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Ep. 1. Olivia Sudjic, Asylum Road
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In this episode, we read the ending of Olivia Sudjic's Asylum Road (2021). Buy the novel from a local independent bookshop, or via Bookshop.org.
Olivia Sudjic was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels (Asylum Road and Sympathy), and Exposure, a non-fiction exploration of art-making, feminism and anxiety in the digital age.
Find the transcript, the extract we discuss, and more about the episode on Substack. Follow the podcast on Instagram.
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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close to the Podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd, a writer and academic, and on this show I talk to other writers about their work and their practice. We also collaborate on a close reading of their writing, looking at a particular passage or a whole poem, and talk about its meanings, resonances and the technicalities of language.
00:00:21
Speaker
This is a show for book nerds, aspiring and established authors, or anyone interested in how texts get Olivia was named one of Grantor's best young British novelists in 2023.
Olivia on Close Reading and Author's Context
00:00:45
Speaker
She's the author of two critically acclaimed novels,
00:00:48
Speaker
Asylum Road and Sympathy and Exposure, a for having me. i um I don't think I've ever done any close reading of my own work before. Well that's the opening question really. I want to know A, your thoughts on kind of close reading as a practice, as like a thing that we do, but also what it would mean to close read yourself with another person.
00:01:18
Speaker
As a practice, I would say it's familiar in a good way. Like it's it's sort of what I instinctively lean towards anyway. It's also what my experience as a student of literature was sort of grounded in. At university, we had like a specific module on close reading called practical criticism, which obviously, you know, is, it was at Cambridge. So that's like often seen as like the foundation of that.
00:01:44
Speaker
I think at the time there were kind of benefits to that in the sense that you don't feel like such an imposter because you don't know the historical context and that's fine. And I think also that I felt like it suited the things I most enjoyed about reading, which were that kind of close attention to language. I think as I've got older and certainly since I've started writing my own books,
00:02:08
Speaker
I've seen more how difficult it is to try and separate out the context, whether that's like the person who wrote it or the, you know, the material conditions, etc. And I kind of wrote actually a book semi about that in the context of exposure, um because I both felt like I wanted to separate myself out from my books. And also, like, partly that was because it seems to be conflated much more for certain types of writers than it is for others.
Evolution of Olivia's Novels
00:02:36
Speaker
and I guess in the context of my own work the idea of being closely read is um I don't know maybe the opposite of familiar or semi-opposite in the sense of being kind of uncanny because it's something I'm so familiar with doing it's very strange to have that kind of turned back on me but also I guess I almost feel happiest talking about books including my own when we are focusing on something very concrete and specific when we get into like the much broader generalise sort of quickly ideological overarching kind of concepts. I think that often you lose touch with what's enjoyable about reading. So yeah, I'm feeling and feeling a little uncomfortable but in a good way I guess.
00:03:20
Speaker
Okay, great. No, I like it. I wonder if you could say like briefly your thoughts about the kind of differences between sympathy and asylum road. Were you thinking stylistically, formally, in a very particular way when you approached asylum road? was there Was there a difference in kind of how you approached the writing process?
00:03:36
Speaker
I think there was some obvious differences in the sense that unlike maybe some people whose first book is actually not their first book, they maybe already had one in a drawer or it's actually, they publish not in a straightforward sort of, I'm thinking actually, for example, of Sally Rooney, who I actually reviewed her third novel.
00:03:58
Speaker
I had to think about the fact that both of her first two novels she kind of wrote before she became a public figure. Those types of things can obviously really affect the way that you then approach kind of consecutive novels. Sympathy was literally my first and Asylum Road was definitely my second novel and they happened either side of that very distinct fault line between being a quote-unquote author and not or not a published one. So I think that did dramatically alter both the way that I approached the writing and to an extent because you've had the opportunity to get feedback, whether it's from critics or just readers or even just your own sort of almost like divining rod that you put out into the world. It can make you want to do something very different.
00:04:47
Speaker
And I think that I look back over some old notebooks the other day, cause I was trying to find a notebook that I hadn't yet used enough of to, to you know, I should actually just get a bit more organized, but I found all these old notes where I've written myself instructions, like no more themes, because there are times, you know, where you feel like you've gotten so caught up in one thing that the next book is like a pendulum swing away from those, those sort of preoccupations.
00:05:15
Speaker
um sympathy I felt like was very there were there were lots of ideas that went in there. And I almost felt like, which is common I think with your first novel, you almost feel like maybe I'll never get a chance to write another book again. So kind of everything goes in. And then your second novel, you're like, oh my God, there's nothing left in the attic. Like where am I gonna find all of this compost? Like do I have to live another 30 years or 20 years just to kind of develop some more life experience to kind of mine for even just like the occasional anecdote.
00:05:47
Speaker
So in a way I was starting from a kind of more clean palette and also I wanted to write something that was not baggy, that it had that kind of like real forward motion. The idea of the road kind of obviously made that kind of quite a kind of that image was in my mind anyway and it's in the title.
00:06:09
Speaker
Whereas sympathy was much more like a lattice, you know, all these kind of nodes in the internet and the idea of like everything being connected in this sort of complicated chessboard like way.
Spoiler Alert: Ending of Asylum Road
00:06:20
Speaker
So I did think about them structurally differently. And also I think that I wanted to get away from whether it was positive or negative, but the kind of the kind of reviews I'd had of sympathy made me want to do something quite consciously different. Okay, no, that's fascinating because they they feel so different as books.
00:06:38
Speaker
Like you get a sense of your voice through both, but formally they're doing very rigorously different things and the reading experience kind of goes along with that. And we're going to talk about the very end of A Silent Road. So listeners, if you've not read it, either you're going to get a reveal here or just go read it. You probably should have read it by now anyway. So I think it's one of those, one of those endings where hopefully it, I don't think it would work like this, but if, for example, with sympathy, I begin almost at the end.
00:07:05
Speaker
And in theory, you could transpose this ending to the beginning and then like force the reader to go back and work out what happened. So hopefully it's not spoiler-ish so much as sort of like titillating, but we'll see. Yeah, exactly. Is there anything you want to quickly tell it? Like, obviously you can't narrate the whole plot, but is there any kind of background that we might want to know, like who these two people are at least in the car or what the context of is of them being in the car at this moment?
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think in the interest of close reading, I don't want to give too much context, but I will say that it is the kind of culmination of a couple who have been trying to work out whether or not they should be together and doing that in a kind of against the backdrop of two very different family histories. um And one has been kind of dependent on the other. So Anya, who is the female character has been sort of financially and in some ways sort of socially dependent on this character Luke to kind of integrate into British society having come to the UK as a refugee, as a child. And and this is a kind of rebalancing of that power dynamic. He's also just killed a mouse in a sink with a brick.
00:08:20
Speaker
ah I feel like that's an important contextual note that, you know, it might not be vital, but I think it's interesting in terms of the mood of this scene. I think that what you won't know when you come to the scene if you haven't read the book is that Anya's kind of character has gone on quite a kind of literal and metaphorical journey in the sense that she begins you could say in a very outwardly passive or like defensive crouch position which she's sort of learned or adopted but I would say is not actually her natural state and sort of more and more as the book progresses like she's sort of finding or awakening a version of herself which is the opposite of that and has maybe realized that after so long suppressing it there's a lot of rage to come out
00:09:11
Speaker
Well, on that note, could you could you read the final little extract for us then? Sure. As the car slides forward, I feel everything go quiet. The past disappears, and so does the future. I have only the present tense. My ears grow alert, my sense of smell so keen I can hold and separate every element inside the car. The leather seats, his sweat, his hair,
00:09:42
Speaker
The silence was like music. I keep my eyes on the road, moving very slowly in the direction of the station. The car is automatic. Driving is easier than I expected. I've had dreams in which I was put in charge of a car without knowing how to drive it, and those were horrifying and exhausting. But this, it feels like when I first broke into a run. I'll have to rethink what I'm capable of.
00:10:12
Speaker
what other things might come naturally to me. I turn to him then again, and as when he'd come through the doorway, it is as if I'm seeing him for the first time clearly, except that it feels final now. And when I turn back to the road, what I see feels as good as an end. The road stretches on and on, the buildings either side a blur like the edge of a black hole.
00:10:38
Speaker
No place to turn, level and straight and stretching resolutely nowhere. I put my hand behind my passenger's head, warm, feeling the weight of his skull. I should have liked to have kept it. I press my foot down now on the accelerator. I do not see the curb. For a long time, it is as if we have lifted off the road and are flying.
00:11:05
Speaker
My passenger, now my captive, holds onto the door, shouting, let me out, he repeats, let me out, as if I've lost control instead of taken it. Stop the car, Anya, fucking hell, please, I beg you, stop. The longer I stay silent and the car careers on, the more it seems I can do this, just as he said. Faintly, I
Writing Techniques and Sensory Details
00:11:30
Speaker
hear him now. I press my foot down harder.
00:11:35
Speaker
Amazing, thank you so much. Loved hearing you read that. I've never heard myself read that. It's funny as well because what I didn't mention in contextualising it is thus far in the book everything up until quite recently has been past tense. And the tense has shifted as well, which obviously Anya mentions in this.
00:11:57
Speaker
So as I'm reading it, it's like a different muscle that my brain is also switching into because as a reader, you have to read it in a much more dramatic tone, I think, somehow, um and bring a different kind of presence to reading it than I do when I'm normally reading from this book. Yeah, that present tends to, like, you feel the shift, like, as the car slides forward and you're like, wait, you know, as a reader, you are experiencing something, you know, something is changing.
00:12:21
Speaker
But also, you know as you were saying earlier, the like were we're introduced to this character who's questions of agency, right? As the car slides forward, there's really kind of passive, that as she's not in control of it. The car is doing the sliding. As a gear shift, literally, in the kind of tone. Yeah, exactly. And then also, like I feel everything go quiet, which I think is just an interesting like phrase, right? like that A sound is like felt, or a lack of sound is felt. And I'm interested in like how many senses ah conjured in this little passage at the end, how like so rooted in her body we are. So I think that when I was trying to imagine this scene it's a road, it's based on a road in London that I know but as usual when you're inventing a scene as ah as a fiction author it can help to have, it helps me anyway to have like an architecture that I know so that there's something grounding
00:13:12
Speaker
Like in in sympathy, I use very much the architecture of New York, the grid. I had a map pinned all the time when I was writing so that I would know, not just like logistically how to plot, but so that it would feel real. So that then I could do these like imaginative leaps and they would feel a bit less like, you know, when Rachel Cusk talks about inventing characters being like, and then Jack said to Jill, you know, and especially when you're doing a scene like this, which feels,
00:13:40
Speaker
you know, so far from my own experience, but also you're really asking the reader to kind of come with you on a potentially like this is where the plot goes over the boil.
00:13:52
Speaker
grounding it in the sensory, grounding it in my memory of that road, et cetera, was like the only way I felt like I could make it seem not sort of overblown, you know, the kind of taking some of the heat out by not using overly descriptive language and focusing on those kind of gaps like silence, like you know the sort of everything that's disappearing from her so that sense of history that kind of maybe like at other points richness to the story and layers they start to be stripped away also at the time in which she's writing this she's pregnant so her sense of smell it's not just a kind of
00:14:33
Speaker
Elaboration, it's a, she really has this very keen sense of smell, which is sort of turning her into more animal instinct. So there's like this stripping away of these layers of sort of potentially like civility and kind of what we think of as being what makes us different from animals, I would say. And so she is almost becoming more predatory on. So when you mentioned the killing of the mouse, like those things are linked in the sense that she's become this like cat like creature.
00:15:01
Speaker
and stripping it back to those kind of instincts. And this idea of the black hole, I guess, as well. So there is this sort of strong sensory thing, but there's also at the center of it, this like nothingness. And I was sort of picturing like this black eye, which is sort of like unseeing, you know. And I guess the kind of, if you've ever had something like sleep paralysis or something like that, it's that very real, it's obviously a dreamlike state, but it really tips over into the real. And there's this combination of,
00:15:30
Speaker
a very physical sensation like the weight pressing down on you so you cannot move and this like suspicion that maybe it's a dream but maybe it's real and you're not really sure and so in the absence of being able to move everything else becomes much more heightened and so I think that there's something like that going on here where what she can touch like his head and and the parts of him that she can smell and so on become like very outsized in her imagination as everything else is kind of narrowing to this vanishing point on the horizon. um And obviously it's the culmination of this basically like road trip they've been on together, which he has always been in charge of as the driver. And so at this point, obviously it's requiring in some sense, well her concentration because she can't really drive down this road. But equally there's this, I would say like quite black and you know, that very like, so that sense of futility, I guess.
00:16:28
Speaker
that this this removal of the future suddenly feels like you know she she really no longer cares about all this stuff that she's cared so much about. And talking about how she's seeing him for the first time clearly stripped back as well of all of these like attributes. She's a you know on him as like what she needs, her saviour, her cloak of protection or whatever it is in terms of integrating into the society that she no longer really cares about fitting into.
00:16:55
Speaker
So yeah, I felt like because it's the culmination of so many of the book's themes, it was going to be very difficult to write it without it feeling freighted. and that's the other thing is that where you choose to end a book often like it will in your head anyway then lend it this like freightedness so you don't want to then freight it yourself as well with all of this kind of extra detail so I sort of was thinking about stripping back detail but in a way that felt like a continuation of the story yeah and it's that even sounds like your description of close reading right like attending to like this presentness without past and present right without too much context impinging on it
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Narrative Ambiguity and Perspectives
00:17:35
Speaker
Because I don't want it to feel like this is some epiphany moment in the sense that she is now explaining herself or, you know, I wanted there also to be a certain amount of ambiguity, which I think there is in terms of what actually happens or to who or how, and people can obviously read different motivations into it. Not because I just think that that's like a more mysterious and chic way to end a book, or maybe it is.
00:17:59
Speaker
But I think also because the whole book is sort of about how two people can see the same situation so differently and and draw such different conclusions, whether that's within a relationship, a romantic relationship, or within a country. You know, I wrote this around the time of the referendum, the Brexit referendum, like that idea that you can like not have any kind of cohesive set of facts that everybody agrees on.
00:18:24
Speaker
And so all she really has to go on throughout the book increasingly as those sort of ideas of like a shared truth or a shared reality of being, you know, ah disintegrating around her. All she really has to go on at this point is her own sort of sensory interpretations.
00:18:41
Speaker
It has to be obviously in the first person, it's been in the first person the whole time except when she flirts with this sort of third person view but it's still her, it's still Anya. So i I couldn't then give it this like extra layer of knowingness because if I think about another ending actually that I guess might have been a model however unconsciously but as I'm thinking about it is the ending of In the Cut by Susanna Moore.
00:19:04
Speaker
where she, again, without wanting to spoil that book for people who haven't read it, but, you know, where a character potentially has to narrate an ending that involves them, you know, like the potential kind of demise of the themselves. That's, you know, is is potentially what's happening in in the cut, but obviously we never get to that point and we're not quite sure exactly what happens.
00:19:26
Speaker
That's something that is so different when you have to write a novel in a first-person voice than when you are, let's say, making a film because you can give that ambiguity much more easily to a viewer of a film than you can to a reader.
00:19:40
Speaker
You know, I was even reading David Lynch, or I guess a kind of obituary of David Lynch yesterday, where that was his mistrust of the written word. It's like just how much you have to pin down. And obviously that's the opposite of everything that he does. And so with a story like this, it was very difficult to try and not be overbearing as the writer, but give enough.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, but there's real restraint here at the level of the language, right? Just even, I have only the present tense, full stop. The car is automatic, full stop. Like there are quite a few of those really blunt, not blunt, but you know what I mean? Like those kind of hard stop sentences.
00:20:14
Speaker
where we're stripping down again. But then when you get caught up in the senses, the leather seats, his sweat, his hair, the softness of those sounds, right, the air sound and s sound, the silence was like music, like so much sibilance through that bit where actually you you really get sucked into her sense of that car.
00:20:32
Speaker
Which is why it's so interesting for me to think about this part of the book compared to the very beginning because I do basically write chronologically, like my changes appear as I write them. Sometimes obviously in the edit they might get moved around a bit but like not dramatically and certainly I'm not somebody who like starts in the middle or starts in the end, like I start and then kind of carry on from the beginning. And normally I've sort of semi-worked out the plot but hopefully with enough room to kind of change
Influence of Daily Life on Writing Process
00:20:58
Speaker
tack. It's just more like to set out. I feel like I need to know vaguely where I'm going. But the first couple of chapters, like I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and I hear every word and it either feels wrong or it feels right but it's conscious and deliberate and like often you can tell that they've been worked or overworked. Whereas by the time I get to the end of the book I'm like rolling downhill and almost like have no sense of control over what I'm doing
00:21:27
Speaker
And it's happening much more on a kind of subconscious level, often based on like what you've put into the book at an earlier point. And so now the dam is just breaking. And luckily I was writing this book at a time in my life where I could basically make space in my daily life to let that process happen. Now that, for example, I'm a parent, that is not possible. You know, you can't just like give in to that flow state basically that you've created by the end. And it is, I'm finding all much more laborious. But what is kind of nice about going over this final section is that
00:22:04
Speaker
what you're saying is all right but I i did not feel in control and that's probably also helpful to writing a character who is potentially losing or in her view gaining control and you sort of have to put yourself in a kind of method actor's relationship a bit to that but it means that like when I think about whether or not I was purposefully using sibilance No, know it was just happening. Whereas at the very beginning of the book, you know you're literally for putting your first marks down on paper and all of those considerations are so present to your mind, almost painfully so, and you have to try and dull that. you know
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, because we've got a few episodes coming up where we are talking about the very opening passage of books. But I thought the ending of this is so striking in so many ways that I thought it would be useful to like do a comparison
Character Transformation and Narrative Tone
00:22:53
Speaker
there. But even what I like in that next bit is that you break for a whole paragraph just for these two lines. The car is automatic, driving is easier than expected.
00:23:01
Speaker
It has a whole little break of its own before you get, I've had dreams. We can talk about that tense shift in a minute, but there was two senses on their own. The car is automatic, very, just like, again, quite blunt, direct, and then driving is easy and expected. This really wry, you know, like so like we're taking control, but also being like, oh, I don't know why I was worried this whole time.
00:23:21
Speaker
yeah It's not very in keeping with the Anya that maybe someone who has become weary or frustrated by her at the beginning has gotten used to. There's like a real split, it seems, that has happened in the way that she approaches the world. There's lots going on under the surface, but very little action and in a way.
00:23:42
Speaker
It's all about like raking back over the past and sort of holding on for dear life to whatever lifeboat is presented to you and that kind of passivity.
00:23:52
Speaker
you get so much internal sense of this kind of roiling under the surface but very little kind of that breaks through. So it was a relief for me also to get to this point in the book where suddenly I could change the tone and make it much more kind of um there's that great James Baldwin line about write a sentence that's clean as a bone and suddenly that could kind of come out here more this idea that I could just sort of describe the actions that are being taken because they were actions as opposed to just like internal mulling. And there's a kind of confidence and a kind of swagger almost that kind of comes out like when she says, I should have liked to have kept it. There's something so, I was picturing like a kind of arrogant cat somehow kind of like prowling, which is not at all how she's been thus far. The idea of like doing things deliberately, but in a way that's even surprising herself.
00:24:46
Speaker
is quite a nice position to be in with a character that you can kind of almost well I can only really get to by the end of the book because that's you know that kind of almost like magical thinking point that some writers talk about where like you just don't know what your character's gonna do and until you've had that experience you're like that sounds really phony that just sounds like a kind of get out to basically say like your characters are just behaving independently. So if anyone has a problem with what they do, it's nothing to do with you. But it actually did happen here in the sense that I felt suddenly like Anya move outside of my brain and just start doing things in this way that didn't feel like I was fully in control.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, the idea that she's rethinking what she's capable of, the idea that we are kind of like unknown to ourselves even until some moment like this happens where you take actions without even really, that she's so, she's an academic, she's kind of this permanent student in a way, everything in her life is about being careful and she's a kind of, I guess, a hamlet-y type figure. And then suddenly discovering this whole other aspect of her personality where It feels like when I first broke into a run, she says, I'll have to rethink what I'm capable of. it's yeah It's sort of like this idea that she's not just that she sort of boxed herself in, but also that like there is a kind of pride in terms of what she's doing.
00:26:07
Speaker
which I sort of found, like I haven't really written a character like that before. Doubting, yes, like, you know, often, often that kind of whatever sad millennial trope, you know, that that actually I think she's breaking out ah of here. Oh, yeah. But even like, I'll have to rethink what I'm capable of, what other things might come, like that points to futurity, right? Like the sense that there might be a version of her in which she's different adds more to that relevance of this ending, right? About like what her idea of herself is going forward.
00:26:36
Speaker
which is I think where the tense refuses the reader's ability to to fully pinpoint what happens and what must have happened. And I think that she's also sensing that sort of doubleness because it's like, I'm seeing him for the first time clearly, except that it feels final now. Well, like she's having this almost like bifocal ability to look at the scene as though she's very far away from it looking back. And this is where the point of view from which she is writing the whole book or like relaying the events of the book, but also that she's like fully in the present moment and she's seeing him for the first time kind of thing.
00:27:13
Speaker
And I think that obviously that's where the road was also a helpful kind of metaphor that I was like totally comfortable with being like an overused metaphor because I think it was, you know, that's almost that cliche was like the point, but where she's on this road that you kind of can't turn around on.
00:27:30
Speaker
And so you are just very much in the present moment because you can't kind of go back anymore. And also it stretches on to the point of like blankness. There's no like obvious end in sight. And she's been holding on so long to this relationship where she's not sure where it's going. And that in the end, that is the ending. like It's uncertainty. That is basically the story of her life, is that there is this level of uncertainty and there is this level of anxiety.
00:27:58
Speaker
And she kind of almost just makes peace with that here. which is an interesting mirror to the opening in the book, where like it's like the Rotherheith Tunnel, right? Is it that one? is it Yeah, or is it the other one? Yeah, good. I was envisioning it as, yeah, whichever one you can walk through. I don't think that's the one, but it's one of those. Yeah, but the you know, a different version of that, like them getting stuck in that tunnel, right? And just looking, it's just like an endless darkness. i' I've driven those tunnels and it it feels so terrifying. You're like, we're never getting out of here, right? Car after car after car after car. There's no space to get through that tunnel. um
00:28:31
Speaker
I'm glad that everyone else or that you also have experienced that. It's not just me that when I go into one of those tunnels, I am looking at those signs that say like, how many meters forward? How many meters back? But also there's a line of in the beginning where she's walking through one of those tunnels by mistake because her phone, classic case of being passive,
00:28:49
Speaker
Her phone sat nav leads her thinking it's like a path or a bridge, but actually it's the tunnel that you're not really going to walk. If you were an average pedestrian who knew your geography of London, you would not walk through this bridge. And she later, when she looks it up, she later realizes that the tunnel was made to curve on purpose by the original builders and engineers so that the horses that used to pass under it wouldn't bolt to the end because if you see light at the end of the tunnel, that will just make you, that's your animal instinct, is to bolt.
00:29:19
Speaker
which is obviously a kind of there's an echo here of what's going on in terms of like well that looks like an ending you know and I'll bolt towards it because it gives me some kind of certainty which I think is sort of what's going on with Anya's character is that you know which you could argue potentially is a commentary on things like the Brexit referendum is that people didn't necessarily know what future lay ahead but they just wanted to take some kind of action that would make them feel more in control of their lives and often we do that seemingly self-defeating or self-sabotaging type of nuclear option because we feel such anxiety that making a choice is better than then sort of deliberating any longer. I don't think she's acting like, in a sense, rationally here.
00:30:05
Speaker
but I think it's rational in the sense that it it it makes sense as a response to her circumstances. I want to ask about that exclamation mark. I asked an author the other day, we talked about commas for a good 10 minutes. I want to ask you about that exclamation mark. Not everyone can get away with that, I feel. But somehow in this sentence, when she's talking about the dreams, but this, if it feels like when I first broke into her, like I feel like does she do many exclamation marks? I don't feel like that's her in the rest of the No, there's two in this passage and there basically have been none and so far from memory. How did you feel about putting that exclamation mark in a text? I feel like it's such a strange piece of grammar. Okay, one one part of it is that there's a kind of ecstasy, I guess, going on here.
00:30:46
Speaker
a kind of like little death ecstasy sort of situation and also that she kind of lacks the word so maybe it could have been a dash but I think the exclamation mark was to show that there was pleasure in this and also like a kind of freedom and like an a no longer worrying about how others perceive her this like unburdening in a way but i guess also that was that's the same as how i felt writing it in the sense that i would have agonized and never probably used an exclamation mark in the first two-thirds of the book but i also was feeling that in this like
00:31:26
Speaker
and Like I described, the kind of gravity just pulling you down the hill at at the end. And I think also because I didn't want to, yeah like I've said, I didn't want to try and over explain. And also because I wanted it to feel like she was really not just in the present moment, but she is really the one narrating it. And that I couldn't be self-conscious as an author too much because it has to sound like it's actually Anya.
00:31:52
Speaker
I mentioned Sally Rooney earlier, so she's just on my mind, but when she talks about like writing as though you're writing an email to a friend, I think if I was sending this as an email to a friend, I'd be like, but this, Eskimo Juma. So Anya can't be conscious that this is a novel, and I have to put that aside, I guess. That's really useful to think about because there's so many, like part of it sounds like she's speaking aloud to me in this section, right? Like it seems very voice forward.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yes, I think there is a slightly fourth wall thing where she has in a recent previous scene broken into talking in the third person but in a kind of self-conscious way where you do become more aware of this like meta kind of narrative around it but here she's like locking back in as well into like being present in that description.
00:32:42
Speaker
I'm trying to think if there's any other, like, because I do tend to recoil when I see exclamation marks in books. I'm pleased you think I got away with it. No, I like i think there's probably only, I probably like Laurie Moore, someone like that is probably the only other person that could get away with the exclamation mark.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah I think that maybe what a reader who hasn't read the book might not necessarily kind of appreciate is that I did write this book which maybe if you only read the blurb sounds quite heavy. I did write it intentionally hoping there would be dark humor in it. You know there are things obviously that if you hear me read it might sound differently to if you just read it for yourself and you would assume maybe that like there was no like irony or there was no You know, in this case, she's a Bosnian refugee and Bosnians and particularly Sarajevans are known for their dark humor. Like they will like make a joke, a very ironic black joke out of like the worst situations. So it didn't feel wrong to introduce elements of like arch-ness or like a raised eyebrow here and there in terms of like her use of humor and, you know, an exclamation mark like that. No, no, it makes sense.
00:33:51
Speaker
yeah that's but And then the other ones that come in later are Luke's shouting, which again is also very different for him. His previous, very buttoned up, very restrained, very kind of British way of brackets, not communicating. um So he's also being forced into a situation where the way that he speaks has changed.
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah, the final paragraph, I press my foot down like suddenly we we've really moved into the active part of her right from like I'm letting the car drift. I'm having dreams about driving to I press my foot like that sudden active voice is really striking.
00:34:29
Speaker
then, full stop, I do not see the curb, full stop. Like, that was such like a tricky little sentence on its own that she's narrating almost in the present, but also we get a sense of slightly delayed, right? Like, oh, I didn't, I didn't see it on this, but like, i I don't see it. but it's just There's something really interesting happening with perspective to me.
00:34:48
Speaker
I'm trying to recall my first driving lesson. And I think there's an element of this, this being how it felt, like the idea that you both have to concentrate on the road to what the person next to you is saying or instructing, but also try as much as possible, not to look down or what you're doing, whether that's like changing gears or pressing pedals. And this like funny feeling of both being in total control and also like, Oh my God, the car is actually in control and I'm not in control. And that kind of.
00:35:18
Speaker
tension between am I driving this or so is it driving me which is also like obviously how it feels to write a novel full stop but I do think that the way that those sentences work the shortness of them is almost because she can't like she can't there isn't like a coherent way they can all come together unless she like focuses on and then the acceleration at the end like it's sort of like she's trying to make the motions feel natural and there's a point in which they start to come together and then there are other points where she's like whoa I didn't see the curve you know where I think that like that sense of ah of ah of a pair of eyes and and a brain trying to take in all of these different levels of what's going on at once it lends itself to these short sentences
00:36:02
Speaker
And she moves back and forth, right? Because then the very next one, for a long, we go from, I do not see the curb, or like monosyllables, to for a long time, it is as if we have lifted off the road and are flying. Like this kind of, you're like, wait, what do you mean? As if we've lifted off the road. Like, are you, are you not, like, where are we? What's happening? Like there's lots of as ifs. There's the, as if I'm seeing him for the first time clearly. And then as if we've lifted off the road, and as if I would go, instead of taking it,
00:36:29
Speaker
I think that there is a certain like you know like I said this is different from the first two thirds but I think some of the repetition is also purposeful in that in that kind of similarly to the short sentences way where like I'm not thinking of Anya as having her thesaurus out at this point. You know, like the kind of repetition is is sort of like part of the way that she's trying to focus, but also no longer really actually in control of the way that she's speaking in a way. It's it's this funny thing, isn't it, about losing control here because it she is both in control and not, but also the the reason why it feels like she's in control is because she's not afraid of what's happening.
00:37:09
Speaker
which is the main difference between what's going on so far. So like all of the real uptight control that she's had thus far hasn't actually felt like control to her because it's felt so labored and so like she's on a precipice of losing everything and she cares so much what others think. But then to fully kind of step into this or like to put a foot down on the accelerator feels like control because there's no longer stakes in a way. Like we don't know if the future is like a continuous thing or not.
00:37:39
Speaker
And I think also the idea of like this long, long road, but with these sort of short, very simple sentences, that kind of contrast, I guess, in the sense that she's at first inching along and then with like the slightest touch of a foot suddenly lurching forwards, I guess there is a sense of like me trying to convey that motion of the car as well along the road.
00:38:03
Speaker
as if yeah so that you can't be fully sure what's happening because she's not stating it directly. Yeah um and you do you get that earlier in the paragraph before it's like level and straight and stretching resolutely you know like those and conjunctions rather than commas like it really is just kind of echoing this kind of flat road right it's going ahead like there's no way but ahead even synthetically Yeah and I remember actually now there was something in my mind other than like the actual road like a picture in South London but also I remember once driving a boat that like a motorboat once and I'd never driven one before I had no idea what I was doing and it was night time
00:38:44
Speaker
and there was just this like total flat black water out in front of me and the person who actually could drive the boat just like in a really alarming way just like sat back and was like go for it and I was like oh but like that kind of weird exhilaration of having no constraint that affects people differently and it kind of is both obviously exhilarating and also terrifying at once and when I was thinking about the blackness or the black hole there was something of that maybe memory coming in where that delight and the kind of exhilaration and thrill is also tempered by this sense of like at any moment I also like i if I did one wrong move this would all end in sort of smoke kind of thing
00:39:31
Speaker
And I think that that's why it's so scary for Luke to sit next to her. It's not just because of the car. It's because she's obviously in a state of mind where, you know, she doesn't care anymore. And he says, please, I beg you, stop. Like, and I beg you. Like, he's not begging previously, right? Like, he's not that kind of guy. He's really it like, oh no, this is, this is different Anya. This is not an Anya that I know.
00:39:54
Speaker
And then next line, the longer I stay silent and the car careers on, that stay silent car careers, I don't know, I'm always a sucker for literation, but it like it really, we're like really pushing forward here that car careers on, the more it seems I can do this, just as he said, which is such like a beautiful little, little jab at him as well as a, you know, reimagining as what they mean. Yeah, I've been patronized for so long.
00:40:17
Speaker
and has been, you know, there's a point earlier on in the book where he literally like gives her a mouthful of food from his plate and she makes a note about like not biting the hand that feeds you or whatever. So like a lot of this is turning back on him, his own behaviors, you know, her always being, let's say, the kind of map reader, but not even a very good map reader, because often they have no signal, and so she can't use her phone, for example, on the road trip.
00:40:44
Speaker
but he's always the one in control of the car and has been sort of pressuring her to learn to drive, but more so that he can emphasise that she's always dependent on him, not actually because he wants her to learn maybe. And so this is about showing him in a way what she is capable of, but also she kind of no longer cares what he thinks, which is terrifying I think to him.
00:41:05
Speaker
because their relationship dynamic this whole time has basically been premised on the idea that like she has to prove something to him and he has nothing to prove. And so now to be begging her to stop and her not even saying anything, her to reverse the silent treatment that he has been giving her,
00:41:23
Speaker
thus far. It's like, it is a role reversal, but scarier than that is that she actually no longer cares at all. She goes from only caring at the very beginning of the scene about proving something to him to no longer even caring about proving something. And and then she got like, faintly I hear him now. Whatever has just happened in this final moment, like she's not even hearing him any longer. He's just drowning out, right? It's just her, it's some weird twisted Thelma Louise ending, right? I'm just like driving.
00:41:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's some Thelma and Louise in here. Like, i I like the idea there's a kind of campy drama and in some way to this, because that's what I mean about the dark humour and the kind of exclamation marks and whatever, is she didn't necessarily plan it this way, but there is a kind of dramatic flair that is sort of pleasing to her on some level, because it's not overly intellectual. Yeah, I pressed my foot down harder. And but that is like a final line is fantastic.
00:42:17
Speaker
I mean, maybe there should have been, but there was basically no editing to this scene. think I think it's probably the bit of the book that was not touched. I can't really remember ever. That's the thing, you remember the bits that you rewrote. And I don't think I really rewrote any of this, probably much between the first and the final draft. That's what I'm saying. that Yeah, it's but it's also funny to do a close reading of it then, because so much of it, it's like quite difficult to give overly intellectual answers to it. It just happened because it happened or it felt there almost like was no other way to write it, it just came out. And in sympathy there's like one scene like that and in exposure I talk about how that type of writing feels so different from the rest and often you can only really access that point of ah writing in that way when you have
00:43:07
Speaker
You know, whatever sets so much else emotional, like put so much potential energy into your dam that finally when, when the dam wall breaks, like it does just sort of roll out of you. And then going back over it, you can't really see anything you would change because it just.
00:43:23
Speaker
it came out like that at this point but i think also because once i got to that i you know faintly i hear him now i press my foot down harder i was like i don't know where they go now i don't have a definitive answer to that I got to the point where I felt like I was satisfied that Anya had sort of morphed or had altered herself enough that I was like confident I'd taken her to this other place, but not know where she was going to go with that. Yeah, which is amazing. Let's use that to transition then into thinking about your writing practice. Do you, I mean, at the moment, being pregnant, maybe not, but like, do you have a usual kind of writing set up? Like, are you in a place time? Are you eating?
00:44:09
Speaker
It's changed so dramatically both with every book and at different phases of my life. Definitely parenthood has changed it dramatically and I've had to become much more of like a nine to five type of writer. Obviously I've worked around other jobs and things like that, but you can still sort of be thinking. I mean, obviously everyone parents in a different way, but I can't really be thinking about my book at the same time as parenting. Like you can actually sometimes be doing that when you're doing your job, obviously. You know, previous desk jobs, I was definitely doing that. Or it wasn't necessarily taking me out of the world that I'd invented.
00:44:49
Speaker
I was able to sort of sustain a kind of fever dream enough through the working day to then whatever morning evening come back to it or more likely throughout the day writing notes on my phone or on my like secret bit of my laptop and so definitely like when for example the the sort of I'm gonna call it a trend but that sounds derogatory not derogatory but the trend for like fragmented writing styles like you know um Jenny Offill or whatever and people are like oh you know suddenly all mothers write in fragmentary styles and I'm like well I see why like I totally see why. It does change the way that you approach your writing obviously and it's such a kind of different way of working for me definitely and I think Asylum Road wouldn't have worked because the whole point of the book is that it's like this rush towards that finish
00:45:40
Speaker
that there is this like, you know, like I said at the start of our conversation, I wanted to do something different to sympathy, which was that kind of like convoluted lattice shape in my head. This was like a much more like beginning middle end, you know, kind of like rushed through sort of like straight as an arrow type feeling. And I couldn't have done that if I'd been a parent. So this book wouldn't have happened. And certainly what happened in the way that it did. And I guess in terms of little things that I do,
00:46:06
Speaker
I work much better when at least the first draft can happen as much as possible in you know in that kind of bubble fever dream. Edits can benefit from more like a nine to five routine or like a much more sub structured approach. But the other thing I do is just to try and keep me in that headspace, which is difficult, is to use as much like visual associated stuff. So lately I've been doing things like picking they'd have to be like actors or famous people but like picking photographs out of my characters and like having them up on the wall you know like having visual references pinned up on a pin board so that even when I'm not writing I'm sort of as much as possible staying in that headspace has really helped.
00:46:52
Speaker
Because otherwise you just, it's like this horrible Sisyphean, like you just roll the ball up to the top of the hill and it rolls right back down every single time you come back to the draft. And that wouldn't happen if it was nonfiction and in the same way. Obviously you're not in the mood to write it, but that thing of the first draft of something fictional where you have to sustain what is otherwise like seemingly so implausible because it only exists in your head. It's so fragile that if you don't have like external, you know, whether it's the map of New York for sympathy or the book I'm writing now is set, I'm not gonna say where, but I've got the map and I've got pins in the board, you know, it looks like a crime scene I'm like obsessively working on. That's not because maybe I'm like worried about, I don't know, continuity or like it's because it just helps me to sort of feel like I'm in that world. And the other thing I've sometimes done which isn't exactly a ritual but can help at certain points when you're losing confidence is I
00:47:47
Speaker
pick a image to be the cover. I also always basically have the title at the beginning of the three that I published that the title was the very beginning. It's like the beginning word. And if an editor would to ever suggest changing it, which actually did the sympathy, I'd be like, I can't, it's like you're taking away the foundations of the whole thing. It's the kind of tuning fork at the beginning. And often like the rest of the book is basically just unpacking that title.
00:48:13
Speaker
So that's I guess another way is that when I'm in danger of like getting lost in the weeds, I have that like image of the wood from above, aerial shot. This is the title. Another, I guess like it's sort of a tip more than a ritual, but it is a bit of ritual with all my books is a friend who works in TV actually said that something they use when they're working on shows in the writer's room is, what's it about? What's it really about? What's it really, really about?
00:48:42
Speaker
And I have the answer to those three questions, which may change repeatedly throughout the process, but I have those like on a post-it note, you know, up on the wall as well, to kind of, yeah, to give it some kind of cohesive, external sort of reference point when I'm a bit, when I'm in the middle of doing the dishes, like attending to a nappy or whatever. No, this is gonna be super helpful to people, I'm sure. And it's gonna, I mean, this is why I struggle to write prose, generally. Like I write poems, they're quicker. I don't have to sustain the days.
00:49:12
Speaker
I mean, I wish I could write short stories. I really wish I could. Unfortunately, it's a skill. I i write novels because I couldn't write them in short stories. I need that long to like clear my throat, I guess, and work out what I'm trying to say. And the force of my stories often only builds from having that much space. I think I'm in awe of short story writers who can do that.
00:49:35
Speaker
maybe I wouldn't find it would be easier basically in a way to be able to do that because I've read somewhere I can't remember who it is now but talks about a novel as being like trying to lift a mattress all at once you know or it's a short story you can just sort of pick it up and hold it and put it back on itself and then come back maybe the mood has shifted but like there's just something so unwieldy about a novel but it's really inconvenient well Well, you do it well, so I think you're on a good track. I'll ask you two more. Is there one book you wish you had written? Oh my God, there are so many. That's the most enjoyable thing, actually, as a reader slash writer, is to feel that when you read another book. There are way too many to list, but I think the last time I felt that and remember feeling that very consciously, um which has happened obviously many more times, but was when I was reading The Topeka School by Ben Lerner.
00:50:28
Speaker
I reread a part of it recently because I was trying to go back and find an image that he'd used and I actually think in the end I think it was him talking about the book I'd heard him use this as an image that wasn't actually in the book but I think in the Topeka school he talks about or in his process of writing it he talks about how parenthood is like looking at a bonsai tree and how you had suddenly have this like level of perspective where you both suddenly remember what it was like to be a child and looking up at this adult figure in your parent but then you also suddenly see your parent as like just a person. And you can both look down at the small child and remember what it was like to be there and also now see yourself as a parent and that kind of double perspective, which I think comes out so brilliantly in that book. And definitely something with the book I've just written a draft of that I'm trying to do more is I've moved away from using the first person. I'm not saying it can't be in the first person, but suddenly having those like multiple perspectives.
00:51:26
Speaker
and experimenting more with that rather than it just being driven by this very strong eye character who lets you know some things and not others. But that and that's what I'm trying to work towards right now is that kind of like multiple perspectives. I think Ben Lerner does it really well. Yeah, this is exciting. Finally, are there any one book, a couple of books that you'd recommend to readers, maybe something that's news coming out or something that you've reread?
00:51:50
Speaker
The books or or essays that I might recommend in terms of like your own writing, there are a few. i I always recommend that people read Annie Erno, just in general, but you know i I find the way that she talks, even in like Happening, which now came out a while ago, about there being no such thing as a lesser truth and the idea about, you know, kind of how you chronicle your own life or your own story. Like I always find going back to her books very rejuvenating when I'm in a kind of fallow period. So all of Ania knows books I would recommend. the The other thing is that I'm reading more kind of zeitgeisty books recently. So I read all fours and I'm currently reading Sally Rooney, which I waited on purpose to kind of let the hype sort of die down a bit.
00:52:37
Speaker
And I loved both. I didn't love all fours as much as I thought I might, but I did find that it it was a good time in my life to read it. And then ah the other thing, I guess, is an essay that I first read when I was starting to write sympathy, which I also recommend to everyone who's trying to write a book.
00:52:55
Speaker
is Zadie Smith, that crafty feeling where she talks about the process of writing a novel. I find that really good to revisit almost every time I'm starting a novel because it takes you through what to me feel like very familiar stages and I think makes make you feel normal that like you're on a journey that like is sort of but basically an outline similar to most other writers.
00:53:19
Speaker
And it was, yeah, it was like cracked to me when I first read it. i I would read that instead of writing my book because it felt like I was doing something just by reading it. um I really recommend that one. Amazing. That's fantastic.
00:53:31
Speaker
recommendations than anyone recommending. er know i'm I'm on board. Whereas you get rejuvenated, I read her and I'm like, I'm just going to give up writing. I don't want to do this. I can't do this. I can also happen. Although one of my favourite bits of writing advice, which definitely applies to me when I wrote Sympathy as well, is It's re-quoted by so many people, so like it's in Kate Zambrino's book, Drifts, but I think she's quoting Camus, I can't even remember now, because it's re-quoted by different people, but what prevents the book from being written becomes the book itself. like For me, it's always that way. like The internet became sympathy when it wasn't about that at all, because that was what was in my way, you know and I think that's what's happening this time with the book that I've struggled to write.
00:54:14
Speaker
parenthood has got in the way, so that but kind of became the subject and I think that often writing into whatever it is that is your obstacle, whether that's like writer's block of some form or insecurity of some form, whatever it is, like that will be where the juicy stuff is. I love that. It is a perfect note to end on. Olivia, said thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
00:54:35
Speaker
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00:54:54
Speaker
You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the sub-stack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.