Tell me about your new book, Love Me!
Love Me! Is about me, a 40-something woman, exploring how to build a life full of love, sex, family and community if you don’t go down the traditional paths of partnership and children. It starts with me having yet another failed romance and wondering why this part of life never works for me, and why I had not gone down the road that most of my friends had – ie marriage and kids. I ask myself is it because there’s something wrong with me? Have I just not met the right person? Or could it be that actually there are many ways to live life? I set off to find out the answers and in the process I discover the single positivity movement, the importance of sisterhood and self-love, get over my sexual hang-ups (almost) in Tantra retreats and explore whether I want children or not and whether I’d regret not having them.
You asked yourself: can you have a life full of love without marriage and kids? What’s the answer?
Yes! I’m almost annoyed that I had to ask the question and spend four years finding out for sure – but yes, yes, yes.
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Your mother once told you: “I never thought you’d get married and have children”
She did! I was a teenager and at the time I think I took it to mean that nobody would want me, which was not what she was saying at all. She thinks the domesticity involved in family life – even today – would not suit me and she was 100 per cent right. It’s irritating how right she tends to be.
Love Me! is a sort of sequel to Help Me! in which you followed the advice of a different self-help book each month for a year. Tell us about that experiment
I had always read self-help books and friends laughed that I was a bad advert for them. One of my favourites was a book called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. I read it five times and continued to worry constantly. But I was sure that self-help books would help if I just did what they told me to do, so one terrible hungover Sunday, I came up with the idea to spend a year not just reading self-help books but actually doing everything they told me to do to see if they helped. I hoped that by the end of the year I would be a perfect person. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
It was described as “improving yourself all the way to a breakdown”?
Ha! I didn’t read that description but it’s a good one. Also, I think that in self-help land we’ve reframed breakdown as breakthrough! But yes, I pushed myself to stupid degrees in that project – I jumped out of plane, did stand up comedy, naked modelling, planned my own funeral ... and while this all sounds kind of mad and silly, it was prodding deep fears and insecurities. When I eventually went to see a therapist she told me what I’d been doing was dangerous – “you’re a guinea pig experimenting on yourself without any supervision”, was how she put it. Anyway, I survived and I learned a lot.
Help Me! featured a chapter on finding love. How does Love Me! differ?
A friend told me that if my self-help experiment didn’t end with love, it would have failed. She was half joking but only half and it stayed with me, so I did a dating chapter in Help Me! And went on lots of dates, chatted up strangers on the Tube and walked up to a handsome stranger in a coffee shop. But even when I was doing all that I was partly doing it because I thought that’s what I was meant to be doing. Love Me! Is a much deeper exploration of why I was so ambivalent about romantic relationships, and it goes quite deeply into my shame around sex and my body and pleasure.
Which book helped you most?
Do you mean in terms of which book I wrote? Or which self-help book I read? In terms of which I wrote – both have changed me utterly and also not at all. I’m the same person I always was after both of them, but the difference is that I’m so much more accepting and at ease with who that person is. I’m still a disaster with money, I’m a slob ... but I can talk to pretty much anyone and feel much more at ease with who I am. I think I’ve realised that we all have our stuff going on, no matter how great things look on the surface. We’re all human. Sounds so obvious but it’s taken me a while to realise that.
In terms of which book I’ve read that helped – I love love love The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I also adore the work of Bella De Paulo who writes about people who are “single at heart” – ie those who suit being single. When I heard this term I let out a sigh of relief. I didn’t know that there were people for whom being single isn’t a mistake or a sadness but actually the best thing. It explained so much about the choices I’d made.
Help Me! could have been gimmicky but laid bare your unhappiness. Was such self-exposure painful? Did it help?
When I wrote it I wasn’t worrying about self-exposure too much. It was just me and a laptop and I wanted to be honest, otherwise there was no point in doing it. When it came to recording the audiobook I read out passages and thought, Oh god, did I write that? That’s quite a full-on thing to admit to the world. Afterwards I got hundreds of messages from people saying that reading my book was like reading about themselves and that it made them feel less alone. I even got messages from readers in Iran, Afghanistan and Russia saying that they could relate. Isn’t that incredible? We are more alike than we are different. It turns out most of our deepest fears and embarrassments are shared by many. That was a lovely thing to realise and also a huge relief.
Is Help Me!, in its way, a self-help book?
I wasn’t intending it to be a self-help book because I am not an expert passing on wisdom, but by sharing my experiences and what I learned I do think it helped a lot of people, which I’m delighted about.
You were born in England to Irish parents. Did that give you a dual identity?
Yes! Mum is from Kerry and Dad was from Clonmel. I grew up in a very English suburb in Surrey but we’d go back to Ireland for all the school holidays. All my summers were spent on Ballybunion beach and no matter how English our accents, my sisters and I were brought up knowing that we were Irish. I liked the contrast of the two worlds.
You spent several years in Dublin as features editor of the Irish Daily Mail. What was that like? How would you compare London and Dublin?
I was the features editor of the Irish Daily Mail when it launched. At that point it was a small team that felt a bit like a start-up. It was long hours topped off by a lot of drinking Guinness at midnight in Jury’s hotel. It was stressful and all-consuming but I made some of the best friends of my life in that office. I have had more fun in Dublin than any city in the world. London is inspiring and so beautiful but it’s also a huge city that it’s easy to feel lost in. Dublin’s smallness and friendliness makes it a much easier place to be in.
Mum always talks with such fondness of living in Dublin in her twenties as a teacher. It felt lovely to go to Brown Thomas as my mum had done and to be in pubs that mum and dad would have been in in their younger years. She talked about sitting upstairs at The Winding Stair near Nell McCafferty and all the cool feminists smoking and talking, so I was delighted the first time I went there. When I worked in the Irish Daily Mail I was able to commission Nell, which was a thrill. I walked down Camden Street one day and a man came up to me and said: “Are you Mary Pierce’s daughter? You’re the image of her.” I’d never met him before but he grew up on the farm next to my mum when she was a child. That kind of thing does not happen in London!
Do Irish women and British women face the same challenges or are there cultural differences?
Oh that’s a good question. I think being an Irish Catholic educated by Irish nuns had a huge effect on me and my ideas of sex and my body. I was brought up to be a “good girl” and to put myself last – “the last shall be first and the first shall be last”, as the nuns put it. I think that lots of women are conditioned that way but I do think the nuns did it with bells on.
The Mail and other newspapers have been criticised for how they portray women, from the sidebar of shame to criticisms of behaviour and appearance. Is the media part of the problem?
Yes, it absolutely is and sometimes when you are part of something you can’t see clearly just how unhealthy it is. Newspapers scrutinise women in horrific ways and magazines can make us feel like we are nothing without designer handbags or Botox. For a while I stepped away from the media because it didn’t feel like it was making the world a better place. Now I’m in journalism again partly because I need the money but also because for all its flaws, there is such power in being able to reach thousands of people. I want to use this power to write and share articles and perspectives that, I hope, make people feel better, not worse. I’m working as a features editor for the I newspaper which is a lovely, open-minded paper. It is a joy as an editor to be able to ask my favourite writers to write things and it never stops being a thrill to be able to share my thoughts and have them published. It’s a total privilege.
Which projects are you working on?
Promoting the book!
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
I haven’t but it sounds like a wonderful thing to do.
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
Two bits: “if it sounds like writing, rewrite it”, which was said by Elmore Leonard. And then a Mary Oliver quote: “Things take the time they take, don’t hurry.” That last bit of advice doesn’t fly when you are on a newspaper deadline but for books I think it’s true.
Who do you admire the most?
While writing this book I became obsessed with Jenny Keane, who started teaching adult sex education online in lockdown. She is a joy and, as one of my friends put it, is doing God’s work! She talks about sex in a way that is joyful and wholesome and her workshops are attended by people from 18 to 80. She is a breath of fresh air and makes the world a better place.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
Nobody should put me in charge of anything – I would pass on responsibility to mum or my sisters. They would do a much better job.
Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?
I loved Poor Things with Emma Stone, it felt exciting to see a sexually open woman on screen. I am currently reading Iconic by Zandra Rhodes, a book about her life, ahead of interviewing her. So far so good, she’s an amazing woman. The kind of person who makes you think “they don’t make them like that any more”. And for podcasts: I love On Being with Krista Tippett (I’ve listened to her conversation with John O’Donohue several times) and The Rest is Politics, which focuses largely on British politics but also has a lot of global news. It’s hosted by Rory Stewart, former Conservative MP, and Alistair Campbell, former PR director for Tony Blair. I don’t know much about politics but listening to these two friends talk about world events brings things to life.
Which public event affected you most?
I was in London for the 2012 Olympics and watched the opening ceremony on a rooftop with hundreds of others. It was a beautiful moment that made me feel proud to be from England, which isn’t a feeling I have often. It made me realise I am as much English as I am Irish. That summer there was such a joy in the city and a relief that we hadn’t messed it up.
I was living in Ireland when the 2009 report came out on the sex abuse in the church. I was on a train to Galway and remember crying as I read The Irish Times’s extended letters pages, which were full of people sharing their stories, often for the first time in their adult lives. It broke my heart and made me feel so angry. It ruined not just the victims’ lives but affected their partners, their children, even their children’s children. There is more talk these days about ancestral trauma and the idea that we carry these things in us, even if they didn’t happen directly to us, and that rings true to me. I also think Ireland is amazingly resilient, forgiving and open-hearted and the way it embraces change is inspiring.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
I drove on my own from LA to San Francisco. It was something I’d always wanted to do but which I thought I’d have to do with a man, on account of me hating to drive. When the man didn’t show up I went on my own and had one of the best times of my life, hanging out in hot springs, meeting gorgeous hippies and slow dancing in the redwood forest. It was a dream trip that I think I’ll remember on my deathbed. One of the places I stayed was fully booked except for the honeymoon suite – I booked in on my own! I could not have been happier.
Your most treasured possession?
Drawings and notes my friend’s son made me when he was young.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
A Taschen book on witchcraft is a proper coffee-table beauty. I haven’t read it yet though. Nor have I become a witch – yet.
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Edna O’Brien, Vivian Gornick, Fran Lebowitz and Graham Norton would be a good start.
The best and worst things about where you live?
I live in a teeny, tiny flat opposite a chip shop in London’s East End. The best things about it are the sunsets from my windows and my neighbours. We all became close in lockdown. My neighbour Gary is a singer and if my windows are open he serenades me from the street. He says it’s embarrassing when he sings and I don’t stick my head out to say hello. I live above Nelly who is a film-maker and is French Armenian and Algerian. She bangs her ceiling with a broom when it’s time for me to go down for coffee. Then there’s Thomas in the basement who works in fashion and wears clothes I don’t understand but who despite being flown to Paris by Chanel helps mum put together furniture. All my neighbours love mum, who lives a couple of streets away. She makes chicken soup for us all. She is the age where we should be providing her with meals on wheels but she is doing it for us. I am so ridiculously blessed with where I live. I often think it’s like a movie version of London, like Notting Hill but in east London. I take pictures of the sunsets over the chip shop and share them on social media – people often ask about the chip shop if I haven’t posted for a while. My two sisters live in the area too. Downsides? The flat heats up like a greenhouse in the summer and doesn’t have a bath.
What is your favourite quotation?
“Things take the time they take, don’t hurry.” That goes through my head at least once a day.
A book to make me laugh?
I loved Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. Brutally honest, funny and sharp. It also taught me a lot about the reality of being autistic.
A book that might move me to tears?
It’s a few years old at this point but A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara made me cry more than any book I’ve read.
Love Me! is published by Picador
