Jersey Festival of Words 2019: Year 5

2019 marks the fifth year of Jersey Festival of Words; it feels like no time at all and also as though the Festival has been part of the landscape for much longer. This year, the events featuring female writers are predominantly non-fiction events, but there’s still an interesting range of subjects and some very special moments.

Those special moments come at the beginning and end of my Festival experience. On Friday evening the headliners, Kate Dimbleby and Cathy Rentzenbrink, create a show called ‘Out of Our Comfort Zones’. Dimbleby (yes, of that family) is a singer who wants to write longer pieces than three-minute songs and Rentzenbrink is an author (The Last Act of Love and A Manual for Heartache) who wants to sing. After sharing with us how they met and telling us their own stories – including Kate introducing us to Roland, the loop station which allows her to layer her vocals on stage – the fun begins. Kate asks Cathy to hum and we all join in to provide an accompaniment as Cathy opens her mouth and sings whatever notes she feels like. This is followed by a rendition of Stand By Me. Rentzenbrink appears exhilarated. The audience is collectively delighted that we’ve been allowed to witness this and to sing along in the darkness of the Opera House.

Then it’s Kate’s turn to be plunged into the new as Cathy sits her down with pen and paper, a timer set to five minutes, and some prompts related to memoir writing. We’re all invited to join in again. When the timer goes off, I’m lost in prose and surprised at what I’ve written. Kate, it turns out, has made one earlier. Following her initial meeting with Cathy, she began working on a memoir about her grandma, Mimi aka Dilys Thomas, who was the wife of Richard Dimbleby. It quickly becomes apparent that Kate can write and I’m already looking forward to being able to read the completed work.

The evening’s rounded off with an unexpectedly vulnerable moment where Cathy admits that she links singing to being drunk in the pub her parents ran. Now she no longer drinks, she isn’t sure she can disconnect the two things. Kate encourages Cathy to sing a sea shanty, one which Cathy learned from her dad, and Cathy does, growing in confidence as the piece progresses. As we leave the venue, there’s a sense that we’ve been part of something bigger than a literary event tonight. Something changed while Kate and Cathy were on stage and they’ve inspired us to try an activity that scares us too.

Saturday begins with a writer whose debut, award-winning book, The Salt Path came out of a terrifying life experience. Raynor Wynn begins her event with Andy Davey by explaining how a financial dispute with a friend led to the loss of the property her and her husband, Moth, had bought and restored twenty years earlier. This was compounded by Moth being diagnosed with a terminal neurodivergent disease. Determined to wrest some control over the situation, and inspired by Mark Wallington’s book 500 Mile Walkies, Raynor and Moth set off to walk the South West Coast Path. Raynor says they were drawn by the idea of following a line on a map. Physically moving forwards became a reason to go on, even though the path is 630 miles of relentless climes.

What stands out about Raynor’s story is the poverty her and Moth faced and how people reacted to their situation. She talks about how they underestimated the effect of hunger while walking the path and wild camping. A direct debit they forgot to cancel – house insurance for a house they no longer owned – led to them having pennies left with which to feed themselves. She talks about the narrowness of the path and how this forces interaction with the people you pass. Initially they told people the truth about losing their house, but the reaction from strangers – Raynor says she could see them physically draw back – led to Raynor and Moth changing their narrative. Instead, they told people they’d sold their house in a midlife moment. Now their story was inspirational. This has clearly affected Raynor and she states, ‘I’ve got something to say about homelessness’. It’s something I’m interested to hear more about – and in the current climate in the UK, it’s a topic many others should be paying attention to as well.

The day continues with another hot political topic via Leah Hazard, the author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story. Leah tells Cathy Rentzenbrink that she wanted to show the reality of her job and the experiences of giving birth. She comments that there’s a tendency to trivialise women’s experiences and their work, noting that the book’s been treated differently to recent medical memoirs written by men. Cathy says it’s unusual that they’re talking about normalising an experience that lots of people have been through.

Leah shares a range of stories. She talks about supporting teenagers giving birth and the care someone young and vulnerable needs; the ‘amazing’ experience of delivering a baby created via assisted conception to a lesbian couple, and, harrowingly, about the women she sees ‘on an almost daily basis’ who are being trafficked, and the holistic care they try to provide for these women. The job is ‘fascinating, endlessly, and challenging’. Hazard ends by saying she hopes the book ‘will make a difference. Individually. And maybe on a broader scale’.

Someone whose life did change enormously after having three children is Janet Hoggarth. She talks to Sara Palmer about how the events that followed the end of her marriage led to her first novel The Single Mums’ Mansion.

I’m on board as soon as Janet says she was told by a university tutor, ‘Your writing is fairly vulgar. No one wants to hear swearing. No one wants to read stories about girls having sex on a building site.’ Janet’s story is slightly more complicated than that, however. Not long after the end of her marriage, two of her friends found themselves in similar circumstances: one’s marriage broke up a month after Janet’s; the other gave birth only for her fiancé to leave four days later. The latter moved into Janet’s house so they could support each other as single mums – Janet’s children were 5, 3 and 1 when her marriage ended – and all three women synched the weekends when the children were with their dads so they could relax together. ‘It was really really magical. It was freedom.’

At the same time, Janet became interested in what she terms the ‘beardy weirdy’ aka holistic rituals and healing. She tells Sara she has a crystal in her bra and that she’s a trained reki healer. She cites two books which were important in her thinking The Journey by Brandon Bays and The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Janet detailed all of these experiences on a blog which her agent eventually convinced her to turn into a novel. It sounds like a riot and I leave the event keen to read it.

Saturday ends with more laughter as I interview Jenny Eclair, who is a joy. I’ll leave Festival reviewer Andy Davey to fill you in on that one.

Interviewing Jenny Eclair is pretty special but the magical moment that ends the Festival for me is Ana Sampson’s event about her poetry anthology She Is Fierce. Ana tells Richard Pedley that she compiled the book after realising that there were ‘more men called William’ than women in her previous anthologies and that when she looked for an anthology of poems written by women, she couldn’t find one. Ana’s passion for the poems she chose is evident in the way she talks about her reasons for including them and the decision to curate the anthology by theme, so readers could find poems that suited their mood. What makes this event so special though is the readings of poems that punctuate the conversation. Poems by writers including Lizzie Siddal, Yrsa Daley Ward, Hollie McNish and Imtiaz Dharker are read aloud by selected audience members. There’s something lovely and relaxing about being read to and especially so when the texts are poems. It allows us a real flavour of a carefully curated anthology.

My trips to Jersey Festival of Words are always lovely, but this year is especially so. Here’s to the next five years of wonderful events.

Festival photos by Peter Mourant.

Reframing the Conversation: Jersey Festival of Words, part one

The Jersey Festival of Words took place between the 26^thand 30^thSeptember. I was delighted to be invited back for the fourth year running, not only because Jersey’s such a beautiful place to spend a few days but also because it’s been a pleasure to watch this festival grow and bring such a wealth of interesting writers to the island.

Photograph by Peter Mourant.

One of the themes that runs (ha!) through this year’s events is a reframing of the conversation around exercise and women’s bodies. It’s no surprise to find journalist, runner, swimmer and author of two books about exercise –  Running Like a Girland Leap In– Alexandra Heminsley involved in this. On the Friday evening, Alex interviews Bryony Gordon whose book Eat, Drink, Runchronicles her journey from couch to running a marathon. Then on Saturday afternoon, Alex herself is interviewed by Cathy Rentzenbrink alongside Libby Page, author of debut novel The Lido.

Frankly, I could review Bryony’s event purely by using direct quotations. If you need a soundbite expressing things about exercise that other people (including myself) will recognise, she’s your woman.

Alex and Bryony begin by discussing the version of sport and exercise we’re sold. The idea, perpetuated right from primary school, that if you’re not good at sport you shouldn’t be doing it. This is followed by the marketing of running to women as something to do to make ourselves acceptable to others. Bryony: ‘I was scared of exercise…for me it was so rooted in self-loathing. I wanted to look like someone else.’ She began running ‘in desperation’ in the hope it would help her mental health. ‘I just needed to stay alive.’ It worked. Bryony realised there was a point where ‘I wasn’t doing it for the losses, I was doing it for the gains’.

Alex: Did you go quite slowly to begin with?
Bryony: What do you mean to begin with?

Bryony decided to run the marathon after thinking it ‘can’t be harder than the days when I can’t get out of bed’. Alex talks about how marathons are good for mental health because you’re ‘locked into a structure’ with the training regime. Bryony mentions the high that comes around mile 10 or 11, ‘I did that with my own body and that’s kind of magic’.

Having run the marathon in her underwear despite being told she needed to lose weight in order to do so, Bryony discusses the so-called ‘obesity crisis’ in relation to exercise. ‘When people who are overweight go out and show themselves and do exercise we’re all, “Put it away”. Obesity to me is as much a mental health problem as it is a physical one.’

It’s a theme that’s picked up again at the lido the following afternoon. ‘There’s no lean thigh or buff arm in the universe that will keep you exercising. It’s community and friendship,’ says Alex. This is echoed by Libby whose novel The Lido is about people coming together to save a local lido, making friends and enjoying swimming along the way.

Libby mentions how ‘community spaces are very much under threat’, linking the threatened closure of lidos to the rapidly disappearing libraries. She also mentions that one of her characters, Kate, who is in her 20s, suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. She’s ‘feeling quite lost in the world’ and it’s the sense of community and the friendship with Rosemary, who’s in her 80s, which allows her to feel less alone.

Alex talks about the connection between swimming, breathing and stress and how helpful the sport can be for managing anxiety. You have to be calm, she says. She thought learning to swim outdoors would give her control over an element but there is no controlling the sea. She describes swimming in the sea as ‘completely intoxicating’. Libby adds that swimming outdoors ‘really changes your perspective of things’ and relates an anecdote about being interviewed at Brockwell Lido in the rain. She didn’t want to get into the water for photographs but ‘It was suddenly just beautiful’.

Cathy mentions that she lives by the sea. She’s been contemplating swimming but hasn’t plucked up the courage yet. Both Libby and Alex offer tips but it’s the benefits to mental health that are mentioned which hold the most appeal. Libby says, ‘It makes you really happy!’ while Alex tells us she was at the lido at 6am with Bryony before the latter’s flight back to London. They swam as the sun rose and Bryony said, ‘I’m going to hold this in my body all day now’.

After the event, a group of women descend the steps into the water. Cathy and I watch standing at the railings above. It looks like fun; it looks like something we might try soon.

Books of the Year 2017

Due to life interfering, I read half as many books this year as I have in previous years. What I have read though has, on the whole, been incredibly good. I’ve selected the ten I loved the most and included five others I highly recommend at the end of the piece. If I’ve reviewed the book in full, there’s a link at the bottom of the description.

When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife – Meena Kandasamy

The story of a marriage between a young, educated woman and a university lecturer. When I Hit You is both a tale of domestic violence and of a woman becoming a writer by writing her way out of her situation. Kandasamy’s experimental style frames the experience as though the narrator is witnessing the horror brought upon her. It’s brutal, it’s thoughtful, it’s shocking. It’s incredibly relevant in 2017.

You can read my full review and watch my interview with Meena Kandasamy here.

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky – Leslie Nnedi Arimah

Hands down the best short story collection I’ve ever read. Arimah does things with the form that shouldn’t be possible. In the first story, for example, the protagonist is held in a moment while the back story of everything that led to that point is revealed and yet the tension holds sharp. Many of the stories are concerned with the way women are shaped by/shape themselves around men, all of them carry an emotional punch.

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi

Two sisters, Effia and Esa, born in West Africa in the 1770s are separated. One becomes the wife of a slave trader, the other is shipped to America as a slave. Gyasi follows the two lines to the present day. Each chapter focuses on the next branch of the family tree and works as a short story in its own right. Alongside this runs the story of the creation of the black race, its reasons and consequences. It’s an incredible achievement.

My full review is here.

Attrib. and Other Stories – Eley Williams

Williams’ debut short story collection is full of animals, clever word play, humour and love. While all of these elements contribute to intelligent, engaging stories, it’s the emotions at the core of the tales which elevate them to something special. The reader’s transported to the position of the narrator, feeling their anticipation at the potential lover standing next to them or their loss at the one who’s just left.

You can read my full review and watch my interview with Eley Williams here.

First Love – Gwendoline Riley

Neve is a writer in her mid-thirties, exploring her marriage to an older man, Edwyn, and the impact previous relationships, both romantic and familial, have had on who they are now. Almost everyone in Neve’s life is abusive in some form; Riley conveys this through a range of incidents told from Neve’s perspective, leading the reader to question whether or not she’s telling the truth. Searing and utterly pertinent in 2017.

My full review is here.

Vernon Subutex 1 – Virginie Despentes (translated by Frank Wynne)

Vernon Subutex once ran a legendary record shop in Paris. When his benefactor and musician friend, Alex Bleach, dies, Vernon is left homeless. Subutex moves between the houses and apartments of friends and acquaintances before ending up on the streets. Despentes gives a searing commentary on Western society’s views of a range of hot topics: social media, hijabs, the rich, sex workers and a whole lot more.

The End We Start From – Megan Hunter

An unnamed narrator gives birth to a boy as floodwaters rise in the U.K. Soon London is covered and the narrator and her new family can’t return to their flat. They move to their in-laws and then on to a refugee camp. Also works as a metaphor for the first year of motherhood. Taut and compelling.

My full review is here.

Homesick for Another World – Ottessa Moshfegh

A collection of stories about ordinary people at their worst, it’s a mirror held up to today’s society: to the misogyny, to the privilege, to the hypocrisy. Some of the characters know better but can’t be arsed to do better; some of them make an attempt but fall flat at the first hurdle. The collection’s full of characters for whom, essentially, nothing changes. Only Moshfegh could pull that off.

My full review is here.

Elmet – Fiona Mosley

“Daddy“ builds a house in a copse in the woods for himself and his teenage children, Daniel and Cathy. The land on which he builds is owned by Price, the most influential man in the area. Daddy is fully aware of the antagonism this will cause, but, as the best bare-knuckle fighter in the U.K. and Ireland, he wields his own form of power. From this moment, the two men are pitted against each other; it’s a matter of when, not if, the violent tension will explode. An exploration of gender roles and what happens if you transgress them, as well as a commentary on class and privilege.

I wrote about why Elmet is an important working class novel for OZY.

Seeing Red – Lina Meruane (translated by Megan McDowell)

At a party, Lucina feels a pain and blood begins to fill her eyes. She begins to go blind. The doctor tells her he can do nothing other than monitor the situation, leaving her to adjust to a life in which she has to rely on others to help her. She is furious and her anger increases as the story progresses. Told in flash length chapters with short, spiky, repetitive sentences. Horrifying and brilliant.

You can read my full review and watch my interview with Lina Meruane here.

And the highly recommended:

Tinman – Sarah Winman

Ellis and Michael are inseparable until Annie arrives in their lives and Ellis marries her. A story of hidden love, friendship, AIDS and art. Beautiful and heart-wrenching.

A Book of Untruths – Miranda Doyle

A memoir about Doyle’s family. Every chapter reveals a lie that’s been told while questioning the reliability of memory and the purpose of memoir writing.

A Manual for Heartache – Cathy Rentzenbrink

An indispensable guide for when the worst happens to you or someone close to you. My piece about it is here.

The Lonely Hearts Hotel – Heather O’Neill

The love story of performers Rose and Perrot and also a scathing commentary on patriarchal society’s treatment of women, particularly with regards to sex and shame.

My full review is here.

The Other Half of Happiness – Ayisha Malik

The sequel to Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged. Sofia’s married to Conall but there’s a whopping great secret he hasn’t told her. Has a punch the air, feminist ending.

My full review and interview with Ayisha Malik is here.

On A Manual for Heartache by Cathy Rentzenbrink and why I’m reclaiming Christmas

In 2015, Cathy Rentzenbrink’s first book The Last Act of Love was published. It’s an incredible memoir about the impact of her brother’s road traffic accident on her and her family. In the introduction to A Manual for Heartache, Rentzenbrink talks about what happened after The Last Act of Love came out; the stories other people told her about their own grief, the advice they asked for in order to support others dealing with loss.

This is the book I wish I’d had when the worst happened, full of the advice I wish I’d been given. It’s also the book I’d like to have beside me for whatever the future may hold. I wanted to pull all my thoughts together in one place, to have something to refer to when life took another twist, or started to look bleak around the edges.

In short chapters, Rentzenbrink covers how we hide our stories because the pain is too much to bear; how grenades are thrown into our lives and the guillotine comes down on what’s gone before. She gives us ‘An Etiquette Guide for Bad News’ and suggestions of what we can do for ourselves. She talks about her depression and anxiety, what helps and what doesn’t, and she gives advice to both her young son and her future self.

I’ve read A Manual for Heartache three times this year. The first time was on the 1^st of May, a week before my marriage ended. I didn’t know my marriage was about to end until the moment it did. It was, as Rentzenbrink calls it, a grenade moment.

In the immediate aftermath, in the mess of what now and how do I cope and trying to carry on doing my job and co-parenting my stepson, I took to carrying A Manual for Heartache around with me. I took it on visits to see my trainee teachers; I took it to the job interview I had two days later (I got the job); I took it to my friend’s where we drank bottomless cups of tea while I cried and she stroked my hair. Sometimes I took the book out of my bag and held it or put it on the table next to me. I didn’t re-read it, I didn’t need to. It was enough that it was there, that it had been sent to me at exactly the right time. A coincidence, no doubt, but a very welcome one.

The second and third readings were prior to interviewing Rentzenbrink at two festivals: Jersey Festival of Words in September and Off the Shelf festival in October. The conversation at each of these events was different; we were in different venues, in different cities at different times. But there was one thing we discussed on both occasions which took on more resonance for me than it had when I’d read about it.

Just past the midway point in the book there’s a chapter titled ‘Emotional Time Travel’.

Since I stopped treating time like the enemy, I’ve started to have a bit of fun with it and have invented a new game I call reclaiming. The first success I had was with rain. Rain has often been present when things have gone awry with me, and I began to suspect it was a contributing factor rather than a coincidence. I’ve learned that when faced with any situation, our brains start scanning for previous experiences so that we know how to respond to this new challenge. This was helpful when we needed to know what to do when a tiger hove into view, less so in a world where we are constantly bombarded with stress and stimulation. This is how we get triggered. I realized that when I sit and stare at the rain, my mind starts up a slideshow of all my previous breakdowns and pretty soon my mood is dipping because all I’m doing is remembering miserable episodes. I decided to see if I could rewire my brain.

One of the things Rentzenbrink did was buy some ‘magnificent mini wellies, grey with white and yellow daisies’ which she wore to both of our events. They were joyful and I took great delight in making her wave her foot in the air so the back row could see them. She then talked about playing in the rain with her son and how much fun they’d had, how she’d created new memories to override the old ones.

Not long after mine and Cathy’s second event, a friend asked me the question I’d been dreading: what was I doing for Christmas? I hate Christmas. I’ve hated it for years. The reasons for this are not ones I want to explain to anyone I’m not close to. This makes conversations with acquaintances and colleagues difficult. Responses from them which include references to Scrooge make me rage. But Cathy’s success at reclamation had triggered something: did I really want to feel miserable every year about an event that’s pretty much unavoidable? And, for several years now, the build-up to Christmas, the anticipation of the day, has been far worse than the day itself. I’m single again, I have no obligations, I can do whatever I like. What if I try to reclaim Christmas?

So far, I’ve got an advent calendar for the first time in a decade and I’ve bought new decorations for the tree, including some amazing Kate Bush ones. I let my stepson do the decorating.

As for Christmas Day, I’m spending it on my own, making my own rituals. Panettone for breakfast; a long walk listening to my favourite music; plenty of cheese, and binge watching a TV show (a re-watch of Breaking Bad this year). I’m looking forward to it.

There’s a line in a novel being published next year which says, ‘Any book is a self-help book, if you read it right’. A Manual for Heartache isn’t any book though, it’s a wise friend, a comforting hug, a light cutting through the darkness.

Thanks to Picador for the review copy.

Jersey Festival of Words, Days Three and Four: Changing the Conversation

Day three of the festival begins with me chairing two events. The first is Cathy Rentzenbrink who I interview at Jersey Hospice. It’s an amazing setting, a £5 million facility on a hill overlooking the sea. The event goes well; if you haven’t seen Cathy speak about her books and her experiences, I highly recommend it. She speaks so eloquently, full of heart and compassion and makes time for everyone who comes to share their experiences with her too. She’s also very funny and that feels important considering the subject matter.

The second event is a panel on fake news and social media curation with Felicia Yap, author of the dystopian thriller Yesterday; Miranda Doyle, author of the memoir A Book of Untruths, and Peter Mourant, Picture Editor of the Jersey Evening Post. We discuss their work’s relation to the truth, Twitter and Donald Trump. I recommend both books, very different but both very interesting.

The last four events I watch, over the remainder of Saturday and into Sunday, all have something in common: they’re about books that are beginning to change the conversation. Whether that conversation is about women and sexuality, trans women, Muslim women or the stigma around mental health, each contributes to the shift that’s beginning to take place around these topics (colour me an optimist).

First up is Rhyannon Styles, author of the The New Girl, a memoir about her transition. The interview gets off to a poor start when the interviewer uses Rhyannon’s dead name twice in the introduction. She corrects him from off-stage.

Rhyannon has lots of interesting things to say about her experiences and there’s plenty for us to hear about the way trans gender people are treated. She talks about recognising something of herself in Madonna in the Beautiful Stranger video. Art college was ‘the breath of fresh air I needed’ and where she first met people with similar interests – music, film, artists. At the time she identified as a gay male, ‘I let the role of a gay male dictate my sexuality’. She describes the nightclub Heaven as ‘monumental’ for her. It was a safe place to express herself and she began dressing and performing as female. In 2011, she saw the TV programme My Transsexual Summer which she describes as ‘the key to the door’.

‘You don’t transition on a whim,’ says Rhyannon, describing it as a long, hard, arduous process. The psychologist she saw was sexist, asking her whether she wore dresses and heels when she attended her appointment in jeans and a sweater. There was an 18-month waiting list at the gender clinic so Rhyannon bought hormones online and began taking them.

She discusses the other elements of her transition: the changes to her body; the laser hair removal treatment she describes as ‘eighteen session of torture’; the speech therapy, and the clothing experiments. ‘Some of my outfits are still mental…I was like the kid in the sweetshop.’

Early in the interview, Rhyannon’s asked what’s acceptable in terms of language. She explains that trans is an umbrella term. The best way to approach the issue would be to say, ‘Hi, Rhyannon, how would you like me to describe you? What’s your preferred pronoun?’

This desire to learn seems at odds with other parts of the interview, however. The story about the parents who removed their son from a school because of a transgender child in his class is raised. The interviewer mentions The Daily Mail to which Rhyannon replies, ‘The Daily Mail is hysterical’. On the subject of uniform rules and clothes for school she says, ‘Clothes are all made from the same fabric, they’re just cut in different ways’. The interviewer pushes her asking if she can understand the parents’ perspective. I don’t see why Rhyannon, or any other trans person, should be expected to understand the point of view of someone who’s transphobic.

Towards the end of the interview, the conversation turns back to Rhyannon’s body. At the end of the book, she discusses gender reassignment surgery. She says she thinks it’s an acceptable topic of discussion for the interview as she’s included in her book, however, some trans people think it’s unacceptable and it reduces them to their genitalia. Unfortunately, the interviewer states that it was the one thing he wanted to know and bemoans the fact he had to wait until the end of the book to discover the answer. Rhyannon turns the discussion back to her experience and thoughts. She says the NHS offered her surgery but it made her wonder whether the decision was about her or whether it was about what society expects her to look like. ‘My womanhood was for me to define; I don’t think having a vaginoplasty makes me a woman.’ She says she fell for an idea of completeness and that it’s not about the physical, it’s about the mental. Something for many of us to think about.

Daisy Buchanan talks to Cathy Rentzenbrink about her latest book, How to Be a Grown Up. It’s aimed at 20-somethings, although I’m pretty certain I could still do with some help at 39.

Daisy describes her 20s as ‘difficult’ consisting of crap boyfriends, dreadful jobs and hangovers. At 27, she went freelance and met someone lovely and now at 29, she feels that some things have fallen into place. She’s still poor at managing money though, she reveals. She’s fantasised about there being an adult auditor and says she wanted to write a book you could pull off the shelf at 3am and feel that you could find some help and support.

She talks about the jobs she had before she went freelance. At 22, she was a Mortgage PR, ‘It wasn’t for me’. She says there are parallels between jobs and relationships in the sense that you decided you’d quite like to be a particular type of person so you force yourself into things. She says ‘Be yourself’ is crap advice; ‘You don’t know, when you’re 22, who you are.’

The discussion turns to social media, of which Daisy says she’s a big fan. It’s where she met her husband and is an easy way of continuing friendships. However, she says it used to be a mix between a house party, a bar and a coffee morning and you could wander away. You can’t do that as much anymore. She comments that it’s difficult to have boundaries on social media, it creates a false sense of intimacy.

Cathy asks about sex and masturbation as it’s a topic Daisy’s written on regularly as well as there being a section in the book on it. Daisy says she has a fear and fascination of it. She was raised as a Catholic which meant that going to hell was a greater fear than getting pregnant but getting pregnant meant there’d be evidence of your sins. ‘We demonise women wanting to have agency over their own bodies.’

Daisy’s mother wrote to her school so she wasn’t allowed to take part in sex ed. Her writing about sex openly is Daisy’s way of covering what she wishes she’d know. She says we’re so quick to demonise porn that we’re not learning from it and how it can lead to expectations and male entitlement. They’ve grown up in a world that says this is okay. She says there needs to be a sexual revolution around pleasure, comfort and desire and there needs to be a language for women to express this.

Sunday begins with Ayisha Malik, author of Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged and The Other Half of Happiness. She talks about conceiving Sofia Khan as a Muslim version of Bridget Jones. She was Muslim dating at the time and had stories which her friends convinced her to write. ‘I never read about Muslim characters who aren’t oppressed,’ she says, ‘I just wanted her to be a normal human being’.

She uses humour because, she says, any situation that arises to do with racism, if you meet it with humour, it reduces it and the person doing it. It’s also an antidote to identity politics. On the reaction to the books, she comments, ‘I’ve not had a fatwa out against me, which is great.’

Khan talks about not wanting to be confined to writing one kind of book. She states her inspirations as Jane Austen, Nora Ephron, Anne Enright and Ruth Ozeki. The novel she’s working on at the moment is about a man trying to fulfil his mum’s dying wish by building a mosque in a West Dorset village. She links the idea to recent bombings saying, ‘When the perpetrator claims to share your faith that has a profound effect on you. Why should I always have to defend my beliefs?’ She says being a Muslim woman has made her ‘grittier’ and describes Muslim women as ‘Unashamed of our multiple identities. We’re multifaceted’.

She says she was honoured to be asked to ghost write Nadia Hussein’s novels (the second has recently been completed), although it ‘might be because I’m the only hijabi Muslim in publishing right now’. She describes the process as ‘a very different kind of writing. It’s quite prescriptive; the ideas are very much hers. I take myself completely out of it. I think that’s part and parcel of the process’. She agreed to do it because the publishers were transparent that it was Malik doing the writing.

The final event of the festival is one designed to help our mental health. Rachel Kelly is a former reporter for The Times and the author of Walking on Sunshine. She begins the event by asking us to stand if we or a member of our family has ever experienced a form of mental illness. If there’s anyone left seated, I can’t see them. She then asks us to remain standing if we’ve felt we could speak openly about it. Around 50% of the audience sits down. Kelly says she hopes she can contribute to changing that stigma.

Kelly tells her story: in 1997, she was working at The Times and had two small children. One night she couldn’t sleep. Her heartrate speeded up, she felt sick. She gripped the bed because she felt as though she was falling. She started to think that if she couldn’t get to sleep, she wouldn’t be able to go to work. If she couldn’t go to work, she wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage which would result in her losing the house and then her children. She was ruminating and catastrophising. She didn’t sleep for a further two nights. On the third night, she assumed she was having a heart attack and went to A&E. At the hospital she saw a psychiatrist who told Kelly her fight or flight response had become chronic.

She tells us that mental illness happens in a context and you can alter that context. (I think that’s too simplistic a response which doesn’t take structural factors into account.) However, Kelly didn’t change anything in her life except for taking the medication she was prescribed for a period of time.

In 2007, she became ill for a second time. This lasted for two years. This time around she became aware there was a pattern emerging and that if a form of mental illness occurs once it’s more likely to occur again. She changed her lifestyle.

The rest of the event consists of Kelly giving us some ideas as to how we can help ourselves. She begins with a breathing exercise during which we close our eyes and she talks to us about focusing on our breathing and our bodies. The reason for this is that we can only breathe in the present; it helps slow the sensation of time down. If you’re physically relaxed, your mentally relaxed, she says.

Kelly goes on to tell us some jokes about cheese – for example, Which kind of cheese do you use to disguise a small horse? Mascarpone – because laughter is good for us. She also recommends exercise and happy foods, which she says are oily fish, dark green leafy vegetables and dark chocolate. She tells us she’s providing us with a toolkit and knows that not all of her suggestions will work for everyone.

The final two things she mentions are the ones that appeal to me the most: first, we have to do an active listening exercise in which we tell someone we’ve never met before three things we’re grateful for and then they do the same. The idea is that we focus on the good things in our lives but, to be honest, I’m more interested in the other person’s story and we have a good chat about our lives. It’s a nice reminder that I like meeting new people and finding out about them. The second is about the idea of Flow as documented by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I haven’t thought about this in years (there was a point when it was trendy to discuss it in relation to teaching and learning) even though I know I love it when I’m in a state of flow reading a book or playing music. Kelly says that she learns poems off by heart and proves it by performing Love by George Herbert for us. I think about how much time I spend on social media and vow to book myself some long promised piano lessons when I get home.

Then it’s all over bar the long journey home for me. Jersey Festival of Words 2017 was bigger and more interesting than ever. I’m already looking forward to 2018.

Hanya Yanagihara in Conversation with Cathy Rentzenbrink at Foyles

It’s a warm Wednesday evening in central London when Hanya Yanagihara and Cathy Rentzenbrink take the stage in Foyles’ flagship shop on Charing Cross Road. They’re here to discuss Yanagihara’s second novel A Little Life, recently longlisted for The Man Booker Prize.

The event begins with Yanagihara reading from the fourth section of the novel, ‘The Axiom of Equality’. Before she starts to read, Yanagihara comments on the number of people in the room. ‘I feel like Donald Trump,’ she says, ‘Which would make you all Donald Trump supporters.’

Following the reading, Rentzenbrink conducts a straw poll to see how many of the audience have already read the novel. The poll will determine whether the event needs to be spoiler free or not. As over half of the audience have read the book, they decide to proceed with a full discussion. As a result, THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. You have been warned!

Photograph by Nina Pottell

Rentzenbrink begins by asking Yanagihara about the inspiration for the novel. Yanagihara says that the first section of the book is a fairly typical post-college, New York novel based on the idea that everyone at that stage, living in New York, thinks they’re interesting! But then the book changes. She compares it to boiling a lobster. The change happens at the point the lobster realises he’s fucked but then it’s too late. She says the first turn happens at the end of part one and she hopes by that point the reader has realised they’re not reading the type of book they thought they were.

Yanagihara says she wanted to write a novel that if it were ombre cloth would run from a shade of light blue to dark indigo. She tells us that Jude was pretty fully formed when she began writing. She wanted to write a character who can’t get better or change or survive his own life. It’s very American to think that life is something to win, she says. Jude is oppressed by hope.

What about the lack of women in the novel? Yanagihara states that she wanted to marry fairytale with a contemporary naturalistic novel. She wanted it to lack parents, to be timeless. She wanted Jude’s redemption to be hollow.

Why male friendship? Rentzenbrink says she doesn’t think it’s been written about this way in literature before. Yanagihara says that she thinks men are allowed to have a more limited emotional toolkit: shame, fear and vulnerability are not there. They’re not encouraged to express these emotions. She says society asks men to change as they grow up and relates an anecdote about two male friends of hers who would wrestle with each other. She says they were wrestling the inexpressible: their love for each other.

Rentzenbrink asks about the reader and how much thought Yanagihara gave to them when she was writing. She mentions Jude and wonders how much a reader can take. Yanagihara says you can never guess accurately what the reader can take but they can tell if you’re withholding. She says readers want to be taken somewhere they haven’t been before. She mentions her two editors – it was edited in the USA and the UK simultaneously – and said they talked to each other which was like having annoying parents! She said they had very different reactions to what they thought were the problem areas in the book: her UK editor thought Jude and Willem’s relationship was a problem, while the US editor thought the length of the novel and the violence were the biggest issues. Yanagihara says that if you believe strongly in something and can answer why it’s in the book, you shouldn’t have to change it.

She goes on to talk about the structure of the book which was the trickiest part to get right. Initially it was two novellas and a coda. The first novella looked at Jude as a success and the second at Jude with a marginal life, the characters from the first novella becoming his counsellors. The coda was his childhood. She wanted to explore different reactions to damage.

Retzenbrink asks about New York City as a setting. The book’s about the sorts of characters and kinds of people who come to NYC, says Yanagihara. There’s a shared sense of collective ambition and whilst that ambition takes wildly different forms, these people are united by being on the run and running to something.

What about the absence of time in the book? Initially every chapter was in present tense, she says, but that was too artificial. She hates readers having to fill in how characters react to big events. Mentioning 9/11 or even that a character is wearing a Prada suit is lazy shorthand, it also dates quickly and the references are never quite right. She says she wanted the reader to have no tethers. The reader is surrendering to the emotional lives of the characters with nothing to ground them. She wanted the reader to feel like they were on one of those wobbly balls.

Yanagihara goes on to talk about social media. She’s not on it, apart from Instagram and she doesn’t read reviews. She says she thinks Twitter’s a great boon for fiction writers now there’s no central cultural authority. She’s too fragile and insecure to read her reviews. She says if you only believe the good ones, you’re a douchebag and if you only believe the bad you become a walking mess.

The discussion turns to the difference between the UK and US covers. The latter is a photograph by Peter Hujar (a contemporary of Robert Mapplethorpe) called Orgasmic Man. It dares you to look then dares you not to look, says Yanagihara. You don’t know whether the expression on his face is pleasure or pain. Yanagihara tells us that she fought with the US publisher for months over using the photograph for the cover: ‘It’s so obvious he’s coming,’ she says was the comment from the US publisher.

Rentzenbrink says that the book is gruelling to read, what was it like to write? Yanagihara says that when you’re in the groove you have to stay in it so there were long jags of writing, several hours each day. She found it physically hard, working on it at night. She had one reader whom she burdened with questions while she wrote in a sprint. ‘I think it was a singular writing experience.’

The final question from Retzenbrink is whether there’s any redemption for Jude in a parallel universe. ‘I don’t even know what redemption would look like here,’ says Yanagihara. ‘His life concludes in the only way it could possibly conclude.’

With that, the discussion opens up to questions from the audience.

Did she think about the moral responsibility of considering anew the horrors of child abuse?

She didn’t think about it at all. She didn’t think of the book as cathartic or as a book with a moral. She’s interested in sexual abuse because of the impact on someone’s life. She describes it as the ‘ultimate abuse of power of the most vulnerable in our society’.

Why is the end of the novel narrated by Harold?

Jude is meant to be a reliable and trustworthy narrator but Harold stands in for the reader and provides another perspective. He’s a Greek Chorus appearing after traumatic moments in Jude’s life, providing a pause. She says she knew what the last line was going to be and wrote towards it.

How long was she living with the characters before she began writing?

Five years but she didn’t realise that until she sat down to write.

Which questions was she pondering whilst writing?

She was thinking about friendship, what it can do for us and what we can expect from it and about love, how it can never save or redeem you. Is there a moment when life becomes unbearable? Do we owe it to the people we love to help them find a way out of it?

How do you feel about redemption?

She doesn’t believe in it but thinks that as humans in society we have to pursue it.

Photograph by Nina Pottell

How do you get into the minds of your male characters?

She says it helps if your characters aren’t meant to stand in for anything larger, including men in general. How do you write something other than you and do it convincingly? You don’t make them stand in for or represent a group. They just need to be compelling, distinctive, interesting characters.

Was A Little Life the first title?

Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days was the alternative title. She says she wanted to show that all of our lives are equally meaningful and meaningless at the same time. She says the title has proved difficult to translate into some languages.

Would she consider writing any extra scenes for A Little Life?

There are things she wishes she’d done to make the book a little longer, particularly with Jude and Willem’s relationship, which she describes as defying what a relationship is allowed to be. It’s a more lineal relationship – it borrows from love and friendship but takes a third path.

Why did she decide to give all of the characters a level of privilege that meant they’re all successful? Does it allow her to go to dark places with them?

She made them successful because groups like this are a phenomenon in New York City. Also Jude’s life is easier with money to cope with his disabilities and constant care. Money prevents people from seeing Jude clearly, he’s reduced to being successful.

Which books move you/do you enjoy/appreciate?

 The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro is the best book this year. Ishiguro has a single theme – the oppression of memory – but does it differently in each book.

Hilary Mantel had a complete change of style mid-career with The Giant O’Brien and she’d love to know how she pulled that off.

John Banville writes beautiful prose. She tells us she hid from meeting him in Dublin when he came to her event there.

Rentzenbrink ends the evening by asking Yanagihara if there’s anything next. She’s interested in ships and books set on ships because they’re a microcosm of people thrown together. She’s interested in the change the shipping trade brought to Asia in the 1840s but knows that this will take a lot of research so she might write something else in between.

With that, Yanagihara takes her place behind the signing desk as the queue to meet her stretches the length of the room.