247. READ. LOOK. THINK.
A compromised character, leaning in to offence, writing as if it's okay, rocket fuel and golden handcuffs, a pen pot, cutting down my screentime with an app, Must You Go?
READ.
‘[Patricia Highsmith] explained that the magazine I saw during my interview had invited the hundred best authors alive to a celebratory event in Paris. “I obviously declined,” she told me. And I understood that she thought she was among the one hundred best but did not think she was really alive.’
‘I’m fine with coming off as a compromised character. I don’t think anybody that writes a memoir should seem virtuous or correct. I should be a suspicious narrator. I’m a human being.’
‘It’s such a rich scene, such a journey—so much more than the bad feelings it begins with, even as it never entirely, never finally, leaves those bad feelings behind. But none of the richness is visible unless we’re willing to dwell with bad feeling, to be offended and then, instead of breaking communion or sociality, lean in toward the source of offense, to see what’s on the other side of bad feeling.’
‘I wrote it as if it was OK – as if everyone knew what I was talking about... As if you could make a joke about something shameful, as if we had all already talked about that thing. Even though we hadn’t. So it was skipping a few steps, even to have humour about it. I was building on an internal world that I believed existed, not just in me.’
Torrey Peters: She came here to be insulted.
‘BookTok has been both rocket fuel and golden handcuffs, catapulting [Emily] Henry to stardom even as it narrows the lane she’s expected to traverse’. / Lorde on changing as an artist: ‘It will be over for a lot of people, and then for some people, I will have arrived.’
What 8,900+ readers hate about the state of writing today.
I’m reading Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter by Antonia Fraser. (Brilliant.) I’ve been reading a lot of theatre world memoirs over the past few months and I’m stunned by how many artists, directors etc voted for Mrs T in 1979. Guys?!
LOOK.
NYT Guide to 36 Hours in East London has delighted me, almost nothing on it is something I know or do yet it all sounds brilliant.
How to do special bows when wrapping presents.
The new Adam Curtis documentary series Shifty is up on BBC iPlayer - I’m mesmerised.
So expensive, I almost feel weird sharing the link — but this is the beautiful pen pot I bought for my desk at Choosing Keeping.
The children have been cheating at papier mache by using water-activated gummed tape. Very good results.
I really miss when we had blogs to give us an insight into other people’s lives — you can’t even get a Top Shelf in this town anymore. Still I enjoyed this new (?) motherhood blog/platform (?) Q and A with Alison Roman.
THINK.
I don’t feel like sharing all the things I’ve read about fascism etc. Just not in the mood.
‘…there’s no order in anything. Maybe that’s the future. I saw a picture taken inside an Amazon warehouse and it’s just a mess, all jumbled up. Things aren’t put in particular places because it’s not necessarily a human who will go and say, “Oh, I need to go to where the books are” or “I need to go to where the records are.” It’s got location tracking so you say “I want this” and a robot—bzz—might go to find it. There’s no need to file things neatly or put things together. So that’s quite a new way of . . . The world is kind of becoming like that.’
Should we get children landlines? (I love this idea — but if I heard the sound of a phone ringing out loud I would have a panic attack. We’ve been a ‘phone on silent’ house for more than a decade.)
And lastly, my screentime is very down using an app called Opal. I have Premium. The reason I like it is that I can fine-tune what is and what isn’t allowed into my phone during different sessions. Sometimes when I’m overwhelmed by ‘having a book out/the fact that people could be mentioning me at any time’ I block Substack and Instagram just to give myself a rest from even looking. Other times if I want to be totally alone while still allowing phone calls (from, eg, the children’s school) I have a different setting. I also have a phone bedtime when nothing gets through to me after the same time every night! It’s working very well for me and I have a referral code if you’re interested: NGXD4. I think you get a month of Premium free? (If it shows you my username when you use it — I am not insane, it’s just a character in a book. I always use book character names on apps. Not sure why. You probably won’t even see it now I’ve done this embarrassing warning.
MY BOOK!
The book in question is Consider Yourself Kissed, available now in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and USA. It’s a love story set in London covering ten years in a woman’s life, with a large cast of supporting characters, some sadness and some jokes.
I had a long Q and A with Emily Gould in The Cut about how to write a literary romance novel.
I was on BBC Woman’s Hour! Listen from 43:23.
CYK entered the discourse in this Guardian Opinion piece (so flattering).
NPR assisted me greatly self-esteem wise by saying ‘Stanley's novel is rich, and her cleverness irrefutable.’ (Tattoo idea? Maybe on leg?)
Washington Post: ‘Can a novel that mentions Theresa May’s 150 cookbooks with a protagonist who sheds tears over domestic suffocation rather than heartbreak be considered a romance novel? Of course. Because readers want different things from romance, and real and raw are two of them. “Consider Yourself Kissed” expertly layers the light and heavy elements of life, with a main character who is quick-witted and quietly perceptive, giving hope that a fire between two people may just survive many storms.’
Vogue has said CYK is a best beach read in a great list drawing not just from current books.
In The Age: ‘Stanley writes in a tradition that runs from Jane Austen to Nancy Mitford, and this charming literary romance queries the endgame in romance fiction, the happily-ever-after, in a way that lingers.’
People have been giving the loveliest feedback to me about Lydia Leonard’s performance on the audiobook. It’s just been named one of the best of the year so far on Audible AU, and in the Financial Times! A friend rang me the other day to say she had started to think in Lydia’s voice. I love that.
Events!
Monday June 30, 7pm: In Conversation with Natasha Lunn, BookBar Chelsea SW3. Tix! Please come, the new BookBar looks stunning in pics I have seen.
Friday August 21, 12pm: Gliterary Lunch with Polly Clark, Edinburgh EH1 2AD. Tix!
Saturday August 22, 12pm: Edinburgh Book Festival with Emma Gannon and Alisha Fernandez Miranda. Tickets have opened for booking this morning!
Jess
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Opal has changed my life for the better!!
Ah thank you for this - so many interesting links - love that conversation with Emily! Literary romance novels for the win.