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Ep. 12. Abigail Bergstrom, Selfish Girls
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In this episode, we read a passage from the end of chapter 1 of Abigail Bergstrom's new novel Selfish Girls. You can buy this and her previous book What a Shame from your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.
Abigail Bergstrom is an author and writer, she has written for national magazines and broadsheets including the Guardian, Sunday Times, the Telegraph, Grazia and ELLE, and she reviews books for the quarterly magazine, Konfek. She writes the substack newsletter ‘Something to Say,’ offering writing advice and cultural commentary to thousands of readers worldwide. Her debut novel What a Shame was published to critical acclaim and the screen rights were optioned by Severn Productions. Her second novel Selfish Girls publishes this summer. She is also the founder of Bergstrom Studio, a literary agency and publishing consultancy that has represented many Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling authors whose books have won literary prizes and awards. She has been listed in the ‘The Bookseller 150’ which names the industry’s most influential and she sits on the advisory board for Cheltenham Literature festival.
Episode references:
- Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; The Bone Project
- Melissa Febos, The Dry Season and Body Work; Guadalupe Nettel, Still Born; Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection; Georges Perec, Things
Follow the show (and Abi) on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to Books Up Close
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language nerds. In today's episode, I talked to Abigail Bergstrom about her new novel, Selfish Girls, which came out on the 10th of July.
00:00:22
Speaker
Abigail is an author and writer. Her debut novel, What a Shame, was published to critical acclaim and the screenwrites were optioned by Seven Productions. She is the founder of Bergstrom Studio, literary agency publishing consultancy, and she also writes the Substack newsletter, Something to Say.
00:00:40
Speaker
Well, welcome, Abi. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much having excited to have this conversation. And nice to have maybe the first Welsh person on the show. I don't know. Yeah, it's an honor.
00:00:55
Speaker
So you'll hear both of our accents amp up as the episode goes along. Getting stronger and stronger as we get into it. Exactly. So the first question I ask everyone before even get into this extract from Selfish Girls, your new novel, how do you feel
The Art of Close Reading in Writing and Editing
00:01:10
Speaker
about close reading? What is your relationship to it?
00:01:12
Speaker
And how do you feel about today's exercise, close reading together? Well, I mean, I definitely respect close reading as a discipline, you know, a way to honor language, slowing down to notice what's really happening in in the text.
00:01:28
Speaker
It's essential. And close reading is very much at the heart of everything I do as an editor, For my authors, I'm close reading in my own writing.
00:01:39
Speaker
When I teach writing, close reading center of the work. And it's not just about analysis. It's about learning to read like a writer, you know, note the subtext, how structure can create surprises or inevit inevitability. Really watching how good characterization forms.
00:01:59
Speaker
and I don't see close reading as separate from writing. It is writing, you're just facing the other way. And the other thing that I think is really important is that we're living in a time in a world around language communication, where we're expected to be more polarized and distinct in our thinking.
00:02:20
Speaker
And, you know, what close reading does is show us that meaning isn't fixed. Two sentences, two people can take away entirely different interpretations. And that's before you start having a think about what the author's actual intention was, which sometimes you you get to know and mostly you don't.
00:02:37
Speaker
So, yeah, I did a degree in English literature and language. So this is going to take me back, I think. to seminar times but I'm going to be honest I think close reading my own work that's something that's very private and that I do on the drafting stage so the idea of close reading a passage from this novel today which you know is just published there's no time make changes so that critical eye yeah it feels a little bit daunting No, that's good. That's great. And yeah, interesting to see it from the different angles as writer, as reader, as editor, the different kinds of close reading. And here, maybe maybe you can just be a reader here. Who knows? Rather than author, see how far away from the text you can be.
00:03:18
Speaker
So we're going to talk about a passage from quite early on in the book. It's like the end of the first chapter, separate from the prologue. I did think about us talking about the prologue, but it's quite an intense prologue, just as a warning for people.
00:03:30
Speaker
And it's quite different stylistically, I would say, from like the rest of the book. Like there's something happening in the language that's a little bit different than prologue. So it doesn't quite give a accurate representation of the rest of it, I think. So that's why I chose the end of this first chapter, because I think it sets up all the characters quite well, the dynamics between them.
00:03:48
Speaker
do Shall we jump straight into the reading? Or is anything you want people to know about it before we start reading? I suppose for context, this sort of brings together what is the inciting incident, which is that one of these sisters is coming back to Wales and is moving home. And so for the first time in a long time, this family is all going to be on home soil.
00:04:09
Speaker
And yeah, that that's probably enough to say for now.
Extract from Selfish Girls: Family Dynamics and Power
00:04:13
Speaker
Yeah. Great. Would you mind reading for us then? No, of course. It's official then, or so I hear.
00:04:21
Speaker
You're moving back to Wales. She watches Innes' shoulders tense, looking for the horror to be found in Dylan's open mouth. You're moving back, Dylan steadies herself in the woods, in what they might mean.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yes, we've just decided. We haven't really told anyone yet. Noah told me. Emma repositions her napkin. He'd also told her Innes wasn't coping, and he wasn't sure how much more rejection she could take.
00:04:45
Speaker
He thought she needed to process what had happened, and Emma had reminded him it also happened to you. He didn't say anything to me, Dylan finally pulls off the gloves. We haven't all lived in Wales since we were children. It'll be nice, Emma offers, and Dylan returns a closed-mouthed smile, will it?
00:05:02
Speaker
She observes her sisters then, quick-footed in their conversation, not wanting to get stuck in the waterlogged marshlands of their childhood, both of them projecting into the future instead.
00:05:13
Speaker
As soon as they will arrive there, at the desired destination, lucid in all its disparagement of what they thought they wanted, Some great job, a child, a perfect studio they'd never been able to afford, inside which they'll realize they're still not happy, still not those people.
00:05:29
Speaker
She wonders if she should warn them. Emma is the eldest, and she knew she'd never escaped the chip on her shoulder that life had been harder for her because of the fact. Dylan was the classic middle child, the moderator, set on cementing herself in ease.
00:05:43
Speaker
And Innes, the baby, well, she'd always been the most dependent on them while being the most attached. Emma found this irritating, though she'd never say so. And in always being one step ahead, she can see exactly what her sisters are coming through.
00:05:57
Speaker
They have little consideration for this. So she keeps quiet, covers her glass when Innes tries to pour more wine and raises the other hand to signal for the bill. Thank you so much. Yeah, there there are so many things about this book that really enjoyed.
00:06:11
Speaker
And I think this extract is a really good example of the way that you're kind of shuttling between these three sisters, right? And that the novel is really built up through, without saying too much, like through the dynamics, the interrelations, the way that kind of family operates.
00:06:30
Speaker
So I was kind of interested in here, you're kind of giving us these like hints about the characters, like some of the backstory, but without giving us too much. And that's something you play with quite a lot in this book of like, what are you telling and withholding?
00:06:44
Speaker
And I think that that like starts off quite well here. and And, you know, I know I've picked the very end of the passage, but it's, it's official that also I hear you're moving back to Wales. Like, That also I hear is so family dynamics, right? It's like, like someone else has told me this thing. Why haven't you told me this thing? And also it's not just like here, like I know it's true, but the kind of the gossip network that like, who knows what nurse of things I feel like is one of the driving energies of the narration. Like, do we know everything?
00:07:14
Speaker
ah sisters know something. This is not a spoiler that we as a reader don't until really late in the book. Right. Which really threw me off, by the way. So like, I think it's quite interesting that, you you know, on page 12, you're already setting up that dynamic.
00:07:28
Speaker
I think so. yeah and And I think inside some families, that information is power. What do you know? Who's told you? What information do you hold? How do you use that information?
00:07:41
Speaker
And it's a way to hurt people. And it's ah it's a kind of hierarchy. Yeah, I think but they play with this power with what they know and and how they use that information, I think.
00:07:52
Speaker
he Even though like it's official or so I hear, it like either it's official or it's made, you know, like it's one or the other, but it it just feels like everyone is, I mean, there are a lot of passive aggressive people in this book.
Narrative Perspective and Family Dynamics
00:08:05
Speaker
i I won't ask you any biographical details, but you know, like it just it felt very um real to me. Yeah, I mean, look, I've got sisters, full disclosure.
00:08:16
Speaker
You know, I was under very strict instructions from them, you know, that they didn't in any way want to be in the book. And um and i I let them read the book before it went anywhere to kind of get their blessing and make sure they were comfortable.
00:08:30
Speaker
all But without a shadow of a doubt, my understanding of sisters and how they communicate and the mode the the modes of power, the subtleties of what's said, what isn't said is something that is instinctive.
00:08:44
Speaker
Like I know it. I'm the youngest of three. and so Yeah, I felt very comfortable that conversation between them and how language can be held between people that know each other so deeply and so intimately that it's the finishing off another thought or how ah conversation about something so quickly can shift into something, a completely different subject matter because of a shared past or shared history or a shared trauma.
00:09:13
Speaker
So it felt very natural for sure. yeah Yeah, there's lots of conversations behind the conversations, right? Even you're moving back, Dylan steadied herself in the words in what they might mean.
00:09:24
Speaker
Like even that is a kind of signal that the language is the the mode in which these sisters are working. But the words, I don't know, is this like the words are too fluid or something, right? She has to steady herself in them.
00:09:37
Speaker
as though, you know, language can't do all of the expressing between them, right? They're so effectively linked that language is like, ah I can't make sense of myself or each other through it. don't know. I just thought that was a really interesting line.
00:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And ah again, I think just the power that sisters have to destroy you with a word or a sentence.
00:10:01
Speaker
And I think what I've observed in close families as well, and something that certainly I have between my sisters is the way in which we communicate beyond and outside of language whilst having a conversation and the deep comfort in that.
00:10:15
Speaker
So in the text, when, you know, Dylan offers a closed mouth smile, will you know, like, is this a good thing? And I do a lot of that where it's a, and there's a gesture happening. There's a raised eyebrow, there's something bodily happening, but then I put the language that that means between them because there's this kind of psychic understanding and in how they're communicating and then, you know, to bring the reader into that.
00:10:41
Speaker
ah whilst keeping it off the page was something that i played with so yeah you have a lot of people just looking at each other and then it's almost like the narrator is then having to tell us to like let us in on what's going on between these sisters right because it's like can we even hear it as ah as a reader and those are always like in the italics right and you you do that quite throughout and I think that's yeah part of it is how much and maybe we can come back to this later in terms of craft but like how much as an author do you tell your reader? How much do you give them? How much do you let them infer?
00:11:14
Speaker
Right, because even this early bit where it says he thought she needed to process what had happened and Emma had reminded him it also happened to you. Like we kind of know what's being referred to if you read the prologue in a particular way, but it's not explicitly stated yet, right? What this instant is, you can kind of infer what it is.
00:11:34
Speaker
So again, there's like this kind of push pull between like what needs to be said and what doesn't need to be said. Yeah, and I think a shifting sands in that. Like the sands are constantly shifting because everybody's perspective is different and everybody's version of the story is different.
00:11:53
Speaker
And I think that's something, again, that is such a common thing in families. And, you know, I think all families have a shared trauma, shared traumas, right? And this one particularly was looking at intergenerational trauma in the female line and kind of the maternal relationship.
00:12:12
Speaker
And what I really was trying to get at was how we can all carry a story, but our versions are so different. And what what is the truth and what is right and what is wrong? And I think this is particularly interesting between children and their mothers, um in this case daughters and their mothers, because, um you know, trying to look at and understand our mother is like looking at the sun.
00:12:41
Speaker
Like she's completely, we're blinded by mother, by this bright shining idea and stereotype and role that she's always played in our lives. and To get around the sides and to truly know her and truly understand her And I think the trauma between these sisters and everything that's unsaid and the the pain in the history that all of them being back on home soil is going to bring back and, you know, make live again in their body is entangled with their mother and with the stories that their family have discussed and the ones that they've just papered over and pretended haven't happened.
00:13:22
Speaker
And I think that can make us, it can make it really hard for us to ascertain like what is real and whose story is the right one. And there isn't an answer to that. It's this, as I say, shifting sand amalgamation of all of it.
00:13:37
Speaker
And that feels really true to the experience of these things from my perspective.
Character Depth and Familial Influence
00:13:43
Speaker
So that was something I think I was wanting to capture in the in the text and in the writing.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah, and here and this is the the kind of big question, oh not question, but the thing I was thinking about the most is even in that line, he thought she needed to process what happened, right? So we've already got the idea like, oh, people might know what's, think they know what's best for another person, right? so already there's an element of like, control or some weird kind of power thing but also what you do linguistically to get formal is that like you use indirect discourse a lot right like he thought she needed to process what happened you do get a lot of speech but there's a lot of time and we'll get into this in the second part of the extract of we're in people's minds often but you kind of wander back and forth between them in each of the chapters like part of me could imagine a version of this book where
00:14:31
Speaker
each chapter is kind of told first person by a different character, but you, you maintain the third person, but shift around within it. And I think that allows you to do something quite interesting. I don't know whether you want to talk about that all, but like the decision, was there ever a version of this book where they were talking in first person or or did you feel like the third person did something different?
00:14:52
Speaker
To answer the question, no. First person and and these characters telling their stories from their own perspective was never an option for this book, for me. And I actually, I wanted to go deeper into that, like them being wrapped up in this and what I'm saying, the living in all of their and both of their perspectives, because i I think that's how families communicate. I don't think, you know, we're never communicating anyone with solely through language. With our family, it's like even more intense.
00:15:23
Speaker
And I wanted to write their childhood. So this book is written across three different timelines in a sense. You've got the present, timeline, the present tense, you've got the the the girl's childhood, and then growing up in their relationship with their mother as children. And then you've got Gwendolyn, the mother's childhood.
00:15:44
Speaker
And as you go back in time, those get shorter, you know, to kind of represent this history and time and their separation from each other's stories as time goes by.
00:15:55
Speaker
And I wanted to write the children's, ah the daughter's childhood in the collective we. So I would write that and then my editor would be like, I don't think it's working. I think you need to go back and change it and put it in the third person.
00:16:08
Speaker
And so I would go back and I would do that. And then my editor would say, I don't know. i think maybe the collective we is right and you should go back. Okay, okay. And then I got a new editor who came on board because my editor, Lily, really, really sadly left. And she was like, part this collective weed. I don't think it's working.
00:16:26
Speaker
It's so nightmarish. Like I went back and forth so much on the tens in that particular part of the book. But no, for the present tent, present narrative, sorry, as in the book where they're all, the girls are grown up, they're adults. No, that was never a consideration. It always felt like it needed to be the third person.
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah, this is the stuff I'm really interested in right? Like how we make these decisions, where it lands, whether it's like set from the beginning, or even that kind of, as you said, what sounds like a painful oscillation back and forth between like changing it and, but again, like that's quite subjective, right? Like one reader is like, this is working. And another one's like, this is not working, kind of suggests that There's no one right answer to this.
00:17:06
Speaker
There is no way to solve this problem necessarily. But that's kind of nice for readers and writers out there that are listening, right? That are like struggling with the form. Sometimes you just got to try it and do it and like see how it lands.
00:17:19
Speaker
Right. And i I think you've got to follow your gut instinct on these things. And sometimes it's fun at the beginning to have a play.
00:17:30
Speaker
and to try on the different tenses and go, okay, what would this character look like if I was writing this from the first person? And I do do that. Like I have done that probably more so for my first book than this one.
00:17:42
Speaker
And I also think maybe there's something in my first book was written entirely in in the first person. So maybe in a sense, like I i wanted to do something a little bit different this time, just variation, for my own sanity.
00:17:55
Speaker
But yeah, there's no right way. Absolutely. and And I think with these bigger decisions, I see it a lot with my writers, my authors, you can get so stuck in them and you can apply so much, you know, agonizing meaning to these decisions that you, the most important thing is the commitment.
00:18:14
Speaker
You have to just commit to what feels right and just see it through. only, you know, oscillating when your editor really makes you. but But that's important, I think, because, but yeah, there the form is going to afford you different kinds of effects, right? Like you could do a Faulkner thing where everyone, you know, I was thinking of like As They Lay Dying, right? Like where all the characters are speaking just on behalf of themselves and you've got contradictory versions of the same story you're like, wait, I thought you were there at that point, but this person said that thing.
00:18:42
Speaker
But because this book is so fluid, as you're saying, moving between those people, it does kind of emulate the way people are half expecting the other person's response already. You know, we haven't all lived in Wales since we were children. It'll be nice, Emma offers.
00:18:56
Speaker
Just that it'll be nice. It's like, oh, God, that and that just sounds not like I'm so excited you're all going to be here. It's like it'll be nice. Be like, nice, not nice, Emma.
00:19:07
Speaker
And then Dylan returns a close-out smile, will it? And then the very next line is, she observes her sisters then. And here's where I'm like, okay, well now Abby's messing with us, right? Because like, suddenly it was like, who's the she?
00:19:18
Speaker
That paragraph could easily begin with like, Emma observes her, because we're with Emma at that point, but it could easily be Dylan there. And sometimes you switch in the middle of a chapter, the focus, which is also quite destabilizing sometimes. You think you're with someone, and i was like,
00:19:32
Speaker
whoa, whoa, wait, who's, this is not, and then i'm like I had to go back a paragraph and i'm like, oh no, we switch from a different, you're focalizing in different ways quite often as though, yeah, to A, kind of like show us how family dynamics work, but also I think you're trying to keep us on our toes somehow.
00:19:50
Speaker
Whether constantly or not, I think you're trying to, there's something destabilizing about it a little bit. Yes. ah Yeah. And I think it's a way of holding attention. And, you know, a really important part of this was I really wanted text, this story, I wanted it to feel claustrophobic.
00:20:07
Speaker
I wanted it to feel like you were really up close and intense and like in your face. And yeah, I think that kind of, jumping in between the perspectives helped create that sense of claustrophobia within dysfunctional family dynamics.
00:20:29
Speaker
um But yeah, I mean, I hope keeping a writer, of keeping a reader on their toes and like being destabilizing them too much. That's always a really difficult line to tread.
00:20:42
Speaker
That's a point in which you can just irritate and people are like, oh, I've, you know, when towing that line is quite hard, I think. Yeah, no, I agree. and Although I'm happily irritated. i don't mind books where i' wear the author will deliberately annoy me. i'm like, that's fine, bring it on.
00:20:58
Speaker
Because I think if it's matching the like emotional tenor of what's going on, I think if the form and the content marry, I think most people will go along with it because they're like oh, I'm feeling it Like, she observes her sisters there comma, quick-footed in their conversation, comma, not wanting to get stuck in the waterlogged marshlands of their childhood, comma, both of them projecting into the future instead.
00:21:17
Speaker
and suddenly we got this's much longer, murky sentence, right, after the very quick dialogue back and forth. Even the stuck in the waterlogged marshlands, that like it sounds... like muggy and marshy, right? You can hear the waterlogged through the comments, through the kind of buildup, but it is describing that thing you're saying, right? That like the book should feel kind of waterlogged. You should feel a little bit claustrophobic, yeah as especially as we're moving back and forth through time and we're kind of like, wait, who's here?
Millennial Identity and Success in Literature
00:21:47
Speaker
And then the next line, and soon they will arrive there at the desired destination, lucid in its disparagement of what they thought they'd wanted. different kind of sentence again right you really move from that kind of like very direct speech and people giving each other side eye this really like poetic line and then this one and soon they will arrive there like this is not emma's voice suddenly right this is now the narrator may be stepping back right giving a kind of like long view the desired destination lucid like there's loads of like alliteration that i quite like
00:22:19
Speaker
of what they thought they'd wanted, some great job, a child, a perfect studio they'd never been able to afford. That doesn't sound like Emma's voice, right? That doesn't sound like we're in her head, inside which they'll realise they're still not happy.
00:22:32
Speaker
So again, like this kind of telegraphing from the very specific thoughts of Emma, like back out to like, maybe it's all of them thinking at the same time, or maybe it's a narrator who's outside who's like, oh my God, this family's doomed.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. and Interesting. I mean, feel that there is, think that is Emma's consciousness in a way. Because the next sign is obviously she wonders if she should warn them.
00:23:01
Speaker
And I think there's, you know, I think she's speaking, have a difference is at first she's looking at them considering them and what they're doing. And then it's almost like she starts speaking for them as a collective.
00:23:13
Speaker
And it's like, she's done this, she's gone, she's got the great house, she's got the perfect children, and she's got the doctor for her husband. And she herself has realized that she's still not happy and she still never see that person.
00:23:26
Speaker
And it's almost as if she feels that they haven't had that realization yet. So think the shift is is going from kind of talking about them to talking about them, including herself.
00:23:39
Speaker
Maybe. But it definitely feels like a different kind of language or discourse, right? If like, if these are her thoughts, right? Like it's not, she's she's not using the same language to talk to them as she is to talk to herself.
00:23:52
Speaker
It's almost like she's like because it's like, and realize they're still not happy. Like this book is so much about like the fantasies of the good life, right? And what the good life is supposed to mean for us.
00:24:03
Speaker
Like it feels like a very millennial book. I always bang on on this podcast about millennials, but I'm sorry, this is 2am. And it's the kind of fiction I've been reading, but like so much of it is what is, what is the life that I should be leading?
00:24:15
Speaker
Do I have access to it? And when I do, you know, cause as soon as they may all are in Wales, everyone's like, is this what we wanted? How did we end up here? Like it's what we maybe should want, but like, is it what we want?
00:24:27
Speaker
And there's still not those people. I love that you move from those really long sentences to still not those people, like almost all monosyllables, but not quite, but just a very short, sharp sentence that tells us, are they ever going be those people?
00:24:40
Speaker
Is it possible to be those people? Right. Or is that, is it just a kind of fantasy? Yeah, I also think these women have got a very painful past that they're living alongside little denial of.
Exploring Sibling Roles and Perspectives
00:25:01
Speaker
And I think it's more that they have made certain decisions in their life and certain choices in the sort of quagmire of this unresolved, unaddressed,
00:25:16
Speaker
pain and that in facing it perhaps it can create more space for them to be the people that they really want to be. I mean i want to I want to say things about the ending now but I'm not going to we're going to focus on this passage but yeah like the book is very interesting like what happens when one sister's idea of like how things should be butts up against another's right and then how that butts up against the mums and all the rest of it and like they each have their own particular ideas and it's the kind of friction when they're all the friction of this of the storylines they have about each other as much as their own selves.
00:25:50
Speaker
Like, it's as much about the idea they have of one another, because then that's what we get here. Dylan was the classic middle child. So again, this is Emma, but you're not telling us it's Emma. So this...
00:26:01
Speaker
dear students, listeners, is free and direct discourse, right? Where you're giving us a character's thoughts, but you're not telling us it's their thoughts. And I think that's like an interesting choice as well, because it suddenly means we're fully in her mind, fully like in her thoughts, but we're having to figure out whose thoughts they are, or or we're just kind of absorbing her thoughts as though they are natural, right?
00:26:21
Speaker
Dylan was the classic middle child, the moderator, set on cementing herself in ease. And Inez, the baby, well, she'd always been the most dependent on them. That well is the giveaway for me, right? That it's Emma's thought.
00:26:33
Speaker
You know, like, and Inez, the baby, well, she'd always, it's like she's rehearsing this story she's told a hundred times. Being the most dependent on them while being the most attached. Like this is why this is why I love close reading. This is that that one well in the commas tells you, oh, no, this is Emma's thoughts. This is not the narrator. This is Emma and her reading of the family.
00:26:53
Speaker
While being the most attached, Emma found this irritant. And then suddenly we she comes back into the sentence. Right. So my sideways question would be like, are you the most dependent with the most attached?
00:27:04
Speaker
You are the baby in the family. But even though like that next line, they're like, though she'd never say so, that also feels a bit like older sister being like, oh, she won't even admit who she is, right? Like she she's she feels so over the sisters.
00:27:17
Speaker
They haven't even like all arrived back yet. It's quite fun. The thing about Emma as a character is that she's kind of the peacemaker. Like even at the beginning of this section, she's she's also like, oh yeah, you know, no one told me that that's happening and you know, yeah, but it'll be nice.
00:27:36
Speaker
We'll all be there. Like, come on guys, it's going to be okay. She is the peacemaker and she is the the eldest. and And I think she placates... in and in a lot of the conversations.
00:27:48
Speaker
But underneath that is this undercurrent of like resentment and bitterness because she's not really putting her feelings or how she really feels at the front because she can't. She has to make sure that everyone else is okay and she has to like calm this down and make sure Dylan doesn't kick off and As a result of that, there's a real resentment in her voice, which gets more intense as the book goes on and we learn more about her and what's happening in her life and the kind of internal and emotional battle she's facing.
00:28:20
Speaker
and so I think that um you know I wanted that. She's controlled, Emma. She's very, very controlled as a person. And I wanted to distinguish that, how she is.
00:28:33
Speaker
you know, how she acts, the things that she says out loud versus what's actually going on inside of her head. Yeah, I think that's like the most important bit, right? That even like externally, not just controlled, but also controlling, right? in in certain ways, but internally she's just like, well, I figured it all.
00:28:49
Speaker
And in being one step ahead, she can see exactly what her sisters are coming through. Like- I can see the journey you're going on, been there, got the t-shirt. Should I bother to warn them? Should I explain? or should I just let them have this like realization and about life, the the painful, bitter, sweet way that I did?
00:29:07
Speaker
And they've got no consideration for the fact that I'm older and wiser and I've been there. They're not even interested. So I'll leave them i'll lead them to i'll leave them to it, you know, and flag for the bill. They can get on with it.
00:29:18
Speaker
But, you know, if somebody in that moment would ask her she'd be, oh, yeah, can I placate you? Is there anything you need? Oh, yeah, fine, you know. And I like that about her. I think it's very real. I think i think a lot of us conduct ourselves that way.
00:29:34
Speaker
It's not even a tension. It's like everyone around her is aware that this is what's happening. You know, she's not fooling anyone because they're her family. They know that she's she's controlling. They know she's difficult. They know she's resentful.
00:29:48
Speaker
So that's interesting as well. Like, you know, in seeing her through this the sister's eyes or the mother's eyes, it makes her real. It makes her feel, she's always felt very real to me, Emma, alive and breathing and real.
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah, such a strong sense of it. Yeah, they they are definitely fully fleshed out individuals, right? They all have their very particular modes. I just think it's interesting how through these like narrative devices, I guess, that you kind of get us on side with some of them.
00:30:18
Speaker
And then they do like really obnoxious things. You're like, okay, okay. I'm back to preferring Dylan again. you know what I mean? Like, she's a bit more like manic and chaotic, but I kind of prefer over this kind of like, they have little consideration for this. So she keeps quiet, covers her glass when Inez tries to pour more wine.
00:30:36
Speaker
Just that's like a, right you know, not even like, oh no, thanks. I'm okay. Just like, Such a big sister move though.
Emma's Role as a Sibling Peacemaker
00:30:41
Speaker
That's such a big sister I mean, to be fair, i just my eldest sister, neither of them have ever done something like that to me. but But like, they do do things where it's like they're in charge and they can signal or do something. And I'm like, oh, right, yeah.
00:30:54
Speaker
Even though I'm in my mid thirties, they're still in charge because that's the dynamic. and And I think that's such a subtle thing, what a big sister can do. And you're like, oh yeah, like you still think you're in charge.
00:31:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, and raises the other hand. I just love like one hand over the glass and then raises the other hand to signal for the bill, which even like signaling for the bill, right? Like just that, I don't know, just, and that's how the chapter ends before we jump to a different place in the story.
00:31:24
Speaker
And I don't know, like one could take away from that. Well, like here are the dynamics set in stone. Emma is this person. Dylan's this person. Inez the other one. Like we know the coordinates of everybody, partly because Emma is the one that's been like leading the charge in in the kind of narrative voice, at least.
00:31:40
Speaker
But then as we move into the next section, and actually, we then we move slightly to a different person. and then we're like, oh, oh, maybe that's not quite how I imagined it. And maybe, maybe people are actually not the same.
00:31:52
Speaker
i don't know, like it you open up room for dissent and, and a little bit of space for the reader to kind of figure out where they are in this mix and like who, who to fully listen to, who to trust, who, where to place ourselves. And I think that's quite fun in a way.
00:32:08
Speaker
o Yeah. I, and I space to get to know them, the reader to get to know these characters for themselves. rather than telling them who's the villain who they should like and who they shouldn't. It's that spaciousness to, you know, you never see these characters outside living their lives. Like you don't see them at the school gates picking up their children. You don't see them work.
00:32:38
Speaker
You only ever see them with under the microscope and lens of their family relationships, their family dynamics. That's interesting in and of itself, because I think all of us could probably admit that who we are at home, quote unquote, you know, at Christmas time, we all talk about how we sort of revert back to regress, you know, to these bickering 14 year olds on the sofa arguing about who had the last purple quality street or whatever it is, you know, just things that, you know,
00:33:12
Speaker
you You just, you don't act like that with anyone else. And it was interesting, this idea of not giving the reader access to them in any of their other areas of their lives where they would be different people. They wouldn't be playing in into these dynamics. They wouldn't be playing into these sort of the trauma bonds that it would.
00:33:33
Speaker
And so I have a lot of compassion for them in that sense. Like you are only really seeing them in this pressure cooker. Yeah, no, that's a really good thing to say, actually, that like we only ever see them in relation to one another.
Abigail's Writing Process and Discipline
00:33:47
Speaker
And it is that relationality that I think that really like drives the book above all else, like that people aren't isolated kind of units. these women bleeding into each other, but at the same time, they they are distinctive and their response to their upbringing has been informative in very, very different ways.
00:34:10
Speaker
And that's always an interesting thing. You know, you can have a shared history and yet how you've decided to take that history and build yourself and build your life is completely different to a sibling.
00:34:23
Speaker
um But there's some sort of, comparison i think that sits there with somebody who you've shared a life with and formed with um and then to how your life's then looked later on down the track and how that comparison lives and obviously you know no spoilers but for these characters some of those things are really intense and they feel that they that things have been stolen from them
00:34:57
Speaker
Things have been taken from them by each other and that shouldn't have never should never have been taken. That feels like a really good place to end up it because ah now people can just go buy the book and find out.
00:35:08
Speaker
And it is now out, people, so you can go buy it in your local bookshops. Let me ask you then about your writing. Do you have a set practice? Do you have a process? Do you have rituals? Do you have like time and place and all that kind of stuff? I want to know.
00:35:25
Speaker
Right. I'm totally corporate coded because I, you know, spent so many years working for corporate publishers and and literary agencies. So it kind of serves me now in my creativity in the sense that I'm just quite disciplined.
00:35:42
Speaker
But I run my publishing consultancy literary agency that I work. I'm working there Monday through Thursday. And then Friday is my dedicated writing day. So I think that's the other thing as well. It's like Monday through Thursday, I'm busy doing other things. So if I don't write on Friday, I'm not writing again for another week unless I spend my weekend doing it, which I do when I'm really, really in love with book.
00:36:04
Speaker
And in that redrafting, sometimes I'll spend a weekend, but on the whole, i wrote Selfish Girls every Friday for the last three, four years. I'll get up early.
00:36:15
Speaker
ah just I just, can't have, i can't listen to the radio or look at my phone or engage really in like the world or a conversation with my partner. Like I just sort of feel I need a clean brain.
00:36:26
Speaker
And mind until I'll come into my office very early and light a candle. And then I just start. And usually I can go on a good day to sort of four, five hours, sometimes six.
00:36:41
Speaker
And then it starts, but I know when it's done, not because of me running out of wanting to work, but it just becomes dribble. Like what is coming out? I'm this is really bad. Now you have to stop. And then I come back the following week and go again.
00:36:55
Speaker
Okay, so got a candle, but like hopefully you're eating snacks during the this time. and i don't know, some people like I just sit and I just write and write and I'm like, no, no, you need to stop and have a cup of tea, my God. Yeah, might pop down and get a cuppa for sure. I actually, I i quit smoking quite a few years ago now, but sometimes when I'm writing, like the thing that I really, really need to like work through an idea, and of course, it's a just terrible bad habit is to go and have a cigarette on the balcony and that can become part of my process.
00:37:24
Speaker
in a way that I've kicked smoking everywhere else in my life. You know, if I have a glass of wine or I have a coffee, I don't think about it. But when I'm writing, I'm in it and I'm stuck with something, it's the last place I need to kick it, I think.
00:37:38
Speaker
Do you find that kind of like going back to it a week later? Is that like helpful having that space like across the week? Or are you kind of like, oh, I really want tomorrow to like go back to this? Sometimes it's helpful.
00:37:51
Speaker
Sometimes maybe it's not. But it's, it's just the way it's, it's, it's what I've got to give it alongside everything else that I'm doing. as I say, if I have that day on a Friday, then I might start my Saturday morning reading a cup of tea in bed, reading over what I've written.
00:38:10
Speaker
and if I need to, I'm running behind on deadline, you know, i can get up early and do some in the morning, but I just, I don't put that expectation on myself. And I, I really, really, really try and just concentrate it on that Friday because I've had, you know, bad experiences of like medicalized burnout where I've sort of been not able to do, you know, not not be able to get out of bed for like almost half Yeah, so I know what pushing myself does. So again, it's that discipline of going, this is your time.
00:38:41
Speaker
Enjoy it, make the most of it. And you know Chris, I think there's something really relieving about that because otherwise it's this constant thing over you where it's like, I should be writing, I should writing this book. I need to capture this idea before it runs away from me. And actually like...
00:38:54
Speaker
It's such a, it's so structured. I don't question it. I come in every Friday and I just write. That's just what I do in the same way that, you know, same way I'll book a gym class in advance. I just get up and I go to the gym class. Don't think about it. It's in my diary.
00:39:07
Speaker
It's what I do. I'm, as I say, that corporate coded helps and it helps me manage my energy. And so I don't over give, which is my problem. But it's just like what you do.
00:39:18
Speaker
Like I'm a writer. that This is what I do on this day. Yeah. As opposed to the, it is my all being. have to be doing it all time, you know. Yeah. And then the early ideation, like I promised myself that I was going to have like a break before starting on another, ah starting on the next book.
00:39:34
Speaker
But yeah. I have had an idea come to me in its sort of early form. And it, you know, it's usually actually I'll i'll just sort of be sat and it's like, oh, you know, and I'll be in bed again reading or something at nine o'clock at night.
00:39:49
Speaker
my life is really exciting. um I'll be like, it's come and I'll just pick my laptop up or i'll pick a notepad up and I'll be scribbling and writing. And it's not like, it's always there. I'm always thinking about it. It's always in my consciousness somewhere, but it really, really works for me just having this one designated day.
00:40:09
Speaker
That was great. Do you have a memory of like when you first wrote, was there is there an early childhood memory of like, this is the thing I like doing. I do have this really, really clear memory of deciding that I was going to write a book when I was very, very young.
00:40:30
Speaker
And it was definitely coming from a place, I think, of having been naughty or sort of being told off, being in trouble sat with my notepad and my pen and being like, one day I'm going to write book.
00:40:45
Speaker
all going to and ah you know here we are with Selfish Girls. And here we are with Selfish Girls. so But I definitely never saw myself as a writer for the years that I was working as an editor and an and agent.
00:40:58
Speaker
I loved books. i left you know I loved reading.
Therapeutic Writing Project for Women
00:41:02
Speaker
As I say, that was my degree. That was always my heart and and and what i what I enjoyed doing most. But it took many, many, many years for me to realize that I myself wanted to to write on a more conscious level, you know?
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, I just I'm i'm always interested interested like when people first like, sit down and think about that as like a, this is for me, this is what I could do. Apparently, like when I was a baby, like I was holding books as like a and like an infant. I could obviously couldn't read them didn't know what they were. But I was just like, this is a solid thing that I want to hold on to, which I feel like is a sign.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, you're like, this definitely feels like it's for me. Yeah, yeah. This is just my thing. You said that you teach creative writing as well. Do you have any like little lessons or activities or things that you could suggest to listeners?
00:41:47
Speaker
I'm actually, I'm working on a really, really exciting and project right now, which I'm going to be launching towards the end of this year with a psychotherapist called Helen Sprout.
00:42:00
Speaker
And it's a therapeutic writing program aimed at women, for women, and way of kind of writing into shadow selves, discomfort, suffering, writing as creative health, writing as a way of...
00:42:19
Speaker
dealing with those things that are really hard to talk about. So I'm really excited about that. It's called the bone project. um And so it's kind of writing in a different way. It's less sort of lessons on how to write and more writing as a way for us to process and create some relief, hopefully. And Yeah, so I'm excited about that. something different. So they're kind of like prompts or kind of just like thought kind of experiment?
00:42:47
Speaker
It's a therapeutic program that will run over a course of three days. So yeah, it's a whole program that's kind got embodied work, writing, all sorts of assets. And yeah, it's we're we're we're still in the process of finessing and perfecting the program itself. um So yeah, it will it will be launching later on this year.
Book Recommendations and Their Impact
00:43:08
Speaker
Okay, last question. What books are you recommending? what do you want people to go and read? New things, old things, things coming out? I'm currently, well, just finished The Dry Season by Melissa Feebos.
00:43:23
Speaker
I mean, I just love her. And in terms of texts about writing and how to write, bodywork is just amazing. phenomenal and the dry season is incredible and it's about her kind of year of celibacy except it's not about that at all like it's so much deeper and existential and I just I literally just can't rate her any any more highly and then also stillborn by Guadalupineto that is just a phenomenal bit of writing phenomenal book
00:43:55
Speaker
And the third thing is, which I've read this year and loved was Perfection by Vincenzo de Tronico. And I think what's so interesting about that is it's so, so, so closely modeled on the 1965 things by Georges Parekh, right?
00:44:13
Speaker
And it seems so clever. I'm like, what a clever idea just take something that was popular at the time then and that worked then that resonated, but kind of attuning it to now.
00:44:25
Speaker
Because so much of the difficulty of writing is trying to find structure and nail story. Where's this going? The idea of being given a roadmap and having write to it, incredibly, incredibly clever thing to do. But I also just think that book, I really saw myself in it as somebody who lives remotely.
00:44:44
Speaker
I really saw myself in it and it was a way that was uncomfortable, in a way that was not the reflection I wanted to see. And I have a bit of an emotional pervert. I love books that make me cry I love books that just create discomfort as well. And that one did.
00:44:58
Speaker
Oh yeah. Like I think at the beginning of the book, you're like, ha ha, this is so funny. It's like skewering a version of like contemporary life. And then you're oh no, this is me. Oh no. Oh no. Yeah.
00:45:09
Speaker
Oh God. Somebody get rid of the sourdough bread. Why is Yeah, no, quite. And it's just like in the plant. I know every, I was reading and I was just like looking up and I was like, Oh no, my room is full of plants. What have I done?
00:45:22
Speaker
Very, very clever. and Very funny. Yeah. Those are really good recommendations. I've not started the new Phoebo's book, but I've like read her other ones and she's, yeah, she's got a kind of writer that makes me both want to write more and give up on writing. So um totally agree with that. i feel same Well, thank you for those.
00:45:43
Speaker
And thank you so much for your time today, Abby. It's been really fun.
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:45:47
Speaker
Yes. So great to chat to you. And thanks for reading Selfish Girls so closely. Thank you for listening to this episode.
00:45:56
Speaker
Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at Books Up Close and on YouTube. And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form linked in the show notes.
00:46:10
Speaker
It's really helpful
00:46:13
Speaker
You can 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