Tell us about your new novel, One of Us?
It’s about why we fall in love with the people who damage us – and sometimes elect them too. It’s about identity, outsiders, belonging, class, misogyny and the irrepressibility of hope. It’s about how entitlement can corrupt and how true connection can redeem. It’s also funny (I think?).
You’re doing an event at the Dublin Book Festival with my colleague Róisín Ingle. What can the audience expect?
A wonderful conversation with plenty of tangents. I adore Róisín and any time we chat, we might start talking about the book but we’ll end up discussing psychics, reality TV and what life really means.
RM Block
Tell us about your chart-topping podcast, How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, and the tie-in books, How to Fail and Failosophy.
I launched the podcast in July 2018 when I felt like a total failure in my personal life – divorced, single at 39 and in the trenches of fertility treatment. I wanted to see how other people coped with failure and to turn the traditional interview format (chatting to celebrities about all their fantastic successes) on its head. I felt, in my bones, that this would be a deeper way to connect to their authentic selves – and so it has proved.
The books came about as a result of the unexpected (to me, at least) popularity of the podcast. By the end of the first season, I’d had thousands of downloads where I’d thought maybe 12 people would listen. My fiction editor approached me with the idea of writing a book and, quite quickly, I decided I wanted it to be part-manifesto, part-memoir: using my own life experience of failure as a jumping-off point to examine it as a broader concept. That book, published in 2019, became my first Sunday Times bestseller.
Failosophy is a slim volume intended as a distillation of all I’ve learned about failure since doing the podcast. There were certain recurring themes that came up the more conversations I had, and I grouped them all into seven failure principles designed as a handbook you can reach for when things go wrong. It came out during the pandemic, which seems particularly apt. I later wrote Failosophy for Teens and a non-fiction book about friendship. So from never believing I’d write anything other than novels, I’ve become someone with four non-fiction titles to their name.
Although English, you grew up in the North of Ireland as your father was a surgeon in Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry. What was that like?
Fascinating. We moved to the North when I was four years old so I simply took the men with guns and the armoured tanks at military checkpoints on the way to school as a relatively normal experience. It was only later I realised it wasn’t. I spoke with an English accent – and still do – so I never fully fitted in. I was like the weird English cousin in Derry Girls. But that was also a position of privilege – I became an observer and a listener to the stories told and untold. That, in turn, probably made me into a writer.
I’d also like to add that I met some amazing people in that time of my life, some of whom I’m still in touch with, and that the landscape which surrounded us was stunning. I have fond memories of our annual holidays in Portsalon and less fond memories of my father making us schlep up the Mourne Mountains in a steady drizzle...
You cut your teeth in journalism as a 12-year-old columnist on the Derry Journal. Any scoops? Any scandal?
Ha! No scoops or scandal, just a grateful young girl who was given an incredible opportunity by the then editor, Pat McCart. I wrote to every local newspaper editor saying they absolutely needed a children’s columnist, and I’d be happy to oblige. Pat was the only one who agreed to meet me and then who gave me a fortnightly column. I remain indebted to him.
You were an award-winning journalist in London for several years. Did that feed into your fiction?
Absolutely. A journalist is often invited into rooms another person would never have access to. You learn to observe, to ask the right questions and to stay silent when necessary. I also learned so much about human nature and different life experiences.
You’ve published five novels, including debut Scissors Paper Stone (2012), which won the Betty Trask Award, and Magpie (2021). They are very varied but can you trace a common thread?
Hmmm. I think I’m interested in what makes people act in the ways that they do and seeking to explain that. Recurring themes include class, dysfunctional families and unreliable narrators.
Your last non-fiction book was Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict. Are you in recovery?
Yes! It’s a lifelong work-in-progress though. I love my closest friends so much and I’ve realised that I simply can’t be the friend I want to be to them if I keep collecting an ever-increasing social circle. But I also want to be nice and I love people so ... as I say ... work in progress.
Which projects are you working on?
Recording new podcast episodes, gearing up for the US publication of One of Us and getting very excited about a TV adaptation of The Party that is about to start filming.
Have you made a literary pilgrimage?
No. Now I feel I must.
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
Actually it’s something Martin Amis wrote about reviews, specifically critical ones: “Envy never comes to the ball dressed as itself.” The full quote is absolutely brilliant. I have it pinned in the Notes App of my phone for when I most need it.
Who do you admire the most?
Malala is pretty great.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
If I had magical powers, I’d give men the capacity to bear children. I think that would sort a lot of stuff out, equality-wise.
Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?
Book: Wellness by Nathan Hill
Film: One Battle After Another. I haven’t seen it yet but I know it’s going to be exceptional as I love Paul Thomas Anderson
Podcast: Unicorn Girl
Which public event affected you most?
9/11
The most remarkable place you have visited?
Venice
Your most treasured possession?
My grandfather’s cigarette case.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
A first edition of Bonfire of the Vanities given to me by my husband for my 40th birthday.
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Marian Keyes, Louise O’Neill and Dolly Alderton – because they’re dear friends of mine so will help me feel relaxed in the company of: Tom Wolfe, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Zora Neale Hurston, Elena Ferrante, Jonathan Franzen, Charles Dickens, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and David Sedaris.
The best and worst things about where you live?
Best – Vibrancy
Worst – Lack of peace
What is your favourite quotation?
“The universe is unfolding as it should” – Max Ehrmann
Who is your favourite fictional character?
Anne of Green Gables
A book to make me laugh?
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits – but it will also make you cry.
A book that might move me to tears?
See above!
One of Us is published by 4th Estate. Elizabeth Day is in conversation with Róisín Ingle at the Royal Irish Academy of Music on October 29th as part of the Dublin Book Festival
