Welcome to a pair of bookends, the book Club You Can Carry Anywhere.

I'm your host, Hannah Matt Donald and are we bookending the conversation with some of the most exciting voices from.

The bookish world.

Welcome to another episode in our debut Spotlight series, where we shine a light on the freshest authors and their work.

Today, that spotlight is on Lucas Oakley.

And his debut novel, Nearly Departed, which is out now and published by Bedford Square.

Nearly Departed is a book about love, grief and modern dating.

Lucas has somehow created the perfect balance of a novel that is both hilarious and gut wrenchingly moving.

Described by Jack Rook, creator and writer of Channel fours Big Boys, as utterly charming and hilarious, this is the debut that should be firmly on your radar.

Lucas Oakley is a writer and journalist based in London.

He has contributed to a wide range of publications including GQ, Vogue, New York Magazine, National Geographic, The Economist, A Squire and Vice, to name a few.

Previously, Lucas served as senior content editor at MOB and was short listed as a finalist for the Guild of Food Writers Food Writing Award in twenty twenty.

Lucas is also the creator of popular TikTok and Instagram book club five Books for Boys, which encourages men to read fiction.

Hit chat all about his debut Nearly Departed.

Welcome Lucas to Fire Weekends.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's weird hearing all your sort of like your life summed up in about you know, a minute.

But you did a pretty good job.

Yeah, that's me.

I mean, you've done lots of amazing things.

We did have a brief chat before we started recording about how cool I think it is that you've worked for MOB.

But I think a lot of people got very into their cooking during lockdown, and yeah, I think MOB definitely hooked a lot of us in so I found that very cool.

When I looked at your io.

Yeah, you've had a pretty cool career so far.

Yeah, Mob was it was a really interesting experience.

I sort of cut my teeth there.

I started when I was relatively young, and I left sort of four five years old, and I learn a lot there about you content, the internet, sort of the way that things get made and how people actually interact with things online a lot of ways.

I think we did a quite a hard pivot, maybe like three quarters away into my tenure there, but we realized the content we were making that I was doing one online wasn't natural what people wanted to buy.

So then we sort of have to try and realize what do people actually want from something?

And that just got me thinking with books and writing, just because you're writing something this that's necessarily I mean, people want to read it, and then trying to figure out things that people actually want rather than just writing something that you want to write.

It's quite hard about to find.

So that was quite a good learning the experience.

And then I've got eight loads of delicious food as well, which always helps.

Always a treat.

We will get into the food descriptions in your book because I'm a massive food and love chatting about food, so I will be asking about that later, but I do love to start before we get into your book by asking what you're currently reading.

Yeah, supers, I'm reading Flesh by David Sloyur.

Short.

It's amazing.

I'm about sort of I think I'm only about eighty ninety pages in.

I read the first like twenty pages, and I thought it was excellent.

It's so good.

I loved his other, his other novel, All That Man Is.

I read that sort of when it came out back in there, and that was a It was a real big text for me in terms of getting back into reading.

I think I studied English university.

I was doing lots of sort of you know, like technical work, thinking about it really hard, and I sort of read that as like a pleasure reading.

It reminded me of that you can just read books for fun and it can made us a complete joy just for entertainment purposes.

And that was real.

Yeah, that sort of spartan to get back into reading for pleasure.

And then now seeing with the next book and like this, it just keeps getting better and vers incredible.

He's so good.

Flash is actually the first book of his that I have read, which I deserve a slap on the rest for because obviously he's so prolific in the literature space.

But that was the first book of his I read, and it was such a joy to get to.

And now I'm like, I'm going to have to get hold of like everything else that he's written, because it's just he's just so incredible at what he does.

I also want to ask you start with about what I mentioned intro, which is about your online book club campaign sort of thing.

It's to encourage men to read more fiction, and I think David Sloy's probably a good jumping off point.

I'd love to start by asking how that idea sort of came about, and then I'd love to find out what some of the favorites might have been.

So it's sort of I've been doing it for quite a while now, I think almost two years, and I kind of the seed the idea basically came well.

I would always be online consuming book content on sort of Instagram, on TikTok and scrolling through it but never really finding anything that spoke to me personally.

It was a lot of fantasy stuff.

It's a lot of romantic stuff.

It was a lot of books that necessarily aren't within my wheelhouse, which is great, but they're not something that really gets me going.

They're not something I read in my spare time.

And there's always sort of these news headlines going on about how men don't read enough, and men aren't reading and men are writing, and there's sort of everything that I was seeing recommended by men tended to be like either a self help book like a Jordan Peterson or sort of a rich Dad, Poor Dad, these books that weren't necessarily terrible, but we're kind of doing this weird, insidious thing.

I think men feel they need to improve every single facet of the life, but every second where it's all this self improvement hustle culture where I thought it'd be nice for men to maybe connect more of the emotional side of things.

But think fiction, to me, is the perfect conduit for that.

It's how you can engage your imagination.

It's how you can engage in a story, and you can feel different things that other people have felt, even if you don't relate to them at all, you know, which is the beautiful thing about it.

So I figured if I kind of want to see that as got to be at least three four of the people who want to see it as well.

So I made a little video saying, like, look, everyone keeps trying to making Jordan Penson.

I think he's an idiot.

You should read these five books for boys instead.

And then it's sort of got really good action and got like tens of thousands of views from there, and then I sort of thought that this is a format that's quite easily arestible.

I could do that again.

I did it again the next month with another five books, and then did again the month after that with another five books, and it kept sort of taking off and gets snowballing and people seem to really engage in it, which is really sweet.

And then from me and two friends have launched a boys book club in person where you meet up every single month and talk about books, and it's been nice to see the fallout in real life afterwards.

I love that.

And has there been any favorites that have been popular amongst everyone's turned up?

As you know, people said like, oh no, I actually really love this one, you know, as they've been because sometimes with book clubs I find that they can be kind of mixed opinions on a book.

But has there been any that have been like favorites across the board?

Yeah, it's it always quite fun the interesting discussions afterwards.

It's not always the books that you think it's going to be.

I think the top rack one from my club so far has been personal ever, it's The Trees and then also Any Human Heart by William Boyd, which is the big long rum.

I think that was the most like joyful discussion the book club.

But everyone's just like I had a great time with this's what fun.

We allays had a really nice time.

There's been We've done a Jillie Cooper as well, which was actually a lot better save than we thought.

We did Imagen, which is one about her sort of going off with a tennis player and having a holiday abroad, which is great and good fun.

And then yeah, there's a few that have quite sort of spiky response.

I think Sally Rooney really split the crowd, which is interesting.

I mean that doesn't surprise me.

I'm a massive Sally Rooney fan, but I know that she can be quite divisive.

No words will come into me, then, yeah, she can be quite divisive.

I know a lot of people known about the lack of lack of speech marks that just seems to really bother people, Whereas I'm like, I don't care, Like I'll let to do whatever she wants because I love the content.

And I didn't love Beautiful World, Where Are You?

But I love I think every other one of the words.

It's so comfortable.

Yeah, it's so funny that book seems to be the one that a lot of people didn't get on with, but I did love that one.

I want to also quickly mention you wrote this amazing essay for Service ninety five in summer, which is around the topics that we've just been speaking about, and I will link that essay in the show notes and something that you did just kind of mention.

But this line in particular made me absolutely cackle.

Men would literally rather read about military tactics and in fifth second China then go to therapy.

It's suppressingly true as well.

I mean that like that's that's a reference to Sun Zoo's The Art of War, which is literally always on best their list.

Because men seem to think that stoicism and reading about these old school militiary tactics is going to somehow be useful in their day to day life.

And I don't get it.

It's like it's like many work in recruitment who think somehow this is going to make a difference in their business meeting.

I just to me, it seems so alien to everything that you should be trying to do to about yourself, almost going too far to one way, going like completely devoid of emotion, just thinking about life as you know, a tactic or a war, which is a bit mad when really you're just getting up and logging into computer.

Yeah, it's pretty mental.

You did also write in that essay.

While there are.

Heaps of women authors writing poignantly and effectively about love, more men writing about writing and reading about love isn't just helpful but necessary.

Now, I agree, But tell us why you feel that way.

I think to me, it's it's obviously growing up as a man.

As all identified as a man, male models do make such a big impact in your life.

You know, there is something about this sort of father figures, whether their actual father or the sort of surrogate father figures coming in where you do have a job as an adult male to be representative for the youth of today.

They do look up to you in ways that a woman can try and do but will never exactly be able to do.

And I think it's really hard nowadays, especially to find positive male role models.

It's why teachers at school such a big thing, as a big drive in primary schoolers to get more male teachers, just to have that kind of touch point from your gage of someone who's you know, willing to cry, willing to share motion, willing to sort of engage themselves in a slightly different way that's not your sort of protypical big bad male, you know.

And there's loads of other malerators in the space, like I love David Nichols, I think it is incredible, Bobby Palmer, Mike Gaye, there are there are sort of others who sort of work in the same wheelhouse, which it's great to be sort of a part of that.

But I think it just does to need to be a few more of them, you know, not just men writing books about cowboys and guns.

Yeah, exactly.

I do think you write beautifully about love, and I think it really is refreshing when you come across male authors, you know, engaging with.

Stories like that and writing.

Stories like that because you're like, oh, there are men out there that we feel things and aren't afraid of your things, and I think that's just kind of so nice to see.

But I would really love to start by asking you about the initial inspiration for Nearly Departed.

Yeah, of course, it's sort of a two twofold answer to that question.

I used to work in in Clapham and office down there.

I used to work for Really Food magazine and then one day, literally sort of coming into work in the office, I actually saw a woman on her bike go into the back of a really lard truck and then seeing it in the moment.

It's on these big instances where you don't really know what's going on, it's quite hard to kind of you know, like digest what's just happened.

But instantly you know someone's just dying.

It's the first time I've ever seen someone dying.

Immediately your body goes that's that's the person's not alive anymore.

You see it happen.

And then for the next few days we're sort of coming into work and you can see these flowers left by sort of you know, the road where it happened, And to me, it was it was sort of quite a stark experience.

But the biggest thing that I was thinking of was what would it be like to someone who actual knows the person.

What if that's your you know, your partner, your girlfriend, your mum, your sister, your daughter.

That would be the worst thing a planet, just a random day of your life, to completely turn it over.

So that was a sort of an incident that was always simmering at the back of my mind and then also, my father was married before my mum, so he got married quite young, when he was about eighteen I think, and unfortunately his first wife passed away.

So in a way that's always been kind of like part of our sort of family history and family law.

It's understanding that love can exist again in many ways.

It doesn't have to be a one and done thing.

You can love multiple people.

Love can die, love can disappear, love can end, but it can always come back again.

So it's almost that hope of second chances.

And I wouldn't exist if my dad hadn't remarried my mother, So it's always you know, there is hope at the end of the tunnel, and those sort of things, combined with my obsession with that nineties rom coms, kind of fueled the end result, I think, which was, Yeah, it started off as an idea during COVID, but I think most people had sort of ideas and decided to start noodling around the things.

And then eventually I've sort of taken it a bit more seriously as it went on.

I mean, I'm really glad that you did take it seriously, because I absolutely loved this book, and I don't know why my memory is getting so much worse with age.

I'm only thirty, and it's just getting horrendous.

To the point where we obviously had a conversation about you coming on the podcast, and I would have obviously read the bio, thought I really want you know, to read this book, I really want to have you on the podcast.

But it's just I must have accepted it, and then it's just immediately gone out of my head because I wasn't prepared within the few pages for what happened.

It was just so unexpected, and I was like, how have I not remembered.

In the globe?

Al I not remembered this?

So it really took me by surprise, and I kind of in the last couple of sentences, I could kind of feel where we were going to.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no no.

And it's got a full experience because again, having written the book, I've never been surprised by any point of the narrative because it's always coming out of my head and it's been fun having people come up to So I didn't expect this to happen.

I didn't expect why to happen.

I was so shocked and surprised by this because I have never been able to that experience as a reader, and I never will, which is quite it's quite a frustrating experience.

Sometimes write a book and go, I don't know what it's like to read it, because in your head all you do is know exactly what's coming up next.

Yeah, I mean it was one of those deaths that took me by surprise, which again we just said, like it's.

In the blurb, so I don't know why it did.

But you know, you're in BET's best head, You're kind of going through life as her, and then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, it's one of those like really awful, like like in one day that death is just and I feel like, you know, I can spoil one day by now, Like I think people have.

Seen it, they've watched it, they've read it, they've cried.

We've all cried.

But he's one of those that like really like hits you in the goat and you're like, this can't possibly be happening.

I do want to ask you about Joel, your protagonist.

I feel like I'm split between Joel and Beth in who I have more in common with.

I really related to him in the way that he sort of second guesses everything.

You know, he overthinks a lot of what he says, especially when he's dating.

And he's also as you write, he was one of those people who would start thinking about lunch halfway through breakfast and been planning his dinner before he'd even finished his lunch.

I looked so much.

He's fun.

It's quite a sort of a relatably frustrating character.

I think a lot of people respond in different ways.

I think to him being such a big part of the narrati, I think best seems to be that most people respond really warmly terms seem to really love her and seem to think she's kind of like a really engaging character.

Joel seems to be quite splits the crowd a little bit, with people going like, I think this bloke is really really insufferable, and other people think like, this bloke is really really relatable, which is quite funny.

I think it's kind of meant to be both.

It's almost like the worst part to yourself kind of come out during grief, and during these experiences you sort of become very selfish, should become very sellipsistic, so you do things just for yourself in some ways, and that was kind of representing that in some ways.

But also I think humans are genuinely quite you know, mundane, and we always come back to our same routines and stuff, and it's almost like stuck in this little rut the whole time of his life and what he thinks life can be.

And then it sort of takes, you know, the narrative of the block to kind of breathe him out of it and make him hopefully see that he's been ignoring his friends, ignoring his life, he's ignoring everything else that's going on around him because he keeps getting stuck in this little cycle.

So he was really fun to write.

But also, yeah, it's been interesting to see people who really dislike him at the end of it.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

You're not meant to completely like him, And yeah, he's meant to be a relatively complex ish character, you know.

I mean, we all love complex characters, and he is.

I can kind of see, you know, there are times when he's insufferable and when you kind of go, oh, like why have you said that?

You know, he really puts his foot in it sometimes, But I do think ultimately he is a very lovable character.

I do really want to ask you about the death and grief aspects in the book and how Joel has sort of learned to navigate life after loss.

You know, he's dealing with this kind of conundrum that he's got where he has to fall in love within three years after he's lost his girlfriend.

And I wanted to ask, first of all, how has writing about death and grief and those sort of subjects.

What is it kind of taught you about those things?

I mean quite a lot.

It's a lot of research involved as well, and sort of talking to people and trying to find out how different people reacting in different ways.

It does make you think a lot about life.

Funnily enough, when you start writing about death, you think more about life and how you can make the most of it and how you want to keep things you know existing and keep things rolling for as long as possible.

Really is what makes you want to get avoided as much as you can, But also it makes you face it in some ways and think about it and what would the fall that be and start planning your will and doing all these different sort of like admin evolved to me, the interesting thing about it was.

I think grief that's sort of straight away and is really raw is interesting and there's lots of rich stuff you can get from it.

But to me, it was almost that three years down the line, where it's come a bit less sharp, it's a bit more sort of vague.

You're still feeling grief, but it's not the most important thing on your mind.

It cannot be the most important thing in your mind anymore.

It just sort of has to live with you.

It's like carrying sort of a load in your shoulders the entire time.

I that to me was more interesting where it goes.

What do you do when that's over and life has to sort of go on.

You're still carrying this thing around with you.

You don't really know what to do with it or what you can do with it.

And that's that's a big part of I think everyone's going to experience death and love at some point.

Those are the big two themes.

You know, everyone kind of asked hopefully will experience.

You know, it means you've you're not going to experience greet if you haven't loved, and you can't really experience, you know, love if you don't try and put yourself out there again.

So yeah, it's something a lot about life in some ways.

But also I think I've still much so much left to experience, you know, I'm not even so my oh god, it's all still to come.

It's been quite nice.

It's been good practice, I think.

Yeah, for sure.

I think grief is such a complicated emotion, and I think, you know, we all respond to it in very different ways.

And I was really.

Curious, actually, why you chose to jump ahead in time, as in a couple of years after he loses Bath, rather than, you know, exploring the immediate aftermath of the fact.

I think, to me, that's sort of where you'd start moving on with your life potentially realistically.

And he has this argument with Beth at some point about when it's a good time to move on, when should still move on with their life, And those questions, to me are inherently interesting because at some point you are and have to ask yourself that question, and to be in their shoes, you don't really know.

I think immediately it's easy to say, how would you feel if your partner died?

You'd feel upset, you'd feel this, you'd feel that you'd obviously be distraught.

I think everyone be able to answer that question, how would you feel when your partner died?

How would you feel three years later?

Is a harder question to answer, I think, and I think if you ask anyone that do have quite conflicting response.

I think you look at life, look how people react to grief.

Some people move on completely, some people move on slowly, some people never move on, And there's always different ways that people reacted depending on who you are as a person.

I think getting into that and sort of trying to uncover what kind of person would joby if this happened?

How would he eventually start moving on this life?

And it's it's the weird routines when it starts feeling guilty for his grief.

I find that quite an interesting thing, because again, what would your partner want for you?

There's no way for anyone to ever know that, unfortunately, But what if she came back and you could ask her, and then it's like, oh, okay, maybe this is an interesting way to get into a story.

If he goeses back, what would they tell you to do?

And what would someone who's just died and seeing you trying to move on, what they advise you to do with your life and what should you do?

You know?

Yeah, I think this book is such a great kind of conversation start.

And I was reading lots of parts of it out to my boyfriend.

You know, he really loves it when I when I do that, and I go, you must stop everything you're doing and listen to this.

And there were aspects, as I said, of Joel's character that I really related to.

But there was a lot with Beth that resonated with me.

And there was a part where she like asks Joel would he still love her if she was like the size of her mouth or.

Something, and the kind of questions.

I think it's based on a real life question my partner asked me one time.

There's a lot of like real life tidbits.

It's like, well, this has happened to me, this is real you.

I'm glad to know that it's not just me being an absolute widow to my partner.

And it's well, we were having a discussion about the question that she asks of of you know, how long would it take him to move on?

And I think you're right, like it is something.

That would sort of split people because the irrational part of me was is like, no, I don't want the partner that I'm now with and love very much to go off and be with somebody else.

I can't think of anything worse.

But of course you don't want them to sit there and be depressed.

And my boyfriend is They have this whole argument jol and Beth about how sometimes she wants him to just say something that she that he knows will make her happy or that isn't necessarily true, but will you know, keep her satisfied or whatever, rather than you know, saying something completely rational.

He switches on the very rational part of his brain and answers things in that way.

And that's very much what my boyfriend's like.

He can be overly rational sometimes and I'm like, no, tell me what I want to hear.

It's quite a blasic male response to things as well.

It's sort of I can fix it mentality, where it's like, no, that tough love.

I'm going to tell you what's right and wrong, and sometimes you don't want to hear that.

You want to hear a lie that makes you feel good, and that sort of it's realizing that life is about that, and it's all about a compromise as well.

That some boy thank lovers in many ways is realizing, you know, which bits you're gonna have to give up yourself for someone else, and that is, you know, part of the past.

So you can't always do what you want to do.

You can't always give the rational aans if someone wants to hear something else sometimes needs to tell them what they want to hear, and that's okay, you know.

Yeah, yeah, definitely, I'm going to relay.

That's my boyfriend.

Lucas said.

I do really want to ask you about another important relationship in Joel's life, which is his friendship with Sam, which he does describe at one point as outside of Beth and his relationship with Beth as Sam being one of the greatest sources of his life, which I think is such a beautiful thing.

I was curious, was you know, this sort of important male friendship, this positive male friendship.

Was that something that was important to you to represent?

Yes, yeah, definitely, I think that's something where in my own life, I find my friendships the longest relationships I've been in really, you know, I've got friends have known for sort of you know, something like twenty years, other ones for like ten, fifteen years.

And they are.

They're such important things about life.

I think, like everyone, you just these are just the people you choose to hang out with, which is quite a bizarre the more you think about friends, it is odd.

These are just friends that you speak to in text and then hang out with all the time.

There's other human beings like on the earth that you just happen to have a fun time with, and yeah, it's maybe are so such an important part of the fabric of life and enjoyment.

I think to me, male friendship is a really interesting thing because it gets a lot of it's a lot of flak.

I think a lot of people see it as it can be toxic, and it can be and it can be not good, and it can be dangerous.

You can lead to all such situations people forced to be a person they're not want the force to be.

I think male friendship can also be embracing.

It can be a brotherhood.

It can be sweet, it can be sincere, and I think you do need to experience both and sometimes I've learned a lot from my female friends, learn a lot from my male friends.

I'm glad that have both of the because I can see what they can bring to you each side.

I think you do kind of need a little bit of an outlet either way.

I think that to me, right about male friendship is an important thing because again, you want to show people that it is it is love.

You're allowed to say you love your friends, and that's say you love your mates, and you're allowed to give them a hug.

It's okay.

You don't have to always, you know, give them a firm part of the back.

Yeah, I think it is.

I mean men are famously you know, they struggle to kind of they've kind of been taught that men can't be emotional, you know, it's sort of a societal conditioning that you know, men aren't allowed to be emotional.

You know, you don't say I love you, you don't hug your mates and all that kind of stuff.

And I think it's really cool to see people like breaking those societal norms and knowing that, like it's more than normal to tell your mates that you love them and to be there for them and to hold them accountable and you know, all those kind of things.

So it was really refreshing to read about Joel's friendship with Sam, and I was really intrigued by something that you wrote, which is that Joel had faith that male friendships were somehow more resilient than female friendships.

Do you think that's true.

I don't know if I think that's true.

I think it's an interesting one.

Where's a lot of the blokes I know sort of have these strange friendships with people where they never see their mates.

They're sort of they'll be really close friends with someone they won't see them for like this maybe once a year, twice a year, and then yet when they meet up again, it's as if nothing has really changed.

The sort of pick up back with the left off with this kind of like statis level of light they get.

I think because men tend to get a little less and maybe less emotionally caught up in their friendships.

They think there's less politics involved of hanging out more with this person or that person.

Why have you seen them?

You're not seeing me, And it's more like when you see me, I am your friend.

When you don't see me, it's okay if you see other people, which is for better words, think men are good at compartmentalizing those friendships where I think a lot of my friendships with women they tend to be a bit more competitive in some ways, or they well, maybe about they need slightly more from their friendships, think men because they learn to expect less, to expect less from their relationships and their friendships in some ways, they accept their willing to accept maybe less contact, less texts, less voice notes.

Yeah, it's so interesting though, to hear the male perspective on female friendships, because I speak about female friendships so much on the podcast, and I think it's such an intense dynamic.

But you're so right, like it is quite a compa tive one, and it is very much that you know, if we don't see each other for a long period of time, you know, it's like it's the sort of an animosity there of like, oh well, why is that?

Who have you chosen over me?

And I don't think it's necessarily intentional.

It's just something that happens.

It's quite a natural, it's a natural responsible to sort of worry about these things.

And you do have to sort of main friendships, our relationships, you do have to tend to them.

I think it's just because there's kind of a lower maintenance.

Menages a different house plant.

Basically, they can run less water, they can just be in the corner and just kind of like vibe, you know.

Just vibe.

I love that.

I did say I wanted to talk to you about food writing food in general.

There is so much great food writing in the book, and obviously you know, I've had a look through your Instagram and there's lots of amazing food pictures on there, which I absolutely love to say.

Do you think there's ever a world in which food writing or food descriptions wouldn't have been in this novel?

I know it's It's something that was actually initially quite a hard cell to agents when I first pitching myself out there, because all my writings basically involved in food, like ninety percent, sort of the bilines you mentioned are writing about food.

I do some culture bits as well, as I've done celebrity profiles and writing about television and art.

I think food is the bulk of my you know, my ouvra, And then I think trying to convince people that I can write about something that's not food was a little bit of a yeah, a jump for something to go, why isn't it about food?

I'm like, well, because I was sort of write about food my day to day, it felt a bit like a bust on holiday, then going home and writing a whole book about food.

I would wanted to do something I was completely different.

So it was almost like, for purely selfish reasons, I wanted to enjoy myself writing fiction.

Don't think I didn't have too much in And then yet you read the book and there's heaps of food discussions.

There's sort of like these long descriptions of like a there's a Putin esca getting described at one point.

There's lots that's quite a lot of past in the book, which is delicious book.

Wonder all that means, I think it's hard for me.

It's such a big part of sensation, a big part of my life, where if you're writing characters who sort of maybe resemble you in some ways, it's quite easier to write about because you go, this is how I think about food, this is maybe how he'd think about food.

And I think I know so many people it's such a poplar part of our relationship and our friendships where you tend to meet someone, you break bread over food, so weede most of your good discussions.

If me and my partner said, you know, talk about something, we'll talk about something over dinner where we're not watching itally, we'll just sit at the table.

And it does feel different when you're eating food with someone and talking about someone because you get rid of all the distractions of what you're doing.

You can just focus on whatever you're talking about.

I think that's where I think a lot of my happy memories around the DNCRE for growing up as well as a family would always have dinner and it'd always be quite a big part of the day.

I think from there it's then become this weird sort of place where I think emotions are allowed to live a little bit more around food.

Yeah, definitely, I think it's a bad time where you know, discussions, important discussions happening around food.

The only tragic thing is when you know it all kind of kicks off, that food gets left.

I always think about I always think about this Christmas dinner that was had in my family and it kicks off and people left the table and my Christmas dinner got chucked away, and it's genuinely devastating thing that's happened to me.

That's horrible, that's really quite again, it's that lost joy as well, you know how good it is and knowing it's never you're never going to experience that again as many times as you're like, you can never relive that.

Oh God, so that.

Yeah, I didn't get a Christmas de human.

I'd be human too.

You get turkey sandwich the next day?

At least, No, I don't think I did.

Yeah, I was really punished that you that's.

A brutal Christmas.

Yeah, cold COVID dinner.

Yeah.

I was well behaved as a teenager after that.

Yeah, well you got to learning curve.

You learn a big lesson from that.

Oh yeah, one hundred percent.

There is a question in the book that Alice Sorry, Joel asks Alice, and he talks about their friendship and how she allows for him to ask these sort of strange questions that I don't really think are strange but other people might.

And he asks her, if you could only eat foods that start with the same letter for the rest of your life, which letter would you choose?

And I was wondering if from writing that you've thought through what your answer would be.

Oh, it's a good, it's a good.

Yeah, it's a question I also asked with color.

It is also quite a form for like one food again, color, which one would have been it's all.

They're all in the vague sort of same whehearts of like stupid ship, I asked people at the pub.

But I think Sea was always quite a good one.

I think see, you can last night, get chicken, you can get carrots, crisps, yeah, chocolate, cottage cheese.

So like you need to think about health as well is important thing.

You got to think you've got enough vegetables to live by, You've got enough protein to kind of, you know, not die, and you've got enough curves to sort of keep yourself going.

Crackers, crackers, chicken and cheese, lot of lives.

That's good, that's a good life.

Christmas dinner, Christmas dinner.

I'd never lose again.

There, you be fine.

There you go eat Christmas dinnervery day for us.

You love You mentioned cottage cheese.

Then there's a lot of people saying that online that cottage cheese is a colt.

At the minute, do you agree it is?

It seems to be really easy with lobbing, like an extra twenty to thirty grams of protein in a dish.

So like a really cynical point of you.

Basically someone's made like a pasta salad.

If you had a cottage cheese in there, so it's a high protein pasta salad, which everyone wants.

So it's an easy It's basically a shortcut.

Happens to getting high protein on any kind of recipe online, which means every it's going to click on it.

And I quite like it.

It is quite salty, though, I would say cottage cheese, yeah, it can.

Be for sure that my favorite.

I only really like the it's.

A very specific brand, is it like Longley Farm or Langley Farm.

It's a really banging cottach cheese.

I never thought would be talking about cottae cheese on the podcast I Love.

I used to I used to at university.

This is hor was really telling on myself it.

I used to used to get cottage cheese, put it in a bowl.

I had a sweeper protein powder, then had frozen fruit and just mix it up and eat that.

It was awful.

Oh my, I was a young man back banging gym, trying to get.

Trying to get you know, I mean, it's not the worst thing I've seen somebody eat as a student meal, so I like, there's a lot.

Of protein to that.

Someone take their recipe, it's still that put that alone.

New recipe just dropped off, mob.

I finally kind of want to ask you about love and yearning and all of those things.

This is obviously very much a novel amongst other things about yearning, and as we've just been talking about online discussions, there is a lot of discussion online around you and it being a lost art.

Do you think it is?

I think maybe it's interesting because I've sort of been out of the dating scene for quite a while, it's hard for me to kind of stay with complete confidence whether people are are yearning or I find it hard to believe that no one is yearning.

I think it's such a natural human emotion and state of being in some ways.

And when you read like Romeo and Juliet at the start, and he's just, you know, completely head over his heels for someone.

I can't remember the name of the girl which I'm going to get in trouble for, but it's not it's Rosalind, Rosalind.

There you go.

So he's absolutely mad for as yearning for this random woman who we're never going to hear from again.

The whole thing.

She's fine, she completely disappears, and you you sort of constantly living from life.

I've always sort of lived my life as a state of like yearning for a slightly different person, you know, like even thinking about to primary school, the different eraas I can think of all the different cushes I used to have, and then moving on from one push to nextcop and just find your life in lots of ways, and even your questions on celebrities and pop stars and singers from bands and things you do sort of have different areas when you've moved on to your new obsession.

I think we're never really going to get with completely.

I think what missing is people being sincere about it.

I think we live in a culture now which is sort of we're quite big into irony, We're quite big into people sort of being too cool for school.

And I think what we missed out is people being open and honest.

Seen as corny because it seems cheesy, because it is corny, and it is cheesy, but also I think that's okay.

I think you're allowed to be corny.

You're allowed to be cheesy because it's got.

What love does is make you into this sort of big, wet, soppy mess.

Sometimes you might write someone a poem and it might laugh at you for it, but also there's another person out there who'd really liked that poem.

So I think you've got to find the right person for your sort of the energy you're putting out into world, which I think is it is possible.

But yeah, I think what we take, we'll go come back to yearning.

Everyone loves to love, you know, Yeah, they do.

I think like you said, though, it's just like you know, it's not seen as very cool and people do like to like cool, and maybe they are yearning but they're hiding it.

Which, Yeah, I wonder if we're going to get a comeback for it when Wuthering Heights the adaptation.

Drops next year.

Yeah, I'm interested to see I mean, jacober LORDI is just I just like to watch him on screen.

It's excellent, good Rankenstein.

No, I haven't seen it.

I've heard.

I've heard mixed things.

I've heard he's very good in it.

I've felt like that's that's the more consistent thing.

Yeah, I'm very curious about that adaptation next year, especially with their's Emerald Fanel isn't it and Saltburn was such a success that I'm very curious what she's.

Going to do with this.

It looks at least it looks interesting.

It'spar lots of discourse already, people saying it's about this, it's about this, and the film's not even come out, and people trying to work out the twist in it.

I'm like, okay, I don't really know if you like Jacob e Lordi.

It's a good And there was a good TV adaptation of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which is about this sort of Australian prison of war camp where they get trapped in engineered that was really good, and that sort of it's just two storylines of a really stark prison of warcamp and then a nice romance story.

So it's kind of it scratches a lot of itches, but it's a really erring watch.

But there's a really good scene where Jacober LORDI is having sex with someone and he holds the entire bed at once.

It's incredible.

You need to you need to see it to believe it.

Oh my god.

Okay, I'm promised.

That's not the selling point.

I do really want to watch that.

It is really good.

That would I being a good mental head space to watch it because it is a bit but it's a really good adaptation of a Ray good novel as well, amazing.

I will have to watch that.

Lastly, I want to ask you what is next for you?

What is next?

I'm currently working on book two, which is which is fun.

It's weird, you sort of get this sophomore sophomore syndrome.

I think the pressures on to write this second book, and no one's second book is really their best book in some way, so the kind of pressures on to make sure this one either is like as good as the first or does something difference the first, and trying to work out where I want to go with my career.

So I might be of a crossroads currently where it's like what I want this book to say and what's it going to say about me?

As a writer.

I think with your debut level, you get the excitement of being a debut and it's a fresh slate and you can start doing something and there's so room to pivot afterwards.

I think once you set it down with two books, you're going to be setting on a certain path and it's where do you want to go?

Do you want to go this way?

As this sort of writer doing it this way is a slightly different writer.

So I'm sort of.

Yeah, I'm working on it currently, but it's fun.

I mean, I love I love writing.

If I didn't enjoy the protests, I wouldn't be doing it.

And it's quite nice to hang out with different characters.

It's weird doing press for a book where I'm like, I'm currently hanging out with like so many different people.

I'm like, well, in my head, there's these new cut toys I'm playing with.

It's really exciting.

It's almost like that Buzz and Woody from Toys Story.

I was like, Woody' is the first book, and I've now got Buzz and I'm buzzes class.

It's got the heats of buttons, and you know, it's really fun to fun to play with.

I love that.

Do you miss the characters from Near They Departed?

I do.

Yeah, it's quite hard to sort of talk about it again because it's almost like these things like someone they always get asked at like book events and stuff, whether I'd ever write a sequel for it, and I was like, no, I don't think I ever would, because once you sort of you get them and you create them and you put them in a box, it's quite hard to open it up again.

I think it makes it a little difficult.

It's quite nice to have them in stasis and have them sort of living there.

I do find rereading my work now quite difficult.

I've not even listened to the audiobook.

I need to actually mend that at some point and give it a go.

But it's quite hard to sort of revisit them in some ways.

It's almost like a little painful.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Would you ever adapt it?

I think I'd love to if anyone wants to throw some money at me to do that.

Excellent, that's happened.

I'd love to scream.

Netflix for a lot of people, which is which is nice, and no one's been like that's impossible to make.

Everyone's like that could be a Tully show in a movie, which is sort of.

It's not something I've intended going into it, but because I think being inspired by all this sort of like classic Nora Efron nineties rom coms and stuff that's probably quite naturally lends itself well to that.

Yeah, definitely.

And I'm a massive nor Referent fan.

So she's the best.

She's so good.

I'm real.

I've got a T shirt with a name on.

That's how I.

I was.

Honestly, I was so pleased when I saw her name pop up in your book.

At some point they got to you got to pay on much of the great I think.

Honest to guard you do.

Lastly, I've said lastly about a hundred times, but I do like to finish by asking for a recommendation.

So is there anything that you've engaged with culturally recently that you'd like to recommend?

Yeah, I was a bit late to the game, but I actually finished the final episode of mad Men yesterday.

You know which is which?

Is it?

This is the thing everyone.

I was always that person and being like, I've never seen I've never seen it.

Genuinely, it's so worth it.

It's about seven seasons of it, six seven seasons.

It's just great quality television.

Everything is so well done.

The actings in credible, the storylines are fantastic.

And having now got food to the end, I can say it's a really satisfying ending and the tie it all up, and I think it's quite nice to watch something that was a big part of the culture is like geist without being able to have it spoiled for you.

In some ways, you can take your own place with it.

There's no danger of like someone reveeling weakly what happened to Don or what's going on with Peggy.

You can sort of like take your own time to get through to the characters, figure it out.

And I think, to me, it's been quite nice to finish it.

But now I don't really not going to leave less because I missed them already.

I really miss them.

I'm still thinking about Don all the time.

I sort of sitting down the other day and my partner's asking what's wrong.

I was like, well, I've just finished mad Man.

I don't really know what to do with my life now.

It's a big as an empty part of my heart I need to fill with something else.

But I would highly recommend it Donner, who hasn't done it, and you know, yeah, it's a real good it's a real worthy journey.

I think I love that.

I'm late usually to the party.

With quite a lot of big TV shows.

I didn't watch Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad until Lockdown Breaking Bad?

Have you not again?

That might be next?

That might be an next to blacement.

Have you watched suc Session?

Yes, I've seen that one.

Such a banger.

I can't think what what big thing I can recommend to you, and there's so many great TV shows out there.

But yeah, thank you so much Lucas for coming on the podcast today.

I've loved chatting to you and I absolutely loved Nearly Departed, So yeah, thank you.

For coming on you.

It's very kind.

Where can the listeners find you?

On socials?

I should be everywhere?

Online is just Lucas Oakley, which is l U C A s O A K E l E Y.

People always miss out the second e, but yeah, find me there, TikTok, Instagram, good Reads, you can sort of read my book reviews as well.

Yeah, there's loads of amazing book recommendations on there.

And if you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to review and subscribe.

And if you want to give us a follow, you can do so at a pair of bookends pod on Instagram and at a pair of bookends on Twitter, slash x and TikTok.

Lastly, go buy yourself as a copy of Nearly Departed.

Links are in the show notes.

Go give Lucas a follow, and thank you so much for listening.

Goodbye.

Jeez, that's very very professional at the end.

Love that