you are thinking about having children, I think you just made a lot of people get their tubes tied. Sorry listeners. Well, there's a real plunge in the birth rate under Carverly. I'd read out that quote. Yeah. Condom sales have gone through the roof. It's just like, I read that.

It was like, the feeling of reading, exquisite writing is pleasure and pain. And that's how I feel, because I feel recognized. Did you feel that there was a huge truth in that? Oh, if you've been a plague, if you're at playground mum stage, when you're with all these women and all you do is talk about children and, you know, toilet training and ear infections and who's going to ballet class, and then you occasionally get glimps when you ask them, what do you do? And they're like, oh, I'm a geneticist and I welcome sick children and helping them recover from diseases that no one's ever cured. And you're like, what? But all I've ever heard you is talk about where it's the best place to get age three to six months, class. because they're like the way you lose yourself as a mother. Have you read Marianne Levy's collection of essays, which is Don't Forget to Scream?

Oh yeah. There's an amazing one about how the infantilising language of all of the stuff, which means that you're an intelligent person. I'm talking about a bugaboo. A bugaboo and a toothy peg. Can I read this bit? Yes. That's exactly the bit that I wanted to read from Deborah,

because she captures that for me, like the anami that is created by that language as you're standing absorbing it. So something strange happened to the way a particular group of the women I met in the school playground used language. They said words that were childlike but not as interesting as the words children made up. Words like groaning, moanie, smiley, fabi, cheery, veggie, sniffy. And meanwhile, the chabs in the playground, which she calls chabs. And I'm from Chatham, so I'm like the only community. community that's actually allowed to use the word chav, so I'm owning that one. We invented it for a very particular reason and we are going to carry on using it. The chavs in the playground

had less money and less education and ate more chocolate and crisps and other nice things. They said words like, oh my God, I didn't know where to look. In the balance, I thought they were the more exciting words. Yeah. I love that. And then she keeps coming back to that phrase, oh my God, I didn't know where to look. And the way she starts imbueing it with this like weight of these things that have happened to her and you're like, she's right, there's a truth to that sentence that isn't in the veggie, sniffy, groany-mony.

Yeah, I just think the way she deals with motherhood in such a kind of like a scientist, like she's like a botanist, like pulling it apart, pulling the leaf and the stamen apart and showing you it. But there's still a joy to that. Hopefully people would immediately run to the condom shop.

I think there's, and look, I'm not an experienced mum, but I think, like many, things. Lots of things are true at the same time. You know, you catch, catch you on the right day, minute of the day, hour of the day. You might feel a very different, like, Motherhood is constantly that. The thing that I think is interesting about it is I don't feel sad or happy about her expression. She's just truthful. That's what I like about it because it's just like there's not, it's not a judgment, particularly as we've been talking about other writers that are more

judgey. I feel like there's just a truth of like, this is what happens. We've become women. We've become, if you do make that choice, if you're able to make that choice, become a mother. And your former self is constantly standing next to you going, what, what happened? I wonder though, okay, just to be slightly contrary, it depends a lot about who you were and what you were doing before you become a parent. I think it must be a huge struggle if you're a creative person who then has all of the limitations of having to care or caring. But there are other people who have an experience of enrichment of stepping up a lot of becoming who they are

or who they want to be. Yeah. There's a liberation for some people, isn't it? I was so conscious of that. And I mean, I think that passage for me really took me to this moment in the playground that I really realized that I'd grown up among the working class mums and not the middle class mums

and that their culture and the whole way that they raised children was so alien to me. Like the whole way they talked about their children, the way it became so competitive so quickly, the way that you were never allowed to let in a glimpse of, of like, your own degradation, which I was feeling a lot at the time. I think there's that real sense of like where you come to motherhood from and what you're trying to escape and what you're trying to run towards

seriously dictates your experience. Yeah, and expectation must be a really huge thing Because how you imagine parenthood to be is based on no evidence. It's guesswork. And the reality can be really surprising. But that's what I mean. I don't think there's a judgment of it of like it can be positive or negative. I think she's just saying that when that you change, you metamorphosize into something.

And there's another person you were. I see. So that's what I like about it. It wasn't the past person was, you know, stronger, better, faster. No, no. And now you're this. I think that's she's put. That's what I love.

It feels like it's she's not damning you for feeling anything. She's not damning if you feel liberated or if you enjoy motherhood and she's not, oh, you know, it's awful. It's so fucking hard. She's just saying you change so irrevocably that your past self will not recognize you, but they will be there slightly haunting you because they won't understand what's happened to you. And you sort of have to look at that other woman and be like, oh, yeah, this is, this is here. I've crossed a different divide. And she says, yes, there'd been many times I called my daughters back to zip up their coats.

All the same I knew they'd rather be cold and free. And again, for me, it's like there's just the truth of trying to care, mother, however you experience it in this life, of like trying to protect people who also don't want your protection. And I think she's just just showing you what it is without giving you a kind of like, that's bad or that's good. It's just that's how they talk. That's how they don't talk. And I think the gap she leave enable all three of us to have completely different reactions to her writing.

I think it's about her divorce in winter. Yeah, that's what I've got. That's what interests me about the... Because it's framed by this visit to this hotel in Mallorca, isn't it? Yes. It seems like the coolest hotel ever. I don't know why it seems cool because it seems kind of not all that comfy,

but there's something about it that seems very kind of bohemian to be there. And she never once makes mention of leaving her kids behind her, which is so unusual. And I found that really refreshing. Like she goes out there and is just, she's just there to be for a while. She goes to New Yorker.

It's where George Sand went to have an affair with Chopin. And I would like to just subnote if that interests you. There's an incredible book called Briefly a Delicious Life. We will do that on another episode. Which goes full into that story. So having read that and read about George and Chopin and what happens in Miorka and then reading her take on it, going to the hotel and the Morkan's head. hating George Sands because she slag them off and she said they were horrible and

disgusting and she's in that hotel sort of experiencing another woman who had left there to try and write but this time had taken her children had this mad experience so she's sort of walking in the shadows of other writers but just to flick the other way um the book mattressants which you say I pronounce wrong it might not be how it's pronounced by by Lucy Jones the book I didn't say you pronounce it no no when I told you about the book before I might you say it I don't No, because it's a word that we don't reuse. No, I didn't know if it was matriessence or matriessence. Yes, and it's probably one of those.

Somebody said to me matriessence. So which is the changes that happen to you with, you know, like adolescence, but the motherhood version. And it's such a fantastic book in much more detail that, which actually proves the point that you could take one of Deborah Levy's sentences and write an entire book about it because it is about what's happening on a cellular hormonal level, on a nature level,

to the body to make you obsessed with your children and care about them. It's not imaginary that your brain changes and you are physically changed in order to do a better job. We're giving you a sub-reading list to the already quite heavy reading list. So you start with this book. That's the terrible thing about books. I know, they spawn. And buying books that everyone's to read, Pile gets bigger and bigger

and eventually topples and kills you. That's what happens to books. of menace about once every three or four months and I have to throw, you know, do you take some to the charity shop? I do. That's what I do. I have a really honest apology to them.

I'm so sorry. I really intended to. I don't think it's going to happen for us. Sorry, David Foster Wallace. It was a phase. It was a phase. How many times have you attempted the David Foster Wallace?

Well, that's trouble is also I bought too many of them. Oh God, you don't want more than one? Yes, I bought several. Those are weighty. If you need to stand on something, he's there for you. His essay's collection is great. though. Yeah, that's what I've got to the essays.

Oh, maybe. There's several essay collectors. Unfortunately, and they've all got fantastic titles and you think, well, I like the first one on the cruise ship, I'll read them all. You won't, Sarah, take them to the charity shop. You have an extraordinary amount of books sent to you, though. And they're tax deductible. So I also buy even more.

I'm a sucker for anything tax deductible. I feel like I'm just giving one in the eye to the man every time I buy a book. Exactly. I'm saying this to anyone listening. Imagine you have a job where you can deduct stationary and books. And that's your job. And that's not illegal. This other thing about this book is she covers so much.

So, you know, we go back to South Africa. We go back to growing up in West Finchley. I'd like to also point out that a large amount of our books reside in North London that we've talked about. And I loved it in the second one because she's walking up and down near where we live in Highgate Hill. Yes. Yeah. She's a real North London girl. And the best people are.

But she also then goes back to South Africa and then, yeah, in Meworka with this, the Chinese shopkeeper that she is having. And the hotel owner Maria, the second Maria in the book, who is having this very subtle kind of escape, we think. And there's this relationship between Deborah and Maria that is very unspoken. I love that. Yeah. And also again, coming back to silence, like she sees Maria sobbing, but says nothing. And even though they both know it's happened, they're both kind of happy to acknowledge, we don't need, we're two women that don't need to know why you were crying, just like a sort of nod. Like, yeah, I see. But then goes on to do this very intuitive thing, which is to pay for her room to Maria in cash,

which gives Maria this sort of freedom. It's like letting the budgie go. Yes, I want to talk about that. Yes, the amazing section where she gets sent away because obviously the mother is obviously extremely traumatized and stress. The husband's been taking away. There's a baby brother. And she gets sent to a school friend of her mum's who seems completely mad. And it's sent to a convent school where they don't think she can read or write.

Because she doesn't speak. She doesn't speak. And there's that amazing bit with this nun. Again, what I love about this, but so she gets sent to the convent school, you think they're going to be awful, but that one nun is sort of a subversive nun. She says something like, oh, should I speak to God? And the nun doesn't say anything. She's like, that's when I first understood to read between the lines.

And you're like, oh, like the characters that she meets. And the mother that she sent to live with, her daughter, the incredible Melissa, who is this bleached blonde beehive covered in makeup is really sexual is kind of has a secret boyfriend as a secret boyfriend who's not white i had to look up what bunny chow was after reading it because she takes the young deborah for a bunny chow which apparently is a lamb curry in a loaf of bread yeah yeah and you kind of collapse the whole thing and it all mushes up together it's supposed to be very nice yeah and she's like but she's kind of i mean she's an absolutely typical sort of cliched big sister in a way that she like takes her out,

gives her makeup, tells her what like what life's about, but also screams at her and is horrible to her occasionally. Yeah. Yeah. But like when she describes, you know, when they finally her father is release and they go, they leave South Africa to come to England and it's Melissa who waves her off and sort of says to her, always speak loudly. This sort of amazing, like the character that she describes, again, in very little words, really. I wonder what's happening to Melissa

I know about Melissa I wonder that But isn't it such a good book When you want You want more But you're also happy That you just knew enough I loved that bit where Melissa came to waver off

Because Melissa would have had to have flown Across from Durban And it's so unspoken But Melissa just turns up I loved it And they're all throwing loo rolls Yeah You give a loo to hold

So that you hold onto it And as the boat goes away They're holding onto your lue and it gets longer and longer. I mean, not great from a pollution point of you, but it's strangely moving. I guess it. Different times. Different times. Different times. Different times. Yeah. How often in this podcast do you require to say different times? Quite a lot. Well, there's so many books that we've read and we reread and have to start the

episode by going, so sorry about the language in this book. Things were different in 2003. Yeah, even 2005. You're just like, oh, wow. Things have changed a lot. A lot. A lot. It's really, yeah. It's scary as a writer. You start thinking. Well, hang on a minute. I wouldn't do that, would I? But imagine if you are. But I think that's us confusing time again because it's actually 20 years ago. I know. I'm not confused.

No, I meant, but if you read something in the 70s and then you read something in the 50s, you would not be surprised at how different they were. But there's something about our time that we're like, 2005 was yesterday. Whereas if I gave you a 1950 book and then I gave you a 1970 book, you'd be like, well, yeah, the language is very different. The woman is speaking differently. I watched Bridget Jones's diary the other week on the plane. And it was shocking. Really? Was it?

Yeah. I mean, the level of sexual harassment that woman endures from literally every man she comes across was just unremarkable at the time. Yeah. And it's been reframed, hasn't it? Yeah. Wow. Rather than like, oh, what women have to put up with. Yeah.

I think the 90s and the naughties are coming into stark contrasts. And the worst history is always the things that's just happened. You know, like something 40 years ago, you could go, oh, well, they were different people. But something sort of that immediate, like, well, I remember it. I lived in it suddenly looks really like how, because you remember thinking it was fine. And you remember watching Billie Jane's diary and thinking, yeah, that's normal. It was pretty funny. That's funny that women have tits and people shout at them.

I mean, my son's watching friends. Oh, God. And, like, Ross is just screaming classic abuser all the time. Like, everything he does, he's obsessed with enforcing gender, his, controlling, he's manipulative, he's a sulker. And I just, I watch it thinking this did not land on me at all at the time. In no way did that present itself to me as offensive. I thought it was annoying, but I wouldn't have gone out with him.

It's like fashion. Like the worst fashion you can sew someone is to remind them of what they wore about seven years ago. Because it looks like, oh God, oh no. Whereas if you showed them something they wore 20 years ago, they'd be like, oh yeah, well, you know, I was a kid, I was younger. My eyebrows 20 years ago were really disturbing. What did you do? A little over plucked. Yeah, the 90s.

The 90s. The 90s basically were the 1920s for eyebrows. They went back to their 20s, but no one told us at the time that's what was happening. And there's a lot of women still scarred by those eyebrows because they didn't grow back. I was really lucky that I couldn't bear pain. Oh, so he didn't pluck. Yeah. Well, I tried shaving them twice.

Oh, yeah. Hard to be accurate. And they grow back. Oh, no, you're not accurate. You have gaps between. Some people don't grow back. You have six or seven eyebrows. by the end.

Like ice, that's how it happened. No, not iced tea. What's his name? Vanilla ice. Vanilla ice. Yeah. Happened to vanilla eye.

And then bleached mine with Joeline because a friend with a moustache said I should just bleached them. And then I looked like I had no eye. That's now in fashion though. Is it? That's a thing now. But it makes people do double takes at you. If you look like, what's weird about you?

It's like, oh, I jollined my eyebrows. That's what's weird about me. And then they grew back and had roots on my eyebrows. Wow. Eyebrow roots. Yeah. I was really busy teenager. Why don't they want my beauty substack?

I now think about, you know, my teenage practice of dyeing my hair a different colour every week and think, how did you get the time? And the energy and like all that scrubbing the bathtub afterwards. Oh, yeah. Ruining towels. There's an amazing bit where she talks about... You're getting us back on course. I am getting us back on course. Because to fitting where she describes Melissa's friend who... Oh no, sorry, this is her friend that she meets in England.

who wants to be Liza Minnelli. Oh, yes. And she describes, on the weekends, I painted her fingernails with sparkling green nail varnish to turn it into Liza, so she wouldn't always have to be Judy

whose father had died in England when she was 12 years old. And actually, I think that's exactly what we're talking about as a teenager. You are desperately trying to not be who you are. And so she describing, like, you know, she sits in cafes and wears a black beret and tries to write

because she thinks that's what writers do and her friend, who she sort of gets on with, doesn't really know, just wants to be Liza Menelli from Cabaret and wears Fischnet, tights and velvet and everyone knows she's just trying to be Lysa Minnelli but the things the people that you try on as a teenager and that's what you have the time and energy because you're and the level of

obsession yeah I was trying so hard to be capy ellen out of babes in toyland and then I met her and she's literally four foot nine and I was all you know I was six foot when I was 12 and I thought I'm never going to pull off this look it's not going to happen who did you want to be who was the one you wanted to be as a teenager? Or was it just Robbie Williams' wife? I met Deborah Levy and so I have this, I have some shame. So I read Hot Milk because it was nominated for the Booker Prize and I was asked to interview the Booker Prize authors.

Someone must have been busy. And Deborah Leifah was actually that green room thing, she was incredibly kind to me because it was a green room full of... She's got two daughters. Well, that's what she came over and she said, my daughters know who you are, was what she said. So she thought very sweet and very nice. And then I had this shocker of interviewing these Booker Prize authors, Carrie Adnosis story. And then she didn't talk to me afterwards in that way.

But if you've had a bad gig, people don't meet your eye. So no judgment on Deborah. But it means that now loving her writing so much of having to blank the bit, when we have any history, I'll start all over again. I'll tell her my name. But also, you don't know. Maybe she felt like she'd had a bad gig as well. She didn't. She smashed it.

Did she smash it? Yeah, she did because she's a human being. She's a writer who's good at talking about writing as well. So she was very good. Do you know what? I saw her at a literary festival a couple of weeks ago. We are so fan girls, by the way. I know. I know. I was like, dragged her into the fridge. I didn't get the chance, but I would have done. Let's be clear.

This one was written as the response to the George Orwell essay. And I wonder if she, as I said, it was a small press that did it. And it became extremely. People were like, oh, this is amazing. And I wonder if cost of living was then commissioned after that. And then real estate as well. So I wonder if originally it was supposed to stand alone. It just feels like such an incredible... Well, cost of living I read first.

And the reason I read it first is because Biddy Piper put it on her Instagram. And it was a very obtuse way of speaking back to her ex who was in the press a lot. She posted recommending Deborah Levy's book about her divorce. Yes, Cost of Living is about the divorce. Yeah, and recommending it. Cost of living really is about a divorce. That's not a reading. That's not a weird interpretation.

It's the squirrels start collecting their nuts for the divorce. This is my concuss. I have the tree first. I would say things I don't want to know is childhood. Absolutely childhood. Cost of living is like middle age, going through divorce. And then real estate, actually, the reason that I didn't connect with it as much is about, it's about life as now you're a very successful author.

Oh, but I'm going to make a case for it because it's about that. That's because you're a successful author. Of course you're going to make a case for us. But it's about that. It's still good. I still love it. It's about that need for a space of your own. I think that really spoke to me.

That's sort of, am I ever going to own anything that I can pin down? And despite all my worldly success, despite, you know, I'm acclaimed all over the world, she's definitely not concealing that. But she still cannot have that fantasy house that we all ultimately have in our head. And hers has got a tiled fireplace, I think. It's by the sea, it's got a fireplace shaped like an egg. It's got jack around the trees. It's got all of this stuff

but she's sort of like in a shed in North London Yeah And she's also Someone else's shed She works in somebody else's shed Which I love She's constantly having meetings

With film executives So you keep going So the female character And then she'll have this meeting She's like Do we, who is the female character Do we love them And they're like

She just watches their faces Go blank Because they're like We want you to do a version of hot milk basically Like how do you And so I have to say It's still a brilliant book

But there's something about this one Even rereading it That I just was like You know when a writer is absolutely just... Well, this is classic memoir, isn't it? It really is about the unearthing of a childhood trauma. Yeah. It's directly that.

Performative events. Yeah. An egg-shaped fireplace. I've been trying to picture that ever since I read it. I can't picture it. I can't picture it. And then she describes like carrying an egg round with her, doesn't she? So she's like making her own version of it and these talismans that kind of what they mean and what does home mean and all of this stuff.

It's brilliant. Her writing is brilliant. Do you have a last line at all? I don't know. Sometimes we'd choose the last line. I loved actually the stuff about, this was, I actually really reminded me of being a female comic actually. When the Chinese shopkeeper says, you're a writer, aren't you? And it would have been such a long answer, she says, but it would be something like this. When a female writer walks a female character into the centre of her literary inquiry or a forest,

and this character starts to project shadow and light all over the place, she will have to find a language that is in part to do with learning how to become a subject rather than a delusion, and in part to do with unnotting the ways in which she had been put together by the societal system in the first place. It continues, but the female nature of being a woman's writer, writing about women and the aspect that that constantly has, she just writes about it in a really intelligent, thoughtful way. She's so intelligent.

How can we have her to dinner? I know. She's so intelligent. I found out she's in a shed. There won't be security. Probably not a lot. You dress up as a magpie. I'll dress up as a North London badger

If you get surrounded really easily Our foxes, we'll dress up as foxes I'm going to be an egg-shaped fireplace And then she'll be like She'll move you into her house What I love so much is that when women Really really really crush On a talented women writer

It's the most purest It's like nothing No one can come between this love Like we don't care Probably Williams could walk past I know but do you remember when we interviewed Ian Rankin And he said someone had his face tattooed on him Or his autographed tattooed on them

and it was like a bit... But we're not doing that? No, but I think this might be a version of that where if someone was to say, oh, Deborah, have you had that weird... Have you had a snippet of a podcast with them going,

I'm going to pretend to be a fox and getting her out? I mean, let's be clear, we can never now meet Deborah. Once this goes out, that's it. Catherine, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.

It was such a pleasure. And thank you for recommending this amazing book. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. You can find Catherine on Instagram at Catherine May

underscore and you can sign up to her newsletter at The Clearing. Next week's book guest is Yellowface by R.F. Kwong. You can find my novel Weirdo in all of the shops. I'm also doing personalized book plates for Christmas if you go to Fox Lane Books. And Carriad's book, You Are Not Alone. It's also available. And you can buy tickets for our live show coming up on the 25th of January at Boils in London. Thank you for reading with us.

We like reading with you.