[SPEAKER_01]: I occasionally have thought I really shouldn't write about this.

[SPEAKER_01]: My brothers have a go.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really like to push myself into areas where I feel that it's quite taboo.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that if things are a little bit too easy and you're skipping along, is that really gonna be good enough?

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, my lovely listener and welcome to the Big Talk Book Club.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a special series, we'll dip into together each month right here on the Jessro Big Talk Show, where we still skip the small talk, but this time we're diving into the books that really stay with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ones that spark big feelings, juicy questions, and honest reflections.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is your backstage pass to some of the world's most celebrated authors.

[SPEAKER_00]: The storytellers whose words stay with us long after the final page.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going deeper than just the plot into the ideas, characters and themes that may be reflect on my own life and maybe yours too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the best part is you won't just be listening in.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have the chance to ask your own questions and be part of the conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: So before we dive in, let me tell you a bit about the incredible author joining me today.

[SPEAKER_00]: British writer, Esther Freud, has written 10 novels.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her first book, It Is Kinky, was based on her own life, and was later turned into a film starring Kate Winslet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Esther is part of a famous family.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her sister is the fashion designer, Bella Freud.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her father was the painter Lucy and Freud, and her great-grandfather was Sigmund Freud.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, it's not the men but the women in her family who inspire her story telling.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to talk to Esther about her latest novel, my sister and other lovers.

[SPEAKER_00]: The book is a sequel of sorts to her first novel, Hideous Kinky, and picks up on the story of the sisters and their mother.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in our conversation, we talk about the line, the authors walk between fact and fiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: asteroid.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have you in the studio.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a long-term fan of your work, of your words, and your latest novel, my sister and other lovers, are I a daughter?

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lot that resonated with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think because I have two sisters, I'm the eldest.

[SPEAKER_00]: and there's so much in there, but hit me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so looking forward to talking with you about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So wonderful to hear.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's so fabulous to be sitting here.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I've experienced in conversations about this book, and it's only been published for a few weeks, [SPEAKER_01]: is just how it is resonating with people, the whole subject of siblings, and where you come in a family, how you've been affected, adversely or not, by your own sisters and brothers, and it is just such a rich vein, I had actually no idea when I began writing this book that I was not alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that whole issue of siblings, and I think especially sisters, it is unique, isn't [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a little bit as if you have a mirror.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're always checking yourself with your close sister, saying, huh, what are they doing now?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I won't be doing that, or I want to try and do that, or damn it's all been done.

[SPEAKER_01]: Any or all of these things are going through your mind.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, sometimes people say, what do you think you'll do?

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think you'll, you know, if you go grey, will you dye your hair?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, I don't know, I'll just see what my sister does.

[SPEAKER_01]: We just don't have to make any decisions of the younger sister.

[SPEAKER_01]: If that's how your character is, I always feel that I was born in the right order, that my natural character was suited perfectly to being a younger sister.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was always quite happy to follow along.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I'm in charge, like with my own kids when they were younger, I was in charge and then I would remember which way to go and how to do things.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the minute somebody else is in charge, I just kind of dream off.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, oh, where are we?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, we've arrived here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I've no idea what what her tell her we're staying in and so I liked being the younger sister and my sister was always very powerful and opinionated and fiery in her opinions were, you know, I didn't necessarily agree with them or even recognize them half the time but she did for sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I have always been very interested in this subject.

[SPEAKER_00]: on the eldest.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm optimistic.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sort of the tap dancer of the family.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I want to keep the peace.

[SPEAKER_00]: Keep everyone happy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a particular quote in the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And could I ask you to read it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because it really hit me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just thought, yes, this is me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so this is quite far on in the story, and Lucy, the narrator, is starting to get some kind of insight and realisation into the sort of fabric of the relationship she has with her sister, and she decides to express this to her sister be.

[SPEAKER_01]: I texted B from the bus, sorry for trying to cheer you up your whole life.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has been quite annoying, she came back.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I read them, I'm like, yes!

[SPEAKER_01]: I know, I was just born.

[SPEAKER_01]: It felt as if my position in the family was to just try and cheer everybody up.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if I stopped for even one minute, total chaos would descend.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just never stopped and someone once said to me, the problem is, it never works, but because you have been quite successful at it, you are deluded in thinking that sometimes it does.

[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And family.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's an enormous thing in your book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, in all of your books, those relationships that are so fascinating.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I read an article that you wrote recently about, there was a quote that you used when a writer is born into a family, that family is finished.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that is one of those theories that people have a little bit like the Pram in the hall is the opposite of the death of creativity.

[SPEAKER_01]: I actually really disagree with that.

[SPEAKER_01]: For me, the Pram in the hall was a great inspiration.

[SPEAKER_01]: One, you only have a bit of time, you better use it well.

[SPEAKER_01]: But whether or not that as Graham Greene said, sort of shot of glass in the heart of every writer or [SPEAKER_01]: writer is born into the family, the family is dead.

[SPEAKER_01]: The family is definitely a little anxious and quite full of, you know, on full alert.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think in my family, it's actually my own novels which have delved in many directions into family history or into more recent history, just the experience of my own life in some ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of given rise to the most fascinating conversations.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when we've got through the difficulties, sometimes, it's made all sorts of different relationships closer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Has it, in what way?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'll just talk about this book for the moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: I felt slightly crazy at times.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was, this book was an odd and easy book to write, partly because I just had no idea what I was doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: It started as a series of short stories, and it was really...

[SPEAKER_01]: just a kind of mix of incident, dramatic events from the life of one narrator.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when it was finished, I just didn't quite know where it stood and where it hung.

[SPEAKER_01]: So then I looked and looked and looked and looked at it and I thought, you know what's interesting about this book is every so often the sisters appear in these stories that's interesting that has something that I'd like to explore more.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not to say I haven't written about sisters before but not like this, not in such depth and not for a long time.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's being built a little bit as a sequel to my first novel Hiddier's kinky, and that's what it became, but it wasn't that, that was not how it began.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I started to work the thread of the sister's through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I put the sister's right in at the beginning, and I pulled it tighter, and there were certain stories that could turn into chapters, but the sister's, the narrator Lucy was always there, but she didn't have a sister necessarily.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I dropped a sister into these stories, [SPEAKER_01]: chapter, then sprung to life, I thought, okay, this is what I need to work on.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I was sitting there working away on this story obsessively trying to work, the sister relationship into the story, I'd text my sister, silence.

[SPEAKER_01]: I thought, oh my god, I'm obsessed with my sister, my sister's forgotten about me today, but when I finished a first good draft and I gave it to my sister, [SPEAKER_01]: she really responded.

[SPEAKER_01]: She started to open up to me and we started to have such interesting conversations about things from the past issues that had never been explored, which is amazing seeing as we speak most days, sometimes for an hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know there was anything left and I started to weave even more depth into my book.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I suppose that's what I mean when I say a book isn't always [SPEAKER_01]: The death now of family relationships sometimes it can be a new healing element that sparks all sorts of interesting conversations and important issues that can be looked at.

[SPEAKER_00]: And do you think too that's because it can sometimes be a lot easier to have a conversation through words and on the page and then the person other person can pick it up and read it in their own time?

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think maybe it's a little bit like having those important conversations in the car where you can't see each other?

[SPEAKER_01]: So you can talk almost monologue one at a time and you hear things in a different way.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've never thought of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I like the idea, I do really feel that books are communication, so of course you're communicating with the people who might be in your life who may recognize things from themselves, but obviously you're communicating with your readers just generally because they will recognize things from their own lives and families and things will resonate.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've had so many conversations about this book and no two have been the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I think is so glorious about books and reading is that it can spark totally different things in different people, depending on their life experiences, certain things will resonate more, or land more, and what it gives to you have is for taking people into these different worlds and lives and making them reflect on their lives in a different way and their relationships.

[SPEAKER_01]: So lovely to hear.

[SPEAKER_01]: It never feels like that when you're in the middle of it, it feels at times extraordinarily self-indulgent that you're spending a whole week rereading a paragraph or two and trying to make it work a little more effectively and changing the grammar and adding something in, changing the names of a character, do you think?

[SPEAKER_01]: Come on, there must be a more useful where I could run my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then...

[SPEAKER_01]: when it's done and it is a sort of message and it uncovered something that feels fundamentally important, certainly to me and I know to so many other women in particular, then it does feel that it has value and when I lose faith, I know that it's books that have comforted me, consoled me and cheered me on through my whole life so I'm just adding I suppose to that great [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what I would have done in my life without having books to reach for.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I think is so powerful about your writing, your body of work is that it's the stories of women.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I would say that I am very drawn to the stories of women, not all of my books, because I have written [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm thinking about a few books back, maybe three books back.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wrote a book called Mr.

Macamee, and almost all the characters in that book, rather amazingly familiar, are men, the narration of that book as a young boy of 1314.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I still felt incredibly close and connected to those characters.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I wouldn't say I'd roll out writing from the points of view of men or about men.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just that the story is that Paul me more powerfully [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything that for you as a writer is off limits when it comes to mining your own memory or your recollections of a time?

[SPEAKER_01]: I like to think that there are.

[SPEAKER_01]: I occasionally have thought I really shouldn't write about this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, maybe I'll just have a go.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I really like to push myself into areas where I feel that it's quite taboo.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that if things are a little bit too easy [SPEAKER_01]: Is that really going to be good enough?

[SPEAKER_01]: So I sometimes force myself to write something, then the hard work of disguising it, changing it, making sure that no one will be devastated, that is never what I want.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a lot, but usually what I find, if I write about something that is quite off limits, there's some kernel in there that's valuable and it will be unrecognizable to anyone, but [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a very interesting process and I don't think really anything should be entirely off-limits.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I had to answer, I'd say sometimes issues involving my children, but I wouldn't completely roll it out because as they grow older and I have three children they're all in their 20s now, I know that I'm capable of disguising it in such a way that they may not even recognise it themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, what a gift you have to be able to disguise it or camouflage it.

[SPEAKER_00]: How can you camouflage it to that extent?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, occasionally I've been quite devastated when I've looked at a passage which I really like and I know it has power, but I know I can't publish it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what I tend to do is I go, what is it actually about?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's actually pivotal to the story of someone's healing after trauma, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'll take it back and I'll change all the details and I'll just keep this an emotional heart of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I resist that because often something true is so much better than fiction in my experience, maybe I've had a particularly event for life, but God is hard to make things up when the reality is right there in front of you, but you get somewhere else and it's usually a value in the end.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have had an incredibly eventful life, as you say, your first novel, hideous kinky, was based on you and your sister and your mum, and that time in Morocco, which was turned into a fabulous film with Kate Winsler.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you wrote that book and then your parents read that, how was that experience for you?

[SPEAKER_01]: They both knew I was writing a book.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't tell many people because I had been working as an actress and people always saying, oh, how did that audition go?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it didn't, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I kept quiet that I was writing a novel.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want to disappoint anyone else.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I did tell my mother, particularly, because I needed to ask her questions about.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was four years old when my mother, my sister, and I set off.

[SPEAKER_01]: from England, across Europe and arrived in North Africa in an old van that promptly broke down and we then lived there for a year and a half, mostly in Marrakesh but we travelled around Morocco and into Algeria.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'd always kept those stories very strongly in my mind and turned them over and was quite [SPEAKER_01]: sort of they were very intrinsic to who I felt I was as a person that I had this experience in a way that my mother and sister seemed to let go of much more easily.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's how it seemed to me anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when I wrote the book my mother are no mother once their five-year-old child to remember so much of what happened and write it down.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I really felt for her, but she was on board she had been [SPEAKER_01]: a very independent and rebellious person herself.

[SPEAKER_01]: She'd done just what she wanted in her life as had my father.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they weren't really in any position to criticize.

[SPEAKER_01]: So my mother said, she was quite tough.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have to say, she was not sort of jury-eyed.

[SPEAKER_01]: But she said, OK, OK.

And my father said, his main worry was that it wouldn't be good, and it was good.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what he said.

[SPEAKER_01]: that was high praise and he looked relieved.

[SPEAKER_01]: I saw I felt I had their blessing.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a little bit different when the book came out because people were critical as they so often are of women.

[SPEAKER_01]: They were critical of my mother.

[SPEAKER_01]: As a character, I mean, obviously this book is based in my own life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't going to pretend that I'd made it all up.

[SPEAKER_01]: Who would make up such a story?

[SPEAKER_01]: So I said, yes, this is based in my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Although, of course, I didn't remember enough to really fill more than three or four pages.

[SPEAKER_01]: My mother suffered at that point and I really suffered with her because I didn't want to bring criticism against my beloved mother and she was described as factless hippie woman dragging her children around Morocco and she said, we've been to an adventure together.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't factless and bragging.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was just with you and I'm like her own childhood, which had been quite harsh.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was a child born in the war.

[SPEAKER_01]: She'd been evacuated alone as a baby.

[SPEAKER_01]: She'd been sent to boarding school age four.

[SPEAKER_01]: She said, I wanted to share you a different life full of love and colour and freedom so she suffered and we took a while to get through that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was very difficult.

[SPEAKER_01]: I felt incredibly protective of her.

[SPEAKER_01]: but we came through it and came to some greater understandings in a way.

[SPEAKER_01]: And was that through lots of conversation?

[SPEAKER_01]: It was through conversation and am I abiding devotion to her?

[SPEAKER_01]: I really adored my mother.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I wasn't going to be pulled over onto the side of other people's criticism to see her in a different light.

[SPEAKER_01]: I remembered how she had been and how every single day she taught those vegetables and made that soup and sewed my clothes and cuddled me and read to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the love too, exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that counted for so much more than anything anyone could say.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just kept saying that to her, eventually she came around.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you were writing that book at a time when you were looking to lay vecting, but you were modeling for your father, Lucy and Freud at the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I started to model for my father when I was 16, and I moved to London, and I came to London to study drama.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had been living in the country, and I had seen him over the years, but that was the first time I'd lived in the same city as him in London.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was my job, you know, like people have a Saturday job, but I sat for him a few nights a week for years and years.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we really actually up until I had my first child in my when I was 31.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I sat with my first child and he painted him and after that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was too busy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then I had two more children.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was writing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had a life and I never really had the time to give those many, many hours in my week over to him again.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, for many years I did model for him.

[SPEAKER_01]: What a experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it was an incredible way to get to know him.

[SPEAKER_01]: He had a huge capacity for charisma.

[SPEAKER_01]: He had such strong relationships with so many people, and partly it was because while he was sitting for him, say, on a three or four hour stretch, it was just you and he.

[SPEAKER_01]: There you were in the studio with a light shining down and you were talking, he would make little meals for you and we swapped jokes, he's something to sing you songs, he's a marvelous company.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so within that first experience when I was 16, I think I sat for him twice a week through a whole school year, so from September to July and then the painting was finished.

[SPEAKER_01]: And by then, I felt, I really, I really know my dad now.

[SPEAKER_01]: And even though people say, oh, you know, you had sort of a such an absent father.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, in some ways, but his character was so huge that when I did see him, it sort of filled the room.

[SPEAKER_01]: But from 16 to I was 48 when he died.

[SPEAKER_01]: I, he was very, very present to my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that more than made up for it, I feel.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did enjoy reading a quote from you that your father had said when he was trying to recognize himself in some of your works that he wasn't quite so sure, though, because the character wasn't wearing a watch.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, my second book, which I wrote very quickly after Hadeskin Key, before it was even published, I just wrote another book.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I'd have written that if I had all the self-consciousness of a published author, but I was sort of, [SPEAKER_01]: energised by having a publishing deal.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I wrote this book and there was a character fairly obviously based on my father.

[SPEAKER_01]: And not entirely complementary.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a bit of a playboy.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not that reliable.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, oh, God, for one terrible moment, I thought it might be me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I remembered, ah, I don't wear a watch.

[SPEAKER_01]: And with that wonderfully generous comment, I felt he'd said, you write what you need to write.

[SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned earlier in our conversation that there is some taboo subjects, but it's important to write about those and one that really struck me in this, my sister and other lovers is when you write about abortion.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a very different take on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really wanted to write two experiences of a woman's finding that she's pregnant.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that happens to Lucy in the book, she's pregnant twice.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the first time, it is the worst possible news that she could receive.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the second time is the best possible news that she could receive.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a very common experience for women.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was aware when I started to write the chapter, [SPEAKER_01]: where she does have an abortion.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, how rarely it's written about, I'd read a wonderful short story by Lucia Berlin called Manual for Cleaning Women, and there's an incredible story that is a series of short stories, but they are very linked, an incredible story about a woman going to have an abortion.

[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't necessarily have one, but I wanted to show that even though women still really don't talk about it very much, it is especially in this day and age that we're living in when [SPEAKER_01]: female rights are being stripped away around the world that it is a life-changing liberty and an incredibly lucky thing that women's lives don't always have to be derailed that they have a choice in that matter and for Lucy she's 18 years old she's caught up with someone totally inappropriate and the idea that [SPEAKER_01]: It's like two paths that she can choose in that moment, and she gets to choose.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I think is so powerful about books that you can explore issues that often are hard to have those conversations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we can think about things in a very different sort of way.

[SPEAKER_00]: You also help writers.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've run creative writing courses.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, [SPEAKER_00]: What is the biggest block to someone who wants to sit down and write about from procrastinating?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, procrastinating is an enormous block.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think discipline is just so hard one.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just to admit that the difference and I learned this through my 20s.

[SPEAKER_01]: I started writing in my early 20s and I was procrastinating like like a professional and then I went to a talk and someone said, you know what?

[SPEAKER_01]: really there's only one thing to say to you guys, you either sit down and write or you don't.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember thinking, oh come on, then must be another way somehow.

[SPEAKER_01]: But eventually, I was about 26 and I thought, I have tried the other ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't seem to work very effectively.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will try this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will sit down every single day for three hours.

[SPEAKER_01]: Surely I can do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was so terrified that I wouldn't [SPEAKER_01]: do it that I was going to sit down in my nightclothes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would just call out a bed and go to the table and then by 12 midday I was done.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the other thing and I think in a way this is even more difficult for so many people is that great terror over the taboo and what usually what will my mother say?

[SPEAKER_01]: That is the thing that just cripples people's [SPEAKER_01]: self-expression, even if their mother has been dead for 30 years.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because we, you know, we owe so much to our mothers, but to tell a truthful story, we have to be honest, we have to break through the secrets, the shame, the lies, the webs of deceit that have been told to protect everybody.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are we really going to be the ones to do it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, [SPEAKER_01]: Yes or no?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a choice that people have to make.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how effective I've been in my pleas to my students.

[SPEAKER_01]: Come on, be brave.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: When people are scared, they're scared.

[SPEAKER_01]: And also, who am I to say, it'll be okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because...

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been lucky with my family, but it hasn't been entirely easy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I have upset people and we've come through, but not everybody feels that confidence.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes the secrets are buried so deep that they're very, very painful if somebody starts to scratch the surface.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I would say, [SPEAKER_01]: to any writers listening and so many people have wonderful stories they want to tell.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think Be brave, Be courageous, write it anyway, disguise it later, and you might be surprised that people don't mind as much as you think.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I always say, but I wouldn't know for sure because everyone's family is different.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, family almost equals dysfunction, really.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think [SPEAKER_01]: Have I heard you try this?

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't be perfect, you shouldn't need to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, for you, where does that bravery come from though?

[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, that is a really interesting question.

[SPEAKER_01]: I initially feel that in my first book, [SPEAKER_01]: It was just writing, in quite almost a dream, as an actor in the Stannis-Lafski method.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I was just in the head of that little child telling the story, I knew what was around the edges, I knew that the reader could see the sort of terror and the danger of what the story I was telling.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I just kept it in the head of the child.

[SPEAKER_01]: I said, now we did this, now we did that.

[SPEAKER_01]: and I was sort of planting little bombs along the way and thinking, well, I didn't know it was going to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think in some way I was being quite artful and quite artless and possibly quite naive because then as I said there was fallout and since then I've learned a lot about what I want to put out there, what I want to hold back and I do think that along with the ability to [SPEAKER_01]: and apply yourself with great discipline.

[SPEAKER_01]: Along with that grit, probably also does come a kind of steely kind of courage, which you have.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which I guess I must have, I don't feel as if that's who I am, but when I dig deep, it seems to be there, and I don't know if anyone knows.

[SPEAKER_01]: If they have it or not, until they're tested.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just think it must be some mysterious.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think maybe in some ways I had to be very resourceful as a child, and I had to sort things out often on my own.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was painful, but it showed me I could do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, if that's a reward for those difficult times, then I'm going to take it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you did, because then you, you share it with all of us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have some questions now from our listeners that I'd love to ask you, Esther, one of them answered slightly, but I'm going to ask it anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's from my mum.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's a huge fan of your writing, but she's reading at the moment my sister and other lovers, and she loves the style of it, the sort of the fragments of the story that [SPEAKER_00]: pick up and the different timelines.

[SPEAKER_00]: But she is very interested in what did you learn from your mum, whether it be positive or negative?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, my mother was an incredibly creative person.

[SPEAKER_01]: She wasn't rewarded for the creativity of her soul in the way my father was when he stuck.

[SPEAKER_01]: his one form that he worked on all his life and he was rewarded massively for that being an artist.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas my mother, you know, she would weave things, she would move, you know, for anyone who's read my work or knows about my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: We moved a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: We once moved into a temporary council flat and she relined out the floor, painted the walls upholstered and also for she found on a skip.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just have so much admiration for her ingenuity, her creativity and all aspects.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was an incredible gardener, she made the most beautiful gardens in so many places that we lived.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I suppose I've learned how important it is to create beauty wherever I am and it really really important to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: What about any negatives from your mum?

[SPEAKER_01]: I had to unlearn some of the negatives.

[SPEAKER_01]: My mother's ability to communicate.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was something I learned, which was to say nothing and then scream some un-repeatable words.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I started to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: The first time I shared a flat with someone, I said nothing and suddenly I just went, sort of crazy and I thought that was not effective.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I had to relearn things that didn't suit me.

[SPEAKER_00]: A question here from Kirsten.

[SPEAKER_00]: She says, you've spoken about struggling with dyslexia, and that you mastered reading about around the age of 10.

[SPEAKER_00]: How did that challenge the way that you were approached language and storytelling?

[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, that's good.

[SPEAKER_01]: I actually just noticed that I hadn't emailed him with a friend who lives in Sydney and I'd spelled Sydney wrong and I had done that quite a few times.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, it still comes up, not so often.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's different types of dyslexia in the one that I had once you learn each word, you have it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like I'm so baffled by language that I have to check everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think what happened for me was it took me a long time to learn to read and in those years stories became so important and spoken stories became so important.

[SPEAKER_01]: People reading to me my teacher at the Steiner School that I attended the way that they teach there is they tell you everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: They don't refer to books or if they do, they've learnt them already and they tell you the stories as if they're from their own imagination.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I was very inspired [SPEAKER_01]: It was so precious that I never stopped.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I just will never leave the house without a book there.

[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe that's what I gained from that frustrating start.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you made up for it, as you say, which sort of leads me to, there's a wonderful quote on the back of your book from Meg Mason.

[SPEAKER_00]: From now on, whenever I hear anyone refer to anything as Freudian, I'm going to assume that they mean prose that slender and perfect and sparkling.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a beautiful quote from Meg Mason.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's your words that are slender, perfect, and sparkling.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Fraudian, who are for that, we claim the name, yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is from Carly.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's read somewhere that you have a disciplined routine of writing three to five hours a day.

[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned there that it was the three hours.

[SPEAKER_00]: How is this sustained you in a creative way across decades and multiple novels?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's incredibly useful to know when you're going to work, when you're going to start, when you're going to stop.

[SPEAKER_01]: Occasionally, I have the whole day free, and if I'm really busy, I just think, how incredible, on Thursday, I have the whole day free.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's usually my least productive day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Actually a day when I have to stop, I like to have four or five hours now, just because there's so much else going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I do answer a few emails and I do a few things and then I switch off my, you know, internet, etc.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I put my phone out of the room.

[SPEAKER_01]: and I go, right, I'm going to work until, oh, I have to leave the house at two.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think good, and I work really hard.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I think, oh, the whole day I might stop, I might have a snack, I might water the garden, so it's really important to know when you're stopping.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it really helps with your discipline, but it has given me a huge, [SPEAKER_01]: piece.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't spend my days wondering when I'm going to work.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't parade myself then for not doing what I said I would do and having integrity in your life is a great source of satisfaction.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I say, right, tomorrow I'll do this and I do it, even if it goes badly, even if I long to just climb back into bed.

[SPEAKER_01]: You feel so good afterwards, and I'm quite addicted to that, you'll feel so good afterwards feeling what even if that means going for a freezing swim, whatever it is, I like doing those things that make you feel pleased afterwards.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess writing has sustained me in that way that...

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a great believer, not in writing a thousand words a day, or even 300 words, but in paying attention every day that I can, to my story, it feels quite meditative and really for me extremely important.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just finally, this is from Claudia.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now apart from your latest novel, my sister and other lovers, what book or books could you recommend?

[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, well, gosh, there was so many, I mean, I'm just always reading and I feel like that's actually almost such a difficult question for me right now because I think my head is full of books that I've read.

[SPEAKER_00]: What about is there a favourite book of yours that you love to come back to or is a bit of a touchstone for you?

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the books that I would choose is a book I read very early on.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was probably about 24.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was just starting to write with no real belief that I was ever going to.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I picked up an early novel by the writer Jean Wies, who's more well known for widespread sagassocy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a book called Void in the Dark.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, something about the woman's experience, the reflective nature of the main character who grew up in Dominica [SPEAKER_01]: person in a black society but always felt different and then when she comes to England she feels different and it was such a powerful book for me in its beautiful, lyrical prose and the way that the plot hinged on her emotional experience rather than on dramatic events and I remember holding this book and thinking.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would like to write a book one day and maybe I will.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this latest book of yours, when I think about how it moves, it moves through the characters that's how the plot develops.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That we follow the characters along.

[SPEAKER_00]: The drama builds through their emotional response to what they're going through.

[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for this beautiful novel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your words and your stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: And thank you for saying it in the voices of women.

[SPEAKER_00]: They shared experiences.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a real privilege and joy to talk with you, Esther.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a real pleasure.