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Ep. 31. Madeleine Dunnigan, Jean
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In this episode I talk to Madeleine Dunnigan about her novel Jean (2026) from Daunt.
Madeleine Dunnigan is a writer and screenwriter from London. She was a Jill Davis Fellow on the MFA at New York University. While there she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship in Paris. Her first novel, Jean, was published by Daunt Books (UK) and W.W. Norton (US) in 2026 and will be translated into Spanish, German and Italian.
Episode Notes:
- Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven (listen to my ep with him); Philippe Besson, Lie With Me; Justin Torres, We the Animals
Book Recs:
- John McGahern, That They May Face the Rising Sun
- Louise Kennedy, Trespasses
- Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing
- Susanna Moore, In the Cut
- Virginia Woolf, The Years
- Octavia Butler's short stories and manifesto
- Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- Yoko Ogawa, Hotel Iris
Follow the show on Instagramand subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here. Get more from Madeleine on Instagram and at her website madeleinedunnigan.com.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close' and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and anyone that wants to know how texts get made. Today i talked to Madeline Dunnigan about her novel Jean or Jean.
00:00:18
Speaker
We'll get into that very shortly.
Madeline Dunnigan's Career and Novel
00:00:21
Speaker
We're going to talk about a section quite late in the book, so go get your copy. Madeline Dunnigan is a writer and screenwriter from London. She was a Jill Davis Fellow on the MFA at New York University.
00:00:31
Speaker
While there, she was awarded the Global Research Initiative Fellowship in Paris. Her first novel, Jean, was published by Daunt Books in the UK and W.W. Norton in the US s and will be translated into Spanish, German and Italian. She's currently at work on her debut feature film, commissioned by Film4.
00:00:48
Speaker
Hi, Madeleine. Welcome. Nice to see you. It's nice to see you. So today we are talking about, okay, we I can't even get to this, right? Because the novel I picked up and i was like, Jean. And i was like, no, it's Jean. And then the whole novel, like, unpack some of this in terms of
Exploring the Title 'Jean or Jean'
00:01:07
Speaker
like how you say the name. And i how do you say the name of this book? i used to say Jean.
00:01:13
Speaker
And then my publishers were like, it's Jean. Oh, really? For the English speaking market, it's Jean. Yeah. But I think, yeah, that kind of come that crystallizes one of the central problems that Jean or Jean faces is this one of an unstable identity. So his mother, Rosa, is a German Jewish refugee, an artist, bohemian, single mother, virulent socialist, you know, not religious by any and means of the word.
00:01:46
Speaker
and a huge Francophile and has named her son Jean and she calls him Jean. But in you in the UK, particularly in the British boarding school system,
00:01:58
Speaker
that name is bastardized into its English equivalent, which is Jean, which is a girl's name. Obviously, there is the boys Jean, but it's spelled differently. So Jean or Jean occupies this kind of gray zone where people say his name differently. They say it wrong. that They ask him why he has a girl's name.
Textual Issues in Reader-Publisher Dynamics
00:02:15
Speaker
you know and it And it kind of enhances or intensifies feelings of alienation he might have.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. And i think I think that what's interesting is that that's like an intertextual issue has now become like extra textual with like readers and publishers and how we talk about the book. So I think it's like, it's kind of expanded from the book to outside of it.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, which is interesting. I mean, I get the question all the time and I'm sort of and I, and annoyingly, I don't have a fixed answer. I say, you know, it's how you want to
Madeline's Reflections on Her Work
00:02:44
Speaker
say it. Probably um'm I'm a bit of a Rosa, you know, I would want to say Jean, want to say Barcelona, you know? yeah exactly. But it's really, it's really up to the reader. Yeah. Okay.
00:02:57
Speaker
Because I said Jean in my head all the way through it. And then there's like bits when they say otherwise, and i was like, oh, Yeah, the the boys in in that boarding school environment in 1976 aren't saying Jean.
00:03:07
Speaker
You know, they're saying Jean. And the teachers are saying Jean. Yeah. I've got this beautiful copy here. I mean, you're not going to see it on the audio, but I'm just showing so you can see it in front of me with my little post-it notes in it.
Reading and Analyzing 'Jean or Jean'
00:03:21
Speaker
So before we get into a particular passage and we're going to read from like later in the book listeners, if you do want to read along get it out and it's on page 197 of the Dawn copy so you can prepare yourselves. But anyway, before we get there, how do you feel, Madeleine, about close reading as like a practice and activity? Like what is your relationship to it?
00:03:42
Speaker
Such a good question. i when you, when I was first asked to do this, I was very, very excited because I love close reading. um I think it I did, you know, i did English literature, and it's it was the foundation and the bedrock of how I have read books and prose and literature and poetry and even plays, any kind of text.
00:04:07
Speaker
And so it's, I suppose, the bedrock of how I i put sentences of my own together. But then since agreeing to do the podcast and as it's come closer and closer to the podcast deadline, I've had this swirling sense of dread and close reading my own work which i i'm wondering how it will feel and how it will go and also being put into the position of having to justify language choices or not even necessarily justify it but understand because as i write i don't think so consciously about my word choice i think that comes later
00:04:45
Speaker
And I'm sure I don't always get it right. You know, i think I use things instinctively. And sometimes my boyfriend will point out that I've just used them completely incorrectly. So it's like, yeah, I feel mixed. I'm really excited. I love close reading. And I used to have a class at university, which was just purely close reading and be given a poem every week.
00:05:05
Speaker
And you just have to close read. And that was such a pleasure. um But doing it on your own work is a bit like pulling out all of your knickers and sharing the holes in that you still wear. That's a great image.
00:05:21
Speaker
When you had those poems in class, would they be kind of like anonymised in a way? but Would you get the title and the author? or I think a mixture. Sometimes we didn't and it was sort of a test of our knowledge, which none of us had because we were 18 and hadn't read the English literature canon. Other times you had the title and the author because... that would inform maybe the way you read the poem.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's kind of what I've been interested in in doing this show is A, being like, this is what I do in a literature classroom with my students, but I'm just going to do it with the author themselves and see what they see in relation to what I see.
00:05:59
Speaker
But also, i'm not pretending like this decontextualized, right? Like, our conversation will inevitably go towards those other things, because I i don't think you can do a pure close reading without wanting to, like, go out a little bit, right? You're going to go out.
00:06:13
Speaker
You know, imagine being able to talk to all of those incredible writers. Yeah. I'm not saying, you know, that I am not, but um I would say imagine being able to talk to Tennyson about his choices and or Elliot, you know, that would be incredible.
00:06:29
Speaker
And I think also I love close reading because I actually struggled in English for some time. had an English teacher once tell me not to apply for English at university and not to compare myself to my sister because she was so much better. Wow.
00:06:45
Speaker
Which was pretty rough going. But it was when i learned how to close read that things kind of clicked into place because. It can be quite scary to be confronted with a passage of text and be told to analyse it. And you're like, what? What do you mean? Where do I begin? and close reading, sort of offering that step by step journey through a text.
00:07:07
Speaker
Just begin at the beginning and take it sentence by sentence and see what builds as you go Really sort of then made the subject come alive for me. And and I kind of haven't stopped
Narrative Techniques and Reader Perception
00:07:18
Speaker
doing it.
00:07:18
Speaker
I mean, we're going to look at a bit from quite late in the book. I took a while to choose a passage because I thought we could start at the beginning. There's some interesting bits in the middle, but they weren't quite exemptory of the rest of the books. Then I was like, I'm just going to pick this nice little moment later on, ah which is in chapter 10, I want to say. No, nine.
00:07:37
Speaker
And it's kind of... The two boys who are at ah the boarding school, this is Tom and John, and they're doing some kind of like walk outside. They're all forced to do this kind of like trek, right? They have to like plot their journey and things. And this is a little moment where they have like met up and it's a really sweet, quiet moment, like a super quiet moment. And I, I chose it for that reason. Cause I thought there's something in the quietness that we could maybe talk about, but why don't you read it first and then we can like talk about it more fully. Yeah.
00:08:09
Speaker
yeah The next day, they move their camp from sweet willow wood to a stretch of deserted beach directly on the coast. It is another beautiful day and the sand is bright hot and burning.
00:08:25
Speaker
They strip off and swim before setting up camp, Jean erecting the tent, Tom the fire. They move around each other quietly and with ease.
00:08:37
Speaker
Although they are not talking, It is different from yesterday's silence. When they both reach for the canteen, their hands brushing, each pulls away self-consciously.
00:08:51
Speaker
Last night, when they got back to camp, Tom climbed into his sleeping bag and fell asleep immediately. Jean stayed up worrying, but that fear has dissipated throughout today.
00:09:05
Speaker
There are still times when Tom will leave him, his face turning blank, his eyes sunken and hollow, as if someone has turned off his batteries. But these moments don't
Character Dynamics: Jean and Tom
00:09:16
Speaker
last for long, and Gene doesn't need to know where he has gone.
00:09:21
Speaker
They switch between lounging and swimming. Behind them is a small wood where, Gene shows Tom, a beehive sits precariously in the branches of a horse chestnut.
00:09:35
Speaker
Gene makes Tom come with his mouth. Tom makes gene with his hand. Tom goes wooding for the fire and they cook mackerel they bought from a roadside truck for dinner.
00:09:47
Speaker
The skin blackens and blisters and when they put the fish between two hunks of bread, oil oozes onto their knees. There is ale and more tomato.
00:09:59
Speaker
They lie on the sand and watch the sun dip below the horizon. Jean wants to know if the sun sets at the same point every day, and Tom tells him no, it moves with the earth.
00:10:13
Speaker
They will be fine, Jean thinks, and leans back on his elbows when they go to China. With Tom there, they won't get lost, and with him,
00:10:26
Speaker
He can bring his tent. He can pick herbs. He says this to Tom. I'll bring a book on Chinese plants. But Tom is lying with his eyes closed.
00:10:40
Speaker
Thank you so much. What's interesting is listening to you read it. I noticed things I didn't just reading it with my eyes, which is kind of interesting. And one of the main things I thought about this passage is this, A, the kind of quietness that I mentioned, but also something you do that I find interesting, which is like...
00:10:59
Speaker
there's a sentence of kind of like plain description. And then the next sentence is like quite different from that. I'm going give you an example in a minute. And then you go back to this other thing. And there's this is real kind of interplay of, wait, wait, did I just miss something, right? that's That I find really full of...
00:11:16
Speaker
i don't want to say tension, that's probably too strong a word, but there's some kind of like friction there. For example, you know, they switch between lounging and swimming. Behind them is a small wood where Gene shows Tom. I'll talk about the commas in a minute. A beehive sits precariously on the branch in the branches of a horse chestnut.
00:11:31
Speaker
Gene makes Tom come with his mouth. Tom makes Gene with his hand. Tom goes wooding to the fire. Like that sentence in between of their like sexuality is... You know, it doesn't lead up to that. Like the paragraph doesn't lead us there, but it kind of just like drops in the middle after this precarious beehive.
00:11:46
Speaker
And then we go on to like cooking the mackerel and like, where were wait, wait, wait. And I think it's a real kind of note for people when I say about like slower reading. right I think if you're a quick speed reader, there are moments like that where you could easily just like jump over it. Right. That you could just yeah fly by. And I'm interested in how.
00:12:02
Speaker
this like slow accretion of details has these little bits in but in
Narrative Perspective and Emotional Insight
00:12:08
Speaker
between that like give us actually way more information than you might think in what seems like a very descriptive passage, if that makes sense.
00:12:15
Speaker
So it's interesting that you picked that because that used to be a whole dramatised scene. when i When they were in this new section, in this new stretch. So like you said, this is chapter nine, I guess, um in filmic terms, it's the bottleneck chapter. but they fight They leave the school, they go on a wilderness hike, they're meant to do it alone, they meet up secretly.
00:12:40
Speaker
And we have this very long chapter where it's just Jean and Tom, which has never really happened before. They've never just been the two of them for an extended period of time. it's always been snatches at night or in the afternoon. They don't acknowledge each other in school. Their relationship or their friendship is that even just their friendship is hidden, let alone the kind of romantic overtones to it. And I was really struggling with what to dramatise and what not to dramatise. And before this scene, you have quite a a detailed scene of them having sex and it's first time of penetrative sex. So it's quite a big deal for both of them and especially for Jean.
00:13:20
Speaker
And when I got to this scene again, I was like, well, they're, you know, they are teenage boys. They are incredibly sexually active. They think about it all the time. It's not going to be, a you know, one stop shop. um But in terms of the rhythm and pace of the book and how much one lingers on which parts and which actions, I wanted us to have a a moment here which created a sense of the quotidien or the mundanity or the kind of simple ease of the of the day that they're having together, that it it isn't fraught because so much is fraught. And so all of these actions that are just layered next to each other, almost paratactically or associatively, I guess, maybe that's the word.
00:14:09
Speaker
was about showing that lounging, swimming, eating, fucking, they all sort of just come with the pace of the day. um And they're not major moments. But I also had to kind of fit bits in...
00:14:24
Speaker
ah for plot so for example like you you know here that beehive will come to be significant later in the chapter I had to have it there but I was like where would a beehive be and like it was sort of like it was really like I was like I really need a beehive or I need some bees because Tom tom gets stung later on yeah so it was about sort of fitting
Identity Struggles and Narrative Distance
00:14:48
Speaker
fitting key bits of information in but also just creating a sense of time passing through actions and none of these actions kind of taking the foreground e and there's like no it's kind of building there's like no speech in this little passage right or there is but it's kind of reported speech like he says this to tom i'll bring a book on chinese plants that's not in like quote marks there's no or you know it's not kind of deliberately that would be the one one bit of speech that if that if this book used quotation marks yeah as much to the chagrin of many readers that it doesn't, next one does, that would be in quotation marks, but it's because of the way time is operating, because it's sort of continuous flow of things happening and and we're not deeply in a scene, it's kind of hovers there, I think a bit, this sense that, you know, I mean, something they are in a scene at the very end of of this paragraph,
00:15:45
Speaker
because they lie on the sand and watch the sun di below the horizon. and then Jean wants to know, and all of this is reported. So they are there there in this scene, but they're also sort of like hovering slightly outside of time. I feel because it's time passing.
00:15:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the like present tense of the whole thing like adds to that. like there's There's slipping backwards, right? Like last night when they got back, but then there are still times when Tom will leave him.
00:16:13
Speaker
They switch between like this kind of present tense that is... multiple timelines at once right there's lots of reflection back and reflection forward and I think that haziness is kind of indicative of the whole book in a way this kind of because it's set over this like very hot summer and I think you get a sense throughout the book of i don't know it reminded me of a few other books but that kind of moment of like teenagehood when time feels like so expansive but it's so compressed at the same time right it could feel like 10 years but it's like wait this is really not that long
00:16:44
Speaker
You feel like you have forever, but you also can't conceive of the future. So there's both this sense of like timelessness is both. rooted and in a continual or a a continuous notion of time but it's also completely outside of time because you have no concept of it you're like yeah the future what and yeah ah but that's quite liberatory and kind of terrifying right because for jean john like so often it's like well if it doesn't happen now it's never gonna happen right it's like the idea that it might happen in a few days is like well that's intolerable right because all we've got is
00:17:16
Speaker
now and I think the book could easily have been written in just like simple past tense but it isn't and I think that adds to that slipperiness but I'm like interested the third person right I can also easily imagine this as a first person novel and the third person is quite detached at times like it's it's not Well, it depends on where you are in the book. But in this little passage you just read, there isn't much like free and direct discourse, right? We don't often delve into Jean's perspective necessarily. There are like moments, but in general, we're we're kind of, we're not in Jean's kind of thoughts or Jean's language necessarily.
00:17:52
Speaker
And I think that moving in and out is is always interesting to me when when authors do that. Hmm. Well, the the third person felt very necessary to the novel because Jean is someone who struggles with language. It's not his medium of expression. i mean, he is dyslexic. He struggles with emotional nuance. I think probably these days he'd be called neurodivergent or, um, would definitely be on the a autistic spectrum.
00:18:25
Speaker
And so writing a book it would be very different book if I, if i wrote it in the first person, because it would need to be true to his modes of expression, which I think very different from my own. So use third person because that gave me the license to
Close Reading: Grammar and Meaning
00:18:41
Speaker
use language and introduce concepts and ideas um that Gene himself wouldn't necessarily use or be able to formulate whilst also absorbing his thoughts, his language patterns, his ideas. So you have a little bit of his language or his ideas at the end of the second paragraph. Jean doesn't need to know when Tom is gone. And then again at the end of the third paragraph. But yes, you're right. This is a moment where if the third person hovers kind of at Jean's back and sort of in his throat, we're definitely at his back watching him a bit.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah, like even like there are still times when Tom will leave him, like leave him feels like Gene's or Gene's experience of that, right? like yeah like as the Like his face turning blank, his eyes sunken and hollow.
00:19:31
Speaker
Like that's just someone kind of zoning out or feeling like confused. But to Gene, that's like abandonment, right? Like that's like, so like you get those little moments, but you don't. But here it isn't like throughout. And I think that also adds to this, like a moment of tranquility, both for the boys and for the reader, maybe too, right? Like, as you say, in the kind of structure of the book that we need a moment where we aren't totally enmeshed in Jean's like confusion.
00:19:56
Speaker
not least because, you know, I was a teenage boy who was confused about queerness. So like, It often felt like claustrophobic. I was like, I know this is stressful. but But at the same time, within the book, like for them to have a moment where they just sit and eat and be, I don't know, like, obviously, you're not thinking about the reader necessarily. But there is a sense of like, everyone taking a breath collectively.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yes, what you were saying about, i I did think a lot about the reader and I thought about the reader needing a break. And I think that quite a lot of the novel can feel quite intense and quite intensely in Jean's psyche, like you said.
00:20:33
Speaker
And particularly this chapter, because it's so a it's a climax, literally and sexually of the novel, and and something is coming to pass between them. And and we're actually about to go into another passage where something else difficult happens, it felt really important to have these moments of pause, to have these moments of breath, to sort of have these prose-like caesuras where you kind of have this rest and you're like okay, before we transition. And I really love that you picked this passage. It's one of my favourites to read.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, there's something really soft, even about the sound of it too, right? Not just in kind of what we were saying, but like sweet willow wood to a stretch of deserted beach directly on the coast. Like there's tons of like sibilance and like softness.
00:21:21
Speaker
The sand is bright, hot and burning. They strip off and swim before setting up camp. Jean, like there's ah there's a pace, there's a rhythm to this of like softness. They move around each other quietly and with ease.
00:21:33
Speaker
Like I think you're aiming for ease in like the sound of it too. Mm-hmm. And there's ah there's a few examples of like, Jean erecting the tent, Tom the fire, right? There's kind of ah like balancing almost at the level of the sentence between like the two of them, which then is like echoed in the kind of sexual Jean makes Tom come with his mouth.
00:21:53
Speaker
I need to come back to that sentence though because I've seen something that I didn't see the first time. So let us pin that before I forget it. But there's like a not equanimity, because it's,
00:22:03
Speaker
not an easy power relation between the two boys right they're not it's not quite equal I don't think in terms of what they see of each other but at the level of the sentence you do these yeah kind of weighing things up maybe or like a kind of balancing back and forth and sometimes
Themes of Identity and Change
00:22:18
Speaker
it drifts off and I don't know whether any of that is like conscious as you're writing whether it comes later i think it was conscious when I came to editing it and in the editing therefore wrote this passage where I was I felt like it was again this question of It's such a long chapter, it's twice the length of the other chapters in the novel. And I wanted to have this real sense that you are just with the boys for this whole time. you almost forget the outside world and it's just them. And that's just really wonderfully um sort of not like this bubble that they have together.
00:22:53
Speaker
And I think the sentences, you're right, reflect that desire for creating some balance. um I noticed that I do a thing where i omit the verb to create the balance. So Jean erecting the tent, Tom, the fire. And you're right, I do that with the sexual. So I omit erecting again. You know, Jean erects the tent, Tom, I could say Tom erects the fire, but I remove that verb.
00:23:19
Speaker
then I do it again. With the sexual act, Jean makes Tom come with his mouth. Tom makes Jean with his hand. So you remove the verb come.
00:23:30
Speaker
I don't know why I do that. I think because it creates this balance, but it's just slightly off as well. And I don't know, maybe that speaks to your idea that there's balance here, but there's also underlying it, power and balance.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah. And there are these moments, these other kind of like, don't know, grammatical, let's call, I don't know what to call them, moments of where you do these little clauses, right? So later on in that passage, they will be fine, comma, Gene thinks and leans back on his elbows when they go to China.
00:24:03
Speaker
Right. And I think you're delaying the when they go to China because there's a moment of like, they will be fine, Gene thinks. Yeah. when they go to China, you're like, ah you know, like that it actually, you' it's pulled away from us actually that they're going to be fine forever. They're going be fine in this fantasy of them going to China together, right? Which is never good. Like, I don't know, like as we're reading, we're like, is never happening, boys. But, you know, like I love the idea.
00:24:25
Speaker
You could have had, they will be fine when they go to China, Gene thinks and leans back on his elbows. But instead you put this... like claws in the middle and you do it a couple of times in here. Where is the other one?
00:24:36
Speaker
oh like when they both reach for the canteen, their hands brushing, each pulls away self-consciously. This is constant like pausing between, don't know, like the sentence isn't is interrupted. You do a couple of times and I think that interruption makes us think about the multiple options that could happen there. And I think it adds, again, like I'm not saying tension because tension is too strong, like friction of some kind.
00:24:58
Speaker
That's such a nice way of putting it. um I really love that idea of this kind of thinking about the possibilities that the sentence could be could be and that speaking to like the possibilities that Jean or Jean could have had or could have in life, but then it always falls into something different or inevitable,
00:25:16
Speaker
I know I do it a lot and I would love to know what the grammatical term is. Is it like a split clause something where the the what is the part of the sentence that defines it? But the defining part of the sentence is always delayed.
00:25:30
Speaker
I did find when I was copied, when I received the copy edit of this book back. though, that I really don't know how to use commas, you know, and I, when I write, I often just, more you know, the comma just pops in when I'm taking a breath and that is not how the comma should be used. So I have to, I spend a lot of time, you know, there's that joke where who was it? It was a fake, you know, Dostoevsky or something, or or maybe Joseph Conrad was asked, how, yeah, how his writing day was. And it's like in the morning i added a comma in the afternoon, I deleted a comma. I spent so much time deleting commas when I was editing this because they they were just littered everywhere.
00:26:13
Speaker
You're not the only person on this show to have said that. Sean, me and Sean, we had a long conversation about his commas and his editor that just said, there's a lot of commas here, Sean. And he was like, yeah, know. We need to talk about them. So comma teens, this is the episode for you. Go back to Sean's episode. You'll enjoy it similarities with the books. There are so many so similarities between these two books actually. and That was the first one that I thought of as I was reading this.
00:26:40
Speaker
I was also thinking of like Philippe Besson. was thinking of like Lie With Me. I know if you know that book. That one kind of rose in my mind. but yeah, the there's something about these clauses, whatever we're calling them these clauses, these interruptions that the other one I found, I'll say in a minute, which is about the beehive, that the grammar feels, whether you're thinking about it or not as a writer, like the grammar is doing something to us as we read slowly. And I think you're forcing us to read slowly here because it is this kind of like dialing down of the tension that we've had for like so long in this book, right? And like the book starts off with Jean being kind of like chastised by the like headmaster, right, about something. And it kind of begins on a moment of like friction and like fraughtness. And here even the other example was behind them is a small wood where Jean shows Tom a beehive sits precariously. Like that sentence could be formatted anyway, right? Like a beehive sits precariously or Jean shows Tom a beehive that sits, you know, whatever. But there's a behind them is a small wood, which sounds really nice. And then you're like, there's a precarious beehive. You're like, oh, no, thanks. I you mean, like that's the.
00:27:47
Speaker
Chekhov's gone moment, right? Like the, that there's kind of like a nice description of a small wood turns into something potentially threatening, right? Or, or, something might tip over.
00:27:58
Speaker
and I think that's, that tipping over is like quite strong throughout the book. Even, you know, like the oil drips out of the bread, the sun dips below the horizon. And there's lots of things, you know, like just like teetering over.
Teenage Emotions and Future Uncertainties
00:28:13
Speaker
That's, I didn't, i didn't notice that that's such a lovely,
00:28:16
Speaker
reading of the passage things yeah things shifting things tipping over sliding out of sight or just turning into something that's a bit um sinister or has the potential for threat and danger and I and you're right I am making the reader slow down because when you have sentences like that where the They're split apart.
00:28:40
Speaker
You know, we can learn the practical terms another time, but it's forcing the reader to hold multiple bits of information in their mind before they will come together and make sense.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah. So you know that there's a small word and then, you know, Jean's showing something to Tom, but you don't know what that thing is until the very end. Yeah. I think sometimes some people would, you know, it's, it's making us aware always of the agents Like, you know, you wouldn't necessarily need to say Gene shows Tom. You could just say where a beehive sits precariously. But it's like putting in the agency of the boys or sort of they become little actors, um which, again, I don't know if that makes it sort of more distancing or closer.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah, like or like both, because, you know, when Gene wants to know if the sun sets at the same point every day and Tom tells him no, it moves with the earth Like Gene is so desperate, like as all these things are tipping over the edge, like Gene is like, well, okay, it's slipping out of sight, but at least if it could happen in the same spot, like I might be able to do something with that. And Tom's like, no, everything keeps moving. It moves with the earth.
00:29:49
Speaker
And that sounds like a very like natural thing, right? It's just part and parcel. But to Gene, I think that's like a really scary idea that things will constantly be moving, right? That there isn't that kind of solidity.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah. And that's kind of the residing theme of his life. things aren't stable. They always shift. Yeah, 100%. And the line that I kind of started with, and I want to return to that only as you read it out that I heard it, this kind of, Jean makes Tom come with his mouth, semicolon.
00:30:20
Speaker
Tom makes Jean with his hand. And you said like in the early one, you could have repeated like erecting the tent, erecting the fire. And here you could say Tom makes Jean come with his hand, but you leave out the come. So it's Tom makes Jean with his hand.
00:30:34
Speaker
And I don't know, like when I heard you read it, like the idea of like making Jean, right, as though he's bringing Jean into being. and And this is the thing about close reading that I'm always saying, right? like It's like, just me reading with all of the stuff that I've had in my brain. But there's a chapter at the end of Justin Torres's book, We the Animals. I don't know if you've ever read that Yeah. Right.
00:30:54
Speaker
And the chapter is called the night I am made. And the night I made is the night that like, he finally has anal sex with this guy. And he's like, I am made, I am made as though the act has like, it hasn't just confirmed him as being queer, but it is like, isn't constructed him in that way. Right.
00:31:11
Speaker
That I always kind of read psychoanalytically, but anyway, like this, this interesting here about like Jean makes Tom come with his hand, which is just like an act versus Tom makes Jean with his hand. And there's a I don't know, there's some element of construction there that I think is interesting that I hadn't seen and now makes loads of sense with this, where it is in the book.
00:31:28
Speaker
You know, I would love to say it was artfully constructed. such And I think that's such a brilliant, close reading, but I was not aware of it. And I love...
00:31:39
Speaker
that book ah by Justin and it was an influence on the, on Jean. I read, you know, I turned to my brothers, um, when I was otherwise lost in this novel, you know, reading to understand maybe experiences that i didn't have access to. And that was one book that really captures the yeah the becoming of queer identity, but also the sort of enmeshed violence and fear that can come with that. and
00:32:11
Speaker
But yeah, Tom makes Jean with his hand as a completely can be read in in a completely different way, as a completely different sentence, because the only verb there is makes. And I think you're completely right with that. there is a sense that Tom is bringing Jean into becoming and Jean is becoming who by the end of the novel, Jean has come to a place of, of greater knowledge or greatest, greater, you know, self self knowledge and, and a clear identity of who he is.
00:32:43
Speaker
And I guess there's also like Carmen is in become, you know, there's a rival in that there's yeah all of these words. come back to senses of of being made, constructed, arriving, existing.
00:33:00
Speaker
You know, and like when they go to China with Tom there, they won't get lost. With him, he can bring his tent. Like when they go to this new place that is like completely, you know, quote unquote foreign to them, right? Like that's probably in quote marks of a word, isn't it? Like it's a place so far away from their experience.
00:33:17
Speaker
that like they won't get lost and they'll have like shelter, right? Those two things that they're kind of relying on each other for kind of a stability, ah a home life, ah a kind of contentment. So the idea of like making, finding, like dwelling, like there's so much in these three very quiet paragraphs that are just about them sitting down and having a fire. But I think it opens up lots of the questions that the book has about these two boys, like imagining the future for them.
00:33:44
Speaker
right, that Gene clearly has Tom in his mind in the future, but whether Tom has Gene in his mind in the future is like a whole other thing. That's, yeah, the a yeah, and and I think I don't, I want to leave that open in the novel. I want there to, like you said, there are many different possibilities. I want there to fit. I want it to feel kind of unstable and unclear um how much Tom loves Jean when, you know, and and it's about the caprices of being a teenager as well. It could, and everything can be true at once. he can love him in one moment, be annoyed with him in another, be disgusted by him another, and then not even think of him.
00:34:20
Speaker
and ah And it's definitely for Jean, the future, Tom sort of, is so linked to his future, but Jean isn't linked to Tom's future.
Influences and Writing Experience
00:34:33
Speaker
Which is very sad in this book, by the way. um Can I digress before I ask you about your writing practice? You were taught by Garth Greenwell.
00:34:42
Speaker
also know you were taught by Katie Kitamura. And like those two are my prose parents. Like those two people, I will read anything they write at any point in their careers. They know I am devoted to them.
00:34:54
Speaker
These are like my idols, right? Of the people that care about sentences and what sentences can do. What is it like studying with these people? intimidating, yeah exciting, thrilling, you know, inevitably disappointing in oneself because, you know, to, to study with someone you admire so much is to crave their approval in such a craven and base way that they will never give, they can never give you because what you're, what you really deep down desperately want is, um,
00:35:31
Speaker
It's something that no person can give you. But for this novel, it was also unbelievably helpful um and transform transformative. And I've said many times that it was a class I studied with Garth Wienerall on sex writing that really transformed the sex in this book. um You know, clearly I'm not a young queer male. it's not a teenager and not in the 1970s. So it was very, there were there were limitations to my writing and I, and on all levels, but also particularly with the sex, like trying to create intimacy, fraught nurse, kind of teenage lust and awkwardness, but also something that has beauty that has genuine desire and lust mixed in to it.
00:36:17
Speaker
And quite, i you know, I sent it to some pastors to friends, um, who very kindly and gently told me where I was going wrong with some descriptions. Um, certainly some, some smells and sensory descriptions were cut, but it was only when I got to Garth's class that I really thought about sex as a kind of dance or a choreography. And being about bodies in space, if, if prose is really this, the, it's conceiving of physical beings in space. sex is, is the, is the M is emblematic of that as the kind of like most spatial, spatially oriented act.
00:37:01
Speaker
Um, and that was really helpful. And we read so widely, we read from writers like Yoko Ogawa to DH Lawrence to Jeanette Winterson. And so that class really helped me to think about the way sex can be described as a literal act and as a metaphorical act.
00:37:19
Speaker
So that was really helpful. Also. he's so knowledgeable of and and so focused on sentences like you said so it was it really i guess attuned my attention to those sentences again and then Katie was one of my workshop leaders in my final semester and I think her ability to kind of you know when we talk about the novel being restrained I would put that down to her or or these moments of pause or needing balance I think she brings in again it feels like dance like knowing where to move and shift weight and how to how these characters interact so yeah she was they were both unbelievably helpful and and they're
00:38:09
Speaker
their attention and kind of insight really incredible yeah and just nice people and nice what i like how do you do this I don't know it's like my you know I would love to like study with people like that and then at the same time I'm like don't know I'm just gonna I never want to show you anything I've ever written please don't look at me yeah because you will also show things that are bad or not bad but you work you know like and it's not very helpful and it's in it It's important to show stuff that needs work. Like if you just showed stuff that didn't need work, what was what's the point of being in a workshop? But it's also mortifying. so you're like, yes, I wish I hadn't done that. and Katie, actually, it was this whole chapter that I workshopped in her class. So the restructuring of it and the shifts in the way the characters interacted was really down to that workshop. Expressing moments of intensity, but with this restraint is something I really learned from her.
Writing Process and Health Impact
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And she is like the person that does that. Just like the quietest sentence, but she's delivering this like punch and you're like, I don't know how you did that. It's always my question with both of the books. I just get to the end of like, how, how though? How is that a thing? how do you do that? They have the, that awful effect of, which is very dangerous when you read another writer's book and you think, right, that is how I'm going to write. And you go next few days, I'm, I'm actually,
00:39:33
Speaker
sort of cranking out bad Garth Greenwell and Katie Kitamura sort of fan fiction. yeah And my style is actually slightly different. So, you know, I can't do it.
00:39:44
Speaker
but I try. I'd love to ask you how you do write though. Like obviously writing for a program like that is one thing, but is there a set writing life for you? Do you have a practice? Do you have rituals? Are you writing by hand, computer? All the questions.
00:39:59
Speaker
Yeah. so I think one of the things that my MFA really gave me was a process. um And I remember, you know, people talk about it all the time, like, you just need to find your process, find your process. And I didn't really understand what they meant. i was like, no, tell me how to write a book. But I suppose what that means is how, like, how do you, like, how can you write? What makes it bearable for you? Because it is so daunting. um And usually it depends where I'm what stage I'm at in a project. But if I'm in a getting words down on the page place, it's early, well, not that early morning, but it's first thing in the morning. So it could be as soon as I wake up or it could be needing to get up and get out of the house and go and write something. But it's usually the morning hours before I've interacted with the internet, before I've looked at my phone, It feels like I'm in a different room and the world is out there and I'm not interacting with it. As soon as I've interacted with the world, I find it quite hard to dip back into that kind of intense, initial creative stage.
00:41:05
Speaker
And part of my process that I have learned is that I actually, it's not the same always. there's There's general rules. So like generally when I'm producing material and it's like sort of that kind of creative energy, It needs to be in the morning and often it needs to be like, I don't even get dressed. I don't even brush my teeth. I just pull on some clothes and I, in my pajamas and I'm just,
00:41:29
Speaker
for like yeah two hours and I can't really do more than two or three hours a day so if I do that in the morning i actually spend the rest of the day kind of recovering you sort of you feel dazed do you feel a bit dizzy you feel a bit sick you need to eat something you need to shower you feel immediately depressed it's sort of how I imagine which is an awful analogy and I hate to say it's how I imagine a kind of macho straight man feels after ejaculating you're like oh You know, there it is. It's gone. um And I feel like, like sort of spent and wasted.
00:42:03
Speaker
if I'm editing, i can, it needs to be much more like a job. needs to much more get up, have your breakfast, do the things you need to do in the morning, get down to it because it's going to be sort of over a much longer period. um And And that's, you know, that's going to be a day's work. And again, it depends what kind of editing. So I am not someone who my first sentence is not my first sentence necessarily, nor is my last sentence my last sentence. I am very fast writer, but I'm a massive rewriter. So I would say I'm an incredibly inefficient writer. I'm producing a huge number of words that go into the bin all the time for everything.
00:42:45
Speaker
Like doesn't matter what I'm writing. It could be a sh little short bio. It's several drafts. So when I come to editing, it depends how much work the chapter needs, but often I will start with a blank page. So I will have one, the the chapter I've written on the side, and then I will start from scratch, retyping the bits that I need then weaving in the bits that i I feel like I need to add. So the shift between scene and memory in the novel it's often down to an editing process where I rewrote that chapter and wove in memory, whereas before it might have just been a straight scene.
00:43:26
Speaker
I don't have... I use a computer. very, very early on when I first started writing, I wrote some things down by hand because it felt less distracting and sort of more direct.
00:43:40
Speaker
But... Now, i i just write by, i you know, use a computer. i I don't keep a diary, which I feel like is something I'm learning more and more is maybe part of my process in that I feel like anything I feel or think goes into my writing and goes into what I'm writing. And if I keep a diary, I often feel, again, I feel...
00:44:00
Speaker
I feel spent and I feel like I don't have anything to say. So it doesn't really, it's not, you know, I know for a lot of writers and I, and I really wish I was like this and I feel a lot of shame about it actually. Cause I think of Joan Didion making notes after therapy, you know, like, could you imagine?
00:44:19
Speaker
So we have to relive it again um But, you know, writers keeping diaries as kind of sketches.
Book Recommendations and Conclusion
00:44:26
Speaker
But I have, I have instead notes for ideas.
00:44:30
Speaker
rather than a diary per se. And I don't have daily writing amounts. I sort of try to, when I'm, when it's a new draft of something, it's like just a few hours a day, see how you can go. But that has also shifted. And I'll be interested to know, to see how it works in the future for me, because Last year I had breast cancer, so I was really ill. I spent most of my time on the sofa and couldn't write at all.
00:45:01
Speaker
um And then I'm completely fine now. it was it was all caught early and completely fine, but it it turned it meant that when I came back to writing, my tolerance was much lower initially. And it was my first sort of, well, I have endometriosis as well, but it it felt like, you know, was the first initial really big illness and now I'm pregnant.
00:45:24
Speaker
So I'm about to lose 5% of my gray matter, which is hell. And I'm like, you know, right now I have a really luxurious relationship with time. I'm like, oof Maybe I'm going to watch an episode of Love is Blind in the middle of the day. That's going to go So I don't know how I'm going to write in the future. I actually feel pretty scared, um but also excited. Well, A, congratulation congratulations on the pregnancy. B, I'm glad you are well. That's good to hear. um i'm glad you are all clear. And yeah, I don't know. That's interesting about...
00:45:57
Speaker
those changes and seeing what comes of it. I interviewed Olivia Sajic episode one. She talks a lot in that episode about when she was writing with like young kids and like, we, we did the interview while she was like a week away from like labor um So she's like, I'm going to be online if we can.
00:46:15
Speaker
And she was talking a lot about how like how that space of the pregnancy gave her less time to think. But then actually when we spoke, she was more lucid than I think she imagined she was. And yes, I think there's there's loads of conversations there around. Yeah, I don't know. You know, that the myth of like, this is the writing life.
00:46:31
Speaker
the How much of that is a kind of standardized thing. well this is like a white man in the 1920s who didn't have to work and you know had none no other stuff going on like that and how much of that still lingers I think in the cultural imagination right about what like the writer is and what that means um and that's why I'm glad interviewed so many people so that listeners if you want to write you can just write Richie Hoffman writes poems in the bath Amy Key wrote her memoir in bed it's fine you can write anywhere whenever you want There's loads of writers, actually, and often the most successful commercially.
00:47:04
Speaker
They're writers with full time jobs who write in their notes app on the train to work. and I think, wow, yeah, you're you're amazing. like That's incredible. Yeah. OK, final question. What books do you want to recommend to listeners? They could be new things, old things, stuff that's not out yet. Anything you want, as many as you want.
00:47:21
Speaker
Books I would recommend, That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahan, which is his last novel and is so beautiful. And when we were talking about novels or passages of writing that just show time passing and the everyday and kind of the beauty of being side by side with someone, i think that's a wonderful book for that.
00:47:45
Speaker
I just finished reading Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, which... I really loved, I mean, I, like a read it in about two days, less than also love. um Do not say we have nothing by Madeline Tien.
00:48:02
Speaker
Beautiful sweeping epic novel. Again, it was something I read and i was like, I want to write like this. Couldn't, couldn't construct it. It this wonderful dialogue between kind of present day North American or Canadian, um but sort of North American style prose. And then um the character's family in China and a slightly more expanded, um kind of sweeping a story that shifts and has books in books.
00:48:33
Speaker
And then i also love In the Cut by Susanna Moore. Yep. For Sex as well. Really good on Sex. Really good sort of like dangerous, dark, detective-y, noir.
00:48:49
Speaker
I love The Years by Virginia Woolf. Mm-hmm. which is again, her last one, I think. um But I'm a real sucker for passages of of description of of nature. Because i'm always thinking, how does one describe the sky again? It's just been done so many times, but I don't really know how to do it anymore.
00:49:12
Speaker
I really love Octavia Butler's short stories. And actually, I think Octavia Butler has some of the best advice for writers. Her um her little manifesto of how to become a writer, I think is really, really brilliant.
00:49:26
Speaker
i think lastly, a novel that really like influenced this book is On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous by Oceanfront. And actually, i would also sorry i have to recommend Yoko Ogawa as well. um hotel iris which is really nasty there's a lot of s&m sex between a much older man and a younger girl but it's really brilliant sort of eerie hotel by the sea a story
00:49:58
Speaker
There's an amazing little selection. Thank you so much for doing this. was really fun. And listeners, go by Jean, Jean, wherever you get books. Madeline, thank you so much.
00:50:10
Speaker
Thank you so much. Have a lovely evening. Thank you for listening to this episode. For more melancholy queer fiction that we mentioned in the episode, go back to episode five with Sean Hewitt.
00:50:21
Speaker
Or for a very different kind of queer fiction about adulthood and relationships, go to episode 20 with Michael Donkore. Please subscribe if you haven't already. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube and share with people in all the places. Follow me and the show on Instagram.
00:50:39
Speaker
Tag me in posts of episodes that you like and please do fill out the feedback form if you can. You can also get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to The Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.