Book Club Meets: The mess of motherhood, with Holly Bourne

Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university. Now in their thirties, life is pulling them in different directions - but the girls are reunited when Charlotte organises the baby shower from hell for pregnant Nicki. Tensions are high as these women are forced to confront their own and eachother’s views about motherhood... while also dealing with a fire at the baby shower. February’s Happy Place Book Club novel was So Thrilled for You, by Holly Bourne. In this chat, Fearne and Holly talk about how wildly the pretty Pinterest version of motherhood is from the raw, battlefield of a reality. Holly reckons if we want the world to be a better, happier place we need to be supporting mums emotionally and practically. How have you navigated some friends having babies, some struggling to conceive, and some not wanting them at all? Fearne and Holly explore the judgements, assumptions, and irritations that can arise between old friends when everyone’s lives look so different. Plus, how to cut out the noise and trust your gut when you’re working on a creative project... Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for the use of So Thrilled For You audiobook, narrated by Emily Spowage, Evie Ward-Drummond, Kelly Hotten, Paul Hezberg and Rosalind Lailey. Listen to Book Club Meets: David Larbi https://pod.fo/e/2a9766 Listen to Book Club Meets: Dame Harriet Walter https://pod.fo/e/298eb6 Listen to Book Club Meets: Liane Moriarty https://pod.fo/e/28c79c Listen to Book Club Meets: Miranda July https://pod.fo/e/27b9a0 Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To market, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  The flames take the vulva piñata immediately.

• 0:31Fearne Cotton?

  Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  ...sweets inside popping like corn kernels as they explode inside their wiry cage.

• 0:39Fearne Cotton?

  Today, So Thrilled for You by Holly Bourne.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  And there's a moment of stillness in me, the first time I've felt calm in so long. As I take in the view, thinking, wow, I've never seen pink smoke before. Soon the flames will claim the pile of duck patterned wrapping paper, gorge on the coarse wool of the hand-knitted blankets and turn the fallen wall of peonies into a sweet, toxic perfume. I can tell already that everything is lost. My life has already burned down metaphorically, so it makes sense that I've now burned it down literally too. All I wanted to do was torch it all until there was nothing left but sooty soil, rich with nutrients to grow something new. But I never thought I'd actually do it. I watch the smoke plume out of the cannon,

• 1:24Speaker 01

  dancing as eclipses the vista and spirals around in the heat, juxtaposed against the bluest sky. The fire around it ignites instantly, the smoke doubling, trebling, as flames catch and dance in the kindling. The heat slaps my face and wakes me up. I hear myself screaming at what I've done, and I run towards the heat.

• 1:49Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my gosh, this book. Okay, this is the plot. Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university. Now in their 30s, life is pulling them in different directions. But the girls are reunited when Charlotte organizes the baby shower from hell for pregnant Nicki. Tensions are gonna be high as these women are forced to confront their own Annie Each other's views about motherhood while also dealing with an actual fire at the baby shower. This is a whodunit. It's a social commentary. It's absolutely bloody brilliant. I loved it so much and that's why it's our happy place book club read for February. You loved it too. God, this one got you lot talking on Instagram. Here's a voice note from Lena.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  So thrilled for you. What a book that was. Mysterious, gripping, but most importantly, it touches on some subjects that we don't often see in books. Common struggles with expectations for women of a certain age. More specifically, those who are mothers, those who don't want to be mothers, those who struggle to conceive, the list just goes on and on. We get to see it more often these days in modern literacy, but the way Holly captured this in an intriguing way around the mystery was absolutely amazing.

• 3:00Fearne Cotton?

  This is Ally. She's clearly a fan of scribbling in the margins of great books like I am too.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  I loved this book and I devoured it in two days. The depiction of motherhood is so accurate and it's so well crafted. And at so many points, I wanted to get my highlighter out and just think, oh yes, that and that, because it really tunes into some of those feelings that you don't always talk about, but are so personal, you think, but actually are completely universal. And if we don't talk about them, then we won't realise the universality of them. And I also really love the depiction and description of female friendship and how it changes, but the solidity of it and how important it is to us is still there, even when we're all going in different directions. Brilliant book.

• 3:49Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, thank you, Ally. You're entirely right. This book is an amazing depiction of the way that female friendship shifts over time as much as it is about being a mum too. I think this chat with Holly is going to resonate with you very strongly. She talks about how she was literally living this friendship, motherhood mess in real life and chose to translate all those very real emotions into a thriller. And she explains why if we want the world to be a better kind of place, we really need to be supporting mums. My God, we do. And we talk about how wildly the Instagram Pinterest version of motherhood is very different to the raw reality.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 5:00Speaker 06

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies, made without that spooky high-fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready-to-cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market. At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or

• 5:43Speaker 06

  low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 6:00Fearne Cotton?

  Right, let's do it. Here's Holly.

• 6:23Fearne Cotton?

  Hey, Holly. Oh Holly, I was so excited to talk to you today because we have been absolutely loving your book, so thrilled for you throughout the month of February over at Happy Place Book Club. It is amazing. Normally, this is the bit where I would hold up a copy of the book. I had, I think, two or three copies of it here, all of which I've given to friends to read. So I haven't, I haven't got the book on me, but it's very well-thumbed and I, and it's now travelling around the UK somewhere. But I just loved it. I loved it.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. That, that means so much, honestly. I just, yeah, I was telling you just before we started to record, like, what a fan of you I am. So it's, this is very surreal and very wonderful. Thank you. The fact that you like it is amazing.

• 7:06Fearne Cotton?

  I loved it. I mean, it's mutual fan club scenario going on here because I just think you're brilliant. And it was so, it was one of those books, I was really going, oh my God, this is such a good idea. Why didn't I come up with this? And obviously, you're just extremely talented writer and it just, I just flew through it. I mean, for people that haven't read it yet, and many of our followers will have, but for, for those who are thinking about going to get this book now and reading it, it's never too late, obviously. The premise is genius. It's a, it's a sort of whodunit at a baby shower. When did this idea pop into your mind?

• 7:38Speaker 04

  It was actually when I was in the very early stages of postpartum, after my first child. I'm self-employed and therefore my statutory maternity pay was dreadful. So my husband's company had just done it so men get the same as women. And so he was like, we're like, well, we're gonna do that then. And so I technically went back to work two weeks after having a baby through C-section, which was as deranged a reality as it sounds. Like, I thought I was gonna be in this feminist utopia and it was just like, and I'm supposed to be writing a book now? Like, what's going on? So, yeah, obviously, I took more than

• 8:18Speaker 04

  two weeks off, you know, getting to grips with that very, very intense transformation of becoming a mother for the first time. And my baby really, really didn't sleep. I bonded with her very well. Feeding was hell at first, but then kind of settled into it, although she wouldn't take a bottle, so I was having to exclusively breastfeed her. But she just wouldn't sleep. And as we know, sleep deprivation is a form of torture. And I just got quite, like, mad.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  And because she wouldn't take a bottle and because the only way that she would sleep was like fully attached to my nipple, I just had no life. I was just sitting in the dark four or five times a day to try and get her to have enough sleep and then the the nights, which I remember just having that Sunday night feeling every night around six P M. I'll be like, oh, God, the night is coming, the night is coming. How bad is it gonna be? How bad is it gonna be? And just basically fell off the face of the earth. I didn't see any of my friends. I didn't answer work emails and I just remember seeing no way out of this life. I remember thinking, oh, I wonder where she goes to university. Like, if she goes to Edinburgh, I'm gonna have to move to Edinburgh and then after breastfeed her in the nightclub, toilets and freshers weed. Like, I just couldn't.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  And I do remember in my darkest moments, thinking I've completely burnt down my life. And I'm not talking to my friends. I don't even have capacity to tell my friends how much I'm struggling. And I'm scared if I told them that I was struggling. They might think that I was lucky because some of them are struggling to conceive. Or my pregnant friends would be like, why are you trying to freak me out? I'm pregnant. Don't do this to me. Or my friends who already were mothers were also struggling or seemed to be completely nailing it. And I was too ashamed to admit how much I wasn't nailing it. And I just remember, I just kept thinking, I've burnt down my life. It's never coming back. It's ash. It's it's just awful. And I used to always be able to rely on my friendships

• 10:17Speaker 04

  to get myself through hard times. And I, those friendships seems to have just kind of evaporated through my behaviour. And that's when, yeah, I got the idea for this baby shower fire, kind of as a metaphor for what happens. And this idea of like, what if there was this baby shower where something went right wrong? And this fire spread and these women who had always been such good friends turned on each other. And, yeah, it was the sort of thing that pulled me through that, that time, I think. I just, I remember thinking it was quite a strange idea. And I remember pitching it to my editor. I was like, I wanna do a whodunit about an arson committed at a baby shower. And I think they were a bit like, I think you just need to get some sleep.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  I was like, no, I think it might be a good idea. I think, it's crazy, but I think I can fill it off. And. Because you, you know, obviously if you're breastfeeding, it's a lot of time where you're just stuck. And I was able to just plot where everybody was at all the stages of the day and where the red herrings were. And it was just this wonderful kind of escape from the intensity of my life, but also quite a cathartic experience because I was writing about how motherhood impacts female friendships and how women kind of stopped communicating with each other and how that can cause resentments and stuff when we really need to be holding on to each other in these times as much as possible. But we, we really stumble. And yeah, so that's, sorry, a very long answer to your question.

• 11:45Fearne Cotton?

  No, but it's brilliant. I mean, there's, there's already so much to unpack because, I mean, there's so much I want to say throughout what you've just spoken about. I mean, first of all, there'll be so many people listening to this going, thank fuck, Holly has just said all of that. Because like you say, we ostracise ourselves from our friends, we feel worried or ashamed, or we simply don't have the energy or capacity, like you've said, to even reach out to people and say, I'm having a really shit time. And, and like you say, you know, you worry about the judgment of people that can't conceive or are having a tougher time conceiving. And it's so complicated that, that period of your life becoming a mum for the first time. And, and I still don't think we're talking about it in the

• 12:29Fearne Cotton?

  sort of complex ways that we should be. We either see these sort of Instagram, perfect moments of people having babies and doing gender reveals and it all being this perfect thing. Or, or I don't know, it just seems very sort of mumsy and cutesy and twee. And it's like, wait a minute, it's a battlefield. It's an absolute slog. And at times it's, you know, all the things that we feel nervous to admit, mind numbingly boring. And, and also there's times where you just feel like you're completely out of your depth and you don't know what you're doing. But you're not meant to say any of this stuff. So I think it's really powerful to have these conversations where we can talk about it being, you know, really crap. And obviously it's different for everybody. Some people won't have had that experience. Their babies will sleep very well, or they'll feed well

• 13:13Fearne Cotton?

  or whatever. It's different for everyone. But there's got to be space for people to be able to say, wait a minute, that was an extremely full on period of my life where I lost, I mean, I think most people would agree that you do lose a sense of who you are, you know, who, who am I apart from this sort of feeding and nurturing machine? It's, It's really, you know, my kids are a bit older now, but I can very clearly think back to that time and go, oh my God, how did we, you know, how did you get through it? It's just, it's absolutely bananas. And, and I think also I love the notion of writing books being pure escapism. I mean, I've only written one novel, but I found it just the most amazing escapism.

• 13:56Fearne Cotton?

  I, I would so look forward to opening my laptop and thinking, where's this gonna go? Or, or, you know, when my daughter was having a tough time sleeping a few years ago, and I would have to sort of lie next to her in bed as she fell asleep, which was a terrible habit that I've luckily since broken. But I used to use that time to lie there and daydream about what would happen to the protagonist next? And how might the plot unfold? And it is such an amazing joy to have that escapism. I mean, you, as you've already alluded to, you've got these four friends, Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi, who have all got different situations going on, which, you know, really expresses what you've just talked about,

• 14:34Fearne Cotton?

  those complicated dynamics of judgment and irritation between friends and assumption and, and all the stuff that can obviously happen in friendship groups. But, you know, really enhanced and heightened with babies being born or not being born and baby showers. Who would you say was the most enjoyable character to write? Who did you think, oh, I can't wait to make, make her do this or make her do that?

• 15:02Speaker 04

  I really liked writing Charlotte, who's the character who is struggling to have a baby and has basically thrown this very Instagram content, Pinterest board insane. Baby, her dream baby shower, she's given it to her friend as a way of going, I let this go. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm not gonna be able to have this. And Nikki's like, this is like my worst nightmare and I can see what Charlotte's doing. And Charlotte's somebody who's very different from me in that she's obviously very organised, like super organised, you know, really detail orientated, very, you know, well put together. And I'm not like that.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  And I remember being really proud of myself when I was plotting this book. I had made a spreadsheet for the very first time. And if you're an author, you get to dodge that part of adult life quite a lot. Often you just deal with words a lot. I have an accountant and she's like, I literally don't understand how you've got this so wrong still. And I remember, because I, because it is a whodunit and I had to plot where everybody was and because it's set in real time over one day. And I remember showing it to my husband, I was like, look, I made a spreadsheet. I was so proud of myself. And he was like, you've drawn it on paper with a pencil, like I haven't even opened it. You've not even used a ruler to create like the columns. I just literally like.

• 16:24Fearne Cotton?

  This is very me, hence why I'm laughing. I've never done a spreadsheet. I wouldn't, I wouldn't know. Is there software for that sort of, I've never done it. I've got no idea.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Really sophisticated stuff. I think you can build maths into it. Like, it's just not where, how.

• 16:37Fearne Cotton?

  I would be like you with a pen, pen and paper.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  And like, and yeah, I'm not an organised person. I kind of joke that I use all my functionality as a human being to create books. And because it is this weird, as you know, writing a novel yourself, like this mad mental marathon with yourself that requires huge discipline, huge commitment, all this sort of stuff. And I kind of like, I channel it all onto being a novelist. And like the rest of my life is just, I'm almost dysfunctional. And luckily I've married a dysfunctional person who can just sort of. A trail of destruction. I'm like, I wrote a book. And it's just like, the laundry's not been done for, you know, and so it was really fun to inhabit Charlotte's brain. And then when I was trying to like, find her, I was re-watching Girls for the first time and Shoshana.

• 17:22Fearne Cotton?

  Loved.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think I'd like a lot of Shoshana in there. And I just, I really love very neurotic women. I think they're very honest. There's something very nice about them. And I do really like, and also Charlotte is somebody who loves Instagram, loves the content, loves the hashtag. And I think lots of people can be very eye-rolly about that. But she kind of sticks up for herself a lot through the book, kind of going, you always whinge when I ask for a picture. And then afterwards, you're like, do you mind sending the pictures? Like, she's the one in the group who is bringing everyone together and documenting and making these things. And so I loved writing her. And she slowly unravels throughout the day and starts, you know, just.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  Going completely berserk, like that was very fun to write. Like, I think there's like a chapter that opens with like, everything is melting, everything is fucking melting. Our story is so painful. But I loved being in her head because it was, it's quite different for being in my head.

• 18:18Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, it's so genius because I think, you know, whether we're like Charlotte or not, and I'm not like that at all, you know, I'm not attention to detail. I'm, you know, I like being creative and I'm probably more similar to you in terms of, I do leave a bit of trail of destruction when I'm on a bit of a creative flow, if I'm writing or painting and, and it's not attention to detail and italics and everything looking perfect with the little labels at all. But I think most of us, even if we're not like that, feel this immense pressure to either be getting things perfectly right. For everything, you know, and I think we can obviously blame social media to an extent that our homes have to be perfect and our kids have to be well turned out.

• 19:00Fearne Cotton?

  And we're meant to look perfect and we're meant to behave perfectly. And it's this whole weird, it's almost like we've gone backwards, this kind of like, we're gonna be a good girl and everything's gonna be good and perfect and right. And I, and I've really struggled with that over the years. And I think at times I've, I've wasted years and years trying to make everyone else feel better and for everyone to only see the good bits of me and to appear together and whatever. And, and I'm really over it. And I've, I'm definitely Charlotte unraveling towards the second half of the book where I'm just like, I can't do this anymore. It's just all, and I'm so not like that. None of us are, you know, naturally like that.

• 19:39Fearne Cotton?

  I think often when we're like Charlotte, trying to control everything to the nth degree, it's because we feel so chaotic inside. And we're trying to get, hold on to the reins tightly to get some sort of control over the absolute chaos. So I, I love that she unravels. And I think most of us in those times where we're trying to keep everything together and, you know, remembering things for the kids or, or work or whatever, that actually inside, we're just wanting to go, ah, and like freak out. So I'm, I'm so glad that she had that moment of just sort of losing the plot and. And everybody going, Christ, what the hell's going on here? That's not like her at all. It was, it was so, it was so much fun to read that.

• 20:21Fearne Cotton?

  Also, just in my brain, rewinding back, really interesting you talking about, you know, the art of writing a novel, which is the most bizarre process. And like you say, having this intense discipline and this mental marathon that you've got to run. It's such a strange process because you do all of that without any guarantee. And that's quite rare with most things in life. I think if you, you know, whatever your job is, you're working towards a goal and you're doing it because you know there's going to be a pretty certain outcome. And that's, you know, if you're everything from a teacher to a plumber to whatever, there's, you know, there's, you can, you can kind of say,

• 21:05Fearne Cotton?

  you know, there's a 90% outcome that this will happen at the end. With writing a novel, the risk is huge, absolutely huge. You could spend two years writing and editing a book, spend hours of your day obsessing about it and plotting everything for it to totally, well, first of all, you've got to get it published, but if you're lucky enough to get published, it could still go completely under the radar. No one could be bothered about it. And that is a risk that you have to knowingly take on right at the start when you're initiating that idea. How much do you think about that during the process? Because I think, you know, I certainly couldn't think about that too much with mine. So I, I would have given up at the first hurdle or just thought, fuck this and walked away.

• 21:50Fearne Cotton?

  How, how much do you worry about that risk or think about it?

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Um, I'd probably say like all the time.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  It's just like all the time. I mean, it's, it's my full-time job now. So I was a journalist for years before. And because this job is so unsafe and like the kind of saying in publishing is like, you're only as good as your last book. And it's so, I'm in such a privileged position there for about seven, eight years now. It's all I've done. Which I just feel like every year I get away with it. I feel like I'm getting away with it. And lots of me and my author friends have conversations like, who's safe? Is there any author out there who feels safe? And we've kind of narrowed it down to like Stephen King, like maybe Maggie O'Farrell, like, you know, people who just have.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  These followings and it is just this very precarious way to make a living. And as you said, like input in doesn't equal, you know, output. And some of the books that I feel have been my, for me, like my biggest, proudest achievements are the books that have not landed or not sold as well. And some few books, not this one, but if there's been a few books that have done really well, and I'm like, really, that one? And it's just completely Yeah. Not up to me if it's, you know, because there's so much cultural zeitgeist involved and, or, you know, a book about the same thing has just come out five months before yours and done much better. So you're, it is, you know, you kind of get lost in the slipstream and because it's how I have to pay my mortgage,

• 23:20Speaker 04

  it, that noise is in my head a lot. And then I can, and then I get worried that that will impact what I produce. And I do think if you have that thing in your head, like, is this gonna sell? Are people gonna like it? Is it as good as your last book? Like, everyone at the moment's reading like dragon sex books. This isn't a dragon sex book. Like, maybe you should write dragon sex books and then you can afford the extension, like all this stuff. And you've just got, I, I think I've had to train myself to tune it out. And I tried to come back like so, some solid things, which is, one, I'm like, you write because it's so good for you to write. It's how you make sense of your life as you, and also it's that

• 24:01Speaker 04

  distraction, as you said, when you were writing your novel, to have that other world that's sort of running parallel to yours that you can kind of tr- travel to in your head is how I've coped with my life. And I remember just, I once had this awful dentist situation happen and I had to have all this reconstructive surgery on my face. And every Saturday I was having like three hours of dental surgery. I remember just in my head going, okay, so what's gonna happen in chapter four? And just like completely disassociated, but in a It's great. Like healthy disassociation. I also, whenever I've finished a book, I have learnt something about myself. I've processed a part of my life. That's not to say that they're autobiographies, but there's been something in that book that I needed to

• 24:45Speaker 04

  understand. So I'm like, nothing's lost from that. And if it then if it does get published, meet meeting readers who have felt changed or dislodged or seen or understood or emboldened because they needed that too. So I tried to hold on to that. Yeah, it's it is. And then also, I always tell any person who's trying to get published, or who's written a book, or doesn't know whether to finish, or is scared that it all comes to nothing. I do think there's something incredibly powerful about making something from nothing. There is a permanence there. And I do think if you're a woman in particular, considering our voices through history and our experiences have been radically

• 25:27Speaker 04

  marginalized. It's a massive act of resistance to fill a page with your words, with your story, if you're a woman. And that's just even if you're a woman that alone, if you're a woman of color, a woman of disability, all these sorts of things. And so I'm like, you are making something from nothing that will be left behind. And my bit of advice to anyone is always print off your book, even if it never gets published. Get it through the printer and put it on the table and look and go, I did that. If I died tomorrow, somebody will be able to pick this up. It's I've left something behind. I've tried to make sense of the world in my unique way because of my unique story. And nobody can

• 26:06Speaker 04

  ever take creation away from you in terms of what it gives you and what it actually permanently leaves behind in terms of you're actually taking up space. You've taken up, you've filled these empty bits of wood with your words. And that's where I go to when I start worrying that I need to start writing high fantasy dragon sex books to pay the mortgage. I'm like, no.

• 26:29Fearne Cotton?

  No, don't. Don't go there. Don't we? There's, there's enough of those out there.

• 26:36Speaker 05

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• 27:08Speaker 06

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• 28:05Speaker 07

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• 28:39Fearne Cotton?

  What a brilliant idea to encourage anyone that's writing anything, from poetry to fiction to nonfiction, to print that thing out. You know, I feel deeply passionate about that in lots of ways, without really having had the awareness of it until you just said it. You know, sometimes I get this insane urge where I have to paint something. And there is, part of that is the feeling of, there's nothing, and then by the end of the day, there's this thing. And I feel more proud of that than I would anything that might be more publicly celebrated or sort of, you know, in a more mainstream way celebrated. That, to me, is, I am as high as a kite. And I think, you know, that's a quicker process than writing a book, obviously. But I do have it with any of the books that I've written where...

• 29:25Fearne Cotton?

  You can hold it at the end and, you know, you, and like you say, you're leaving it behind. It is sort of a radical act of rebellion in some way. And also, yeah, I guess it just makes you feel like, because we know everything's so ephemeral and, you know, we're not going to be here one day, that we're sort of leaving little imprints of ourselves. I feel really, on a visceral level, I feel that's so, so important. And again, with my brain jumping, hopscotch from subject to subject, you said something about five minutes ago that won't leave my brain. What do you think you have learned about yourself from writing this book from these four brilliant ladies?

• 30:04Speaker 04

  I think what I've learned, reading from this book, is that the baby is can completely demolish the most important friendships that you have. Because child rearing is so intensive, you know, you can't just go for lunch, that's when the kid naps, et cetera, et cetera. Because

• 30:25Speaker 04

  things are so divisive, so triggering, so emotionally painful, so filled with societal judgements. All these things that actually, normally female friendships can hold you through that. Something about motherhood where we can't. And this book's all about what I've learned is we need to hold on to each other. And I do think you come out the other side of the baby is. And as I've kind of been meeting other people when I've been writing this book, who have got teenagers and, you know, they're like, you do, you do, you do. So it's to hold on to each other. And I think, maybe I'm a bit biased because I'm a mum myself, and I was writing this book when I was very newly postpartum. But towards the end of the book, the book's all about letting all these women have their

• 31:10Speaker 04

  experiences shared and they're able to share, talk about what it is to be them and for their friends to hold space for that. But I think the kind of the other sort of theme towards the end of the book is how we need to protect mums. And because I'm somebody who reads about this sort of stuff all the time and really interested in mental health, like the more you look into, if we want to save the world from a mental health perspective, if we want to make sure people grow up. Grow up not having problems. We need to make sure that parents are supported to be as responsive and caring and was with as present with their children as they can be like if you want the world to be better like support mums. Like let them have space for how hard it is. Try to make it easier for them, like be with them.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Because that is what will make the world a better, happier place. And so I do think that towards the end of the book, I don't want to give too many spoilers, but you know, they really give Lauren what she needs to get back on track. And that was so moving writing that. And I think I was like, I just need everyone to give me a hug because everyone's hugging the baby. And I was falling apart. And I was just like, we need to see the mums as well as the babies. And, you know, just be like, are you okay to the mum rather than like, oh, are they walking? Are they crawling? It's just like, are you functioning? Are you all right? Like, and so those are the sort of two things that hold on to your friends and like mothers need, need us.

• 32:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, without a doubt. And also, like, like you say, to, it's so easy in friendship groups for there to be this tension because of people having babies, people not, or judgments made. And it's all misogyny that's led us to that sort of weird, competitive, judgmental mindset that I don't think naturally we, we want to be in at all, but we've sort of been forced into it somehow. And, you know, I guess like when we had Gabor Maté on the podcast, years ago now, he, he, he sort of touched on this theme of women being the shock absorbers of society. And that's why, you know, we disproportionately got autoimmune diseases and, and all of these other

• 33:14Fearne Cotton?

  physical manifestations because we're not supported and we don't feel there's space to be able to say, hey, this is really hard. I'm struggling. No matter what your circumstance is, without somebody else coming back with, you're lucky to have a kid or whatever, you know, we've got to give all mums the space to say, this is fucking hard and I'm really struggling and there's bits of it that I'm not enjoying and I feel like a failure and all the stuff that's going on in our heads, we need to have the space to, to say out loud. I think it's really important and your book certainly got me thinking about that. And also, I mean, I should have said this right at the start. I loved this book and I loved Charlotte too, because I hate baby showers.

• 33:56Fearne Cotton?

  I can't bear them. I absolutely cannot stand them. I went to a couple before I had my own kids and I was like, What the fuck is this? Why are we pretending to sniff shit out of a nappy? Which is melted chocolate? What are we, what are we doing? This is insane. And I, when I got pregnant, I was like, I'm not having one. And then my friend said, can we just all go and get our nails done? And at least we'll just all be together. And I was like, yeah, but I don't want to see a soiled nappy. I don't want you measuring my bum. I don't want to, I don't want to design a baby grow. We'll get our nails done and I'm going home.

• 34:32Fearne Cotton?

  So the, the way that you properly dived into all of those very strange things that happen at a baby shower were just absolutely ideal.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, they're, they're, they're so far removed from what the reality of having a baby is.

• 34:47Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  And I do think marking rites of passage are important. And I do think you shouldn't just get a party if you have a baby. And that's why the child free character is like, why did nobody come to my agency launching their bathroom?

• 34:59Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  I do think marking these passages of time, but like, what a baby shower is, everyone's wearing pastels and it's all very sanitized. And it's just so far away from the grotty gritty mess of early postpartum, where you're like shedding the womb lining into a nappy for two weeks. And you stink of vomit and spare milk and the kid has like got poo all up the wall. And, you know, and then you've been given this like pale pink blanket. You know, you're like, it's just so, it's just so sanitized conception of motherhood, because motherhood is, yeah, like, such biological messy.

• 35:44Fearne Cotton?

  Battlefield.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  Battlefield. It's just so, so odd. And, and also like, it's just so, they're so, it's so flattening. And I think that's why the book as well is called like, So Thrilled For You. Because that's something you never say out loud. It's something you only type under somebody's Instagram notification. And it's, and the book does sort of look about how you get set up to fail. How much worse it is to be a mum and to go through matrimony. Cause you see what it's like online and nobody's posting pictures of like the poo stained walls or, you know, it's, it's.

• 36:23Speaker 04

  And nobody's having face to face conversations anymore. They're just going, so thrilled for you and feeling a bit leaving a little heart like and then getting on with their day rather than going, are you okay? Like, I've just seen the

• 36:33Fearne Cotton?

  You're actually all right.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  living room. Do you want me to come over and help tidy up what holds the baby while you have a shower? Because your hair looks really greasy. Like, we just what we show the world online compared to reality is just the gap's so massive. And I think that's why we then make ourselves feel even worse. Because I do think you reach for social media when you're in those, because it's just something you can do over your baby's head, isn't it? When you're

• 36:55Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  It's got so much worse. Because I was like, how is her living room that tidy? Like, how how is her hair? She's got a blow dry, like, I haven't washed my hair for five days. It's and then I felt even worse. But that was the only space I had to do anything for myself was to feel connected to the world was to go on Instagram. And then I'd feel like what is going on in their house? Why am I

• 37:19Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. I think that goes on forever. You know, I still feel it now. And I know how social media works. Like, we all do. And I'm you know, I enjoy engaging with it. But I can still go, oh, my God, you know, this person's kid's doing four clubs every night after school and you know, and they're, you know, competent reader or whatever it is. And then you start comparing. It's like, what are we doing? We've all completely lost the plot. But I just think it's genius. The title's genius. The setup's genius. It's just the characters are amazing. It's just fucking fantastic plot. I absolutely loved it and flew through the book, as I know many of our Happy Place Book Club followers will be doing, either already have read the book or will be doing

• 38:00Fearne Cotton?

  after listening to this. And yeah, thank you for writing such a bloody enjoyable book. And thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you, Holly.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, did you guess who started the fire?

• 38:12Fearne Cotton?

  No, no, which I was glad of because I'm I love an Agatha Christie. And I've always thought, I've nailed this one, guys. Never do. Never do. And without giving away anything, no, I did not see that coming. So good.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 38:28Fearne Cotton?

  Do you know what, I loved what Holly said about how filling a page with your words is an act of resistance as a woman. How true, how brilliant. When women's voices have been so unheard or silenced in the past, what a cool way of looking at it. I just love it. Thank you, Holly, you brilliant female. So thrilled for you, was our book club pick for Feb. And now, in March, we're reading Broken Country by Claire Leslie-Hall. Let me tell you a bit about it. Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel, and over an intense summer, he made her think and feel differently. Understandably, she thought it was the start of her great love story, but then Gabriel left, and it was Frank who picked up the pieces. So what's going to happen when Gabriel comes back?

• 39:10Fearne Cotton?

  Everything Beth thinks she knows about who she is, is about to crumble. Is this a possibility for a second chance at first love? If you want to read along with us, which I really hope you do, come and join the chat on Instagram, we're at Happy Place Book Club. And then you'll be able to hear from Claire here on the show in just a few weeks' time too. All right, until next time, a massive thanks again to Holly, to the producer, and Ashka Tate at Happy Place Studios, and to you, because you're brilliant.

• 40:03Speaker 07

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers. This message is brought to you by the Capital One Venture X Card. Venture X offers the premium benefits you expect, like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit for less than you expect.

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• 41:26Speaker 07

  Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 41:35Speaker 07

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher. And I'm Marco Burchella. And this is Boots Off. We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts, and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans. And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you. This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure. The adventures that lead to adversity. And how life can be one big adventure in itself. Listen every Thursday. Just search for Boots Off.