Book Club Meets: Holiday romance and friendship in your 40s, with Chloe Ashby

For 20 years Maggie and Will have spent idyllic summers in the south of France with their friends Lydia and Roland. This year though, tension is brewing and loyalties are being tested. Their young kids are all there too, and they might end up stumbling upon secrets that were being kept from them... August’s Happy Place Book Club read is Family Friends. In this chat with Fearne, author Chloe Ashby explains why she wanted to explore relationship dynamics around the age of 40. Each character has brought a bit of extra baggage to this year’s holiday, so through them Chloe wonders at what point doing one bad thing makes you a bad person. Plus, why was it controversial to include a teenage holiday romance? Thank you to Penguin for the use of the Family Friends audiobook, narrated by Sally Scott. If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Book Club Meets: Candice Carty-Williams https://pod.fo/e/4d8d3d Book Club Meets: Caro Claire Burke https://pod.fo/e/42730d Book Club Meets: Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees https://pod.fo/e/40a0df 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.

• 0:00Fearne Cotton?

  Hello.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Will sound strange.

• 0:02Fearne Cotton?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Maggie can see why. The girl before them has long, slender limbs, shiny.

• 0:12Fearne Cotton?

  Today, Family Friends by Chloé Ashby.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  A bikini top with spaghetti straps, two flimsy triangles of crimson fabric covering her upper half, a pair of boxer shorts, blue and white stripes, the waistband rolled over to reveal another flash of red. She's comfortably slouched, one arm lazily held up above her head, the other down by her side. She doesn't move, but she does say hi back, which means she must be able to hear them over whatever music is playing through the plastic buds plugged into her ears. Round, gold-framed sunglasses shade her eyes. There's something unnerving about her mouth, which doesn't smile but is marginally open, as if she's about to say something else, meaning everyone has to keep quiet and wait.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  She's too young to be a friend of Roland and Lydia, and too old to be a friend of Bee. Briefly, Maggie wonders whether she could be an au pair, and if so, how on earth Roland convinced Lydia to give her a go. The thought almost makes her laugh out loud. Or could it be... Surely not. Maggie is trying to remember how long it's been since she saw Roland's daughter from his first marriage, when her friend appears by her side. Thank God. Lydia has never been a hugger, so when she reaches out and wraps her arms around her, Maggie isn't prepared and staggers backwards. She's wearing something stringy too, by the look of the little navy-blue bow tied up

• 1:45Speaker 01

  at the nape of her neck, a stiff white shirt on top. She's rolled up the sleeves, and Maggie breathes in the familiar herby scent spritzed onto the undersides of her wrists. When she doesn't let go, Maggie glances sideways at Will, hoping to catch his eye, but he is staring down at the ground, evidently still in shock.

• 2:11Fearne Cotton?

  This month, we've been reading Family Friends by Chloé Ashby. I took this book on holiday with me, and it is perfect, perfect for sitting around a pool, perfect for sitting on a beach. I cannot tell you, it's the dream holiday book. So, for 20 years, Maggie and Will have spent idyllic summers in the south of France with their friends Lydia and Roland. This year, though, tension is brewing and loyalties are being tested. Now, A, I love books set abroad. There's something about it, especially when you're not on holiday, like reading a book that transports you to somewhere glamorous and amazing, and this, the house they stay in, is so glamorous. I love a bit of glamour in a book, too. That's actually the B.

• 2:55Fearne Cotton?

  B, glamour, tick, love. C, I love books that really focus on dynamics between, whether it's friendships or couples, just like really intricate dynamics between humans I find fascinating, and you get a hell of a lot of that in there. There's also, without spoiling anything at all, moments of romance and also young love. And there's something about young love on holiday, holiday romance, that just gets me every time. I used to be a holiday romanceaholic, if that's a thing, when I was a young person. So, when I was a young person. So, that part of the book for me, loved. I just love all of it.

• 3:38Speaker 02

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• 4:57Fearne Cotton?

  Right, let's do it. This is the show.

• 5:21Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, Chloé.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  Hi, Fern.

• 5:23Fearne Cotton?

  Look at this bird.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Look at it.

• 5:26Fearne Cotton?

  Like one sexy cover.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Thank you. I mean, I can't actually thank you because I didn't design it. It was a brilliant penguin who designed it.

• 5:35Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my God, it just, as soon as I got the cover, I was like, I know what, I know the feeling of this book, I get it.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:41Fearne Cotton?

  I get the feeling of this book.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it was interesting, actually, because early on, my editor and I, we were sort of chatting about the cover, and we assumed it would be a group of people, because, you know, the book is about two couples. And then it became clear that actually it's kind of more mysterious and more intriguing to wonder who this is, who this character is.

• 6:02Fearne Cotton?

  Who is that? Do you know? Or could it be anyone?

• 6:05Speaker 04

  To me, it's Izzy.

• 6:06Fearne Cotton?

  Okay.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  I don't know, I'd be interested to hear what you think, but...

• 6:08Fearne Cotton?

  It could be Maggie in my head.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  It could be Maggie. It could be Maggie. It could be Ly... It could be anyone.

• 6:13Fearne Cotton?

  It could be anyone, but I love, I just think everything about that cover, it just, it totally expresses the book, and I love it. So let's talk about Family Friends. This is so brilliant. Obviously not your first rodeo. You've written how many books? Couple of art histories, couple of novels?

• 6:27Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly that, yeah, yeah.

• 6:29Fearne Cotton?

  But this book, which is specifically set in the south of France, as you said, two couples who go on holiday together every year, the drama ensues. It's brilliant. What came first, characters or location?

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Characters, very much characters. So, when I was thinking about this book, I was, so I started writing it when I was trying to get pregnant and then when I was pregnant. And so I was thinking a lot about family, family life, including my own. And when I was a child, we used to go on these big, chaotic group holidays with my parents' friends and their kids. And I mean, they were really chaotic. I think I would hate this kind of holiday now.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  And the parents had sort of grown up together and in some cases shared tangled past, and as kids, we were, you know, expected, it was expected that we'd just rub along.

• 7:24Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  Which we mostly did. And we were left to our own devices in the way that children often are on holiday, and we would end up sort of seeing, hearing, doing things we shouldn't. And so that's what I was thinking about, that kind of situation. And then the rest came from there.

• 7:39Fearne Cotton?

  I love that it's set abroad, and I love reading fiction that's set in other countries. And I guess the interesting thing about holidays is that anything can happen. Like you've just said there, your own childhood experience is knowing that as a kid, you've just got to crack on with entertaining yourselves, can sneak about because your parents are probably drinking a bottle of wine over here. But it's not the usual, it's not the usual routine and rhythm of life at home. And also, I think as an adult, even now, when I go with my kids, you become a slightly different version of yourself. You're like holiday you.

• 8:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:14Fearne Cotton?

  So it's really, was it, did it feel interesting to put your characters in that situation?

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it did. I think exactly like you say, it can, it can be, I think, both liberating and maybe you do and you drink and you wear things that you wouldn't normally. But also in this particular case, I mean, they're in an incredibly beautiful place. They're in the south of France, in this crumbly château, it's basically a château. But because of the heat, there's a heatwave, I feel the heatwave here has been... Brilliant accidental marketing for me. I wish it hadn't continued so long, but it has been vaguely helpful.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Because of that, they are kind of pressed into this house. And so they're on holiday, but at the same time, they're kind of trapped. Which means that any issues, insecurities, jealousies, whatever it is that kind of bubble up between them, that they're inescapable.

• 9:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yes. And I think that is also the case is that you can be really good friends with someone, but until you go away with them, you don't know that person.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Kind of like living, living with someone regularly. I mean, even some of your closest friends, some of my closest friends, I'm not sure we could live together.

• 9:29Fearne Cotton?

  No, no, you go on holiday, you're like, oh, that's how you do your morning routine. You like to eat there, like all the little things that you miss when you go for dinner or you have someone to your house and you have a cup of tea or whatever. You don't get to see all those tiny little micro moments that make up their routine and you have to be yourself much more flexible, but also you learn so much about other people. Obviously, these four characters, they go away together every year, but this year, and I don't know. I never know with these episodes how much to give away, because there will be people listening to this who are halfway through, have just started the book, so don't want to go too deep into plot. But obviously, stuff comes up from the past and there are certain situations they're dealing with on the hoof. And like you say,

• 10:11Fearne Cotton?

  they're trapped. So it is like this sort of boiling pot. What did you want to get across with the, the two different couples and, and the dynamics that we experience as the reader?

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Well, I think with these two couples, they, so they met at university, they're now in and around forty. They're kind of at the stage of life where maybe we would expect them to like have everything figured out and for life to be sort of set. But what's interesting to me, or was interesting to me in the writing process, thinking about them was that they have kids that are no longer tiny kids anymore. And so for the first time in a while, they've got breathing room to sort of think about or reassess who they are, what they want, where they want the rest of their lives to go.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  So that in itself was kind of exciting for me. And then I think just as I began to, to write these characters and to spend time with them, various sort of similarities and differences began to crop up between them. So the kind of financial difference, for example. One family is hosting the other. And so from the start, there's a slight power imbalance, which just kind of adds to the tension, I think.

• 11:24Fearne Cotton?

  So interesting, because I think when I was in my twenties, I looked at people in their forties and I thought, they know how the world works. They understand life. They know themselves, they've lived a life beforehand. You get to your mid forties, I think you go, you don't know anything. You almost do start again. Maybe some of it is if you've had kids that, like you say, you perhaps my kids are now eleven and thirteen. So I am not only on holiday, but in life, starting to go, oh, right. Okay, I've got a little bit more headspace and they're a bit more independent. And you do start to question after like that amount of motherhood. What do I like? What do I want to do? What makes me happy? And you can really see that with these characters. Again, on holiday.

• 12:06Fearne Cotton?

  Often, I think there should be a new term, a new phrase for a holiday with kids. Because for most of their childhood, it is not a holiday for the adults.

• 12:15Speaker 04

  No. So I saw something about this recently. So brilliant Alice Vincent, do you do you know Alice Vincent, writer? She did a post about this recently and she said how it shouldn't be called a holiday, it should be called a trip.

• 12:28Fearne Cotton?

  A trip.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  Then you don't go into it thinking, I'm going to come back relaxed. And actually, I just went on a trip. And thinking of it as a trip really helped me.

• 12:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, because I think you're, you're lulled into a false sense of like, oh, I'm going to relax, read some books.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 12:44Fearne Cotton?

  You do not. You do not. It's a holiday with kids is, it's very much a trip. But I think that was a really interesting part of it explored, like seeing them with these slightly older children who are going off with varying degrees of success to try and live a sort of little teen life or a mini adult life. And they're figuring things out. I also love with the younger characters, the romance, because I was a holiday romance aholic as a teenager. My main incentive was find a boy to snog and then can they be my pen pal? Because we're talking like nineties here. And there is something really exciting about like, you're in another country, the weather's different, there are no rules, you're staying up late. You're meeting people from different backgrounds, but I, I loved that story.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm so glad because I really love that story too. And it was kind of a controversial one, even in the editing process, just in terms of how people felt about it. But I was kind of determined that it was going to stay as it is.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, maybe we should say for anyone who hasn't read, but as you say, it's very hard to do without spoilers, but there's this romance that kind of comes about through between Izzy, who is this like really beautiful, intelligent, quite rebellious teenage daughter of Roland from his previous marriage. And she's on the holiday for the first time. And she's kind of an exciting character, or she was for me because she's this stranger figure in the book. So she's seeing.

• 14:17Fearne Cotton?

  She's slightly rebellious.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  She is rebellious. Yeah. And, but I think she also has sort of a sweet, vulnerable side to her that kind of, in a way, Sammy, this teenage boy, the son of Maggie and Will brings out. But they kind of help each other. I suppose their story is a bit of a coming of age story within the book.

• 14:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I love it. I love it. And it feels like at times this lovely little moment of relief, because the tension between the adults, the parents is really mounting as the book continues. And you have these flashbacks to university days to look at the untangling of, of previous events. What did you want to get from those flashbacks? Part of me wondered if it was, we look back in our forties and we think, have I really changed that much? Have, have, have my ideas about the world and relationships and love really changed? Because that seems to be something that a couple of the characters are really having to consider on this holiday.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, even it's like on the first or second page, I think Will thinks to his, himself, is this really the twentieth year we've done this? Like, that's mad. And I felt, I, yeah, with the flashbacks, they felt really important to me because I don't know, I guess in general, it makes sense that you can better understand someone if you've seen glimpses of who they were before. And I think in many ways, we stay the same. But I think we also, I mean, if I think back ten years, fifteen years, I've just changed so much. But I, I quite liked showing these snippets of them.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Also, maybe because each of the adults, as we meet them, you know, they're all kind of going through something. They're all bringing to the holiday a bit of baggage. Something is going on behind the scenes, generally something they're not being overly open about. And so we're maybe not meeting them in the best possible light. So I think also for the reader to have empathy, there needed to be these moments of kind of warmth and like naturalness that we saw between them. Also to understand why these, you know, the respective couples are together.

• 16:31Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  And why they're all friends.

• 16:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  Because I think otherwise you might read the book if those flashbacks weren't there and the memories weren't there and think, I don't get it to leave the guy.

• 16:42Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, but the flashbacks, like you say, are so important because not only do their friendships form, but also two of the characters, well, one of them was a professor at university who is now married to one of his past students. So there's an interesting dynamic at play even there. Why did you want to put those characters together?

• 16:59Speaker 04

  I think when I was, when I was thinking about the group, like I said earlier, the book really started with the characters. And I didn't want it to be that there were, to be so straightforward that both couples, you know, that they were all students. I wanted, I suppose in the same way that I ended up having one couple host another. I liked the idea of there being a bit of a power imbalance going on within the group. Also because of the different perspective that Roland brings, you know, he's fifteen years older than the others. And when we meet him, I don't think it's a spoiler to say, he is grieving his ex-wife who has just died, you know. The fact that she's died is the reason Izzy, his daughter, is on this trip.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  And he, he to a degree kind of retains a bit of a separate professor-like role within the group. For most of the holiday, he's sort of up in this like garret, writing, trying to write this eulogy. But yeah, it just, I think the more variety I could get into it, the better.

• 18:04Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. And also I think having a stepkid on holiday for Lydia. You know, I have been a stepparent and had my stepchildren on many, many holidays and, and the dynamic is different to your own children. Whether you've brought them up together or not, there is a slightly different dynamic at play. And I think, you know, there's, it's so prevalent, blended families these days, but of, you know, more often than not, we don't sort of see the intricacies of that playing out in a holiday setting or an everyday setting, like how that feels for everybody, including the stepparent who's trying to work out what the boundary is. Am I your friend? Am I your mum? You're grieving your mum who's just passed away. How close can I get to you? It's a really interesting thing for her to try and figure out.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I, I felt the same way. I mean, I'm, I'm glad it kind of came across that way as a reader because I. Yeah, again, from sort of from the start, it felt, it just felt right. You know, I didn't want any of these families to be too neat because that's not really what families are. I mean, there are so few families that are, if any, that are neat and tidy and perfect. And we're all kind of muddling through.

• 19:15Fearne Cotton?

  We are.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  Um, and also, you know, having Izzy there, there is just something really great and juicy, I think, about having um a stranger figure in a book, introducing a character who sees things through fresh eyes and can disrupt sort of long-held habits and traditions. Um, so she was, yeah, she was great.

• 19:39Fearne Cotton?

  Have you got a favourite character?

• 19:41Speaker 04

  She was definitely the most fun and she kind of reminded me, my first novel is sort of very uh close first person and follows a twenty-six-year-old girl um just kind of figuring out who and what she wants to be. And spending time with Izzy reminded me of spending time with Eve, that character, in a really happy way. So, yeah, I would probably say her, but I also, I empathise possibly the most with Maggie.

• 20:06Fearne Cotton?

  Maggie.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:07Fearne Cotton?

  So I think most people will read it feeling like she's a bit of a victim to stuff going on around her and.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  She's a good person.

• 20:16Fearne Cotton?

  She's a good person.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:18Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, you don't end up leaving the book disliking any of them. You can see, like, all humans, we're all flawed and trying to figure things out and making mistakes and trying to write them. I don't think you leave going, they shouldn't have done this. You, you understand all of them and the psychology behind it, but Maggie seems like the one who is kind of like, I don't know, maybe receiving the, the brunt of all of these decisions that people around her are making.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I think she is and I think she's so, you know, she so wants everything to be good and everything to be well and happy. And I didn't want her to come across as kind of too soft or too much of a pushover. And, and I think there are moments where she will surprise people, you know, where she kind of stands up and speaks her mind. But, yeah, basically, she, she is good and kind and still makes mistakes, but is possibly slightly less flawed than some of the other characters.

• 21:15Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, when you're writing a story like this and you've got all of these backstories and complex dynamics that you need to keep an eye on throughout the storyline, is there like an underlying message that you want the reader to leave with, like, and the lesson learned here is this? Or do you just, are you like, it's, it's up to the, the reader to decide what they take from, from the, how these stories unravel?

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's such a good question and it's a hard question. I, I, I mean, ultimately, it's up to the reader and regardless of what I am about to say, everyone will come away from the book thinking different things, feeling different things. And that's the great thing about books, like films or whatever. But I was definitely thinking a lot while I was writing about people making mistakes and about the point at which doing a bad thing makes you a bad person. And also I was thinking about what happens next, like what happens when someone has made a mistake? Whether, you know, whether your family or friends, do you just carry on because that's how life is? Or do you sort of reassess and walk away?

• 22:25Speaker 04

  Because, you know, there, I, I think Izzy says it at one point in the book, like, do, do they all like going away together? Or is this just like a bad habit they can't break?

• 22:34Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  That's something I was thinking about throughout and I suppose that would be something I'd like people to be kind of pondering.

• 22:42Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, but I think you've left that hanging in the air for people to decide you've not, you don't get to the end of the book and think, and this is the bad person. You're like, I get it, there's these feelings from the past and, you know, there shit's going on and they're trying to figure it out on the heft and life's really hectic. And you're trying to be a parent and you're trying to figure out financial situations back home. And like, adult life is a lot and I think it's, it's never flawless.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:09Fearne Cotton?

  There's always mistakes to be made. And like you say, it's so interesting looking at, you know, how we, I think culturally probably see certain actions to find someone as bad. That is a bad person, but actually, when you really get to know characters in a book or people in real life, it's so much more complicated than that.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, and if it wasn't, then we would just all be so hard on ourselves the whole time because we are all making mistakes all the time.

• 23:35Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  You know, whether they're small ones.

• 23:36Fearne Cotton?

  I think we are hard on ourselves because we've got this black and white view of that makes you a bad person, rather than getting curious about, I wonder why that person acted out in that way? Or that person made that decision, like, what does that mean? I think it's such an interesting topic.

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• 25:25Fearne Cotton?

  So let's talk about the actual writing process because I'm always deeply fascinated and want to know for my own kind of writing. How you write, where you write, what you need in place for you to write well?

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Well, I would say that I probably used to be very um prescriptive about how I wrote. I mean, I used to be so protective of those early hours first thing. And I, I think I almost had this feeling that if I didn't just like sit up in bed and start writing without seeing or hearing or thinking about anything else, somehow the writing would be diluted.

• 26:01Fearne Cotton?

  Wow, so there's something about that liminal space between like sleep and awakeness where you're, that's your most imaginative hour?

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Well, yes, it was, it was. And, and that, you know, that time before other people start work and you start to have like the ding of emails coming in. But then I had a child and that went out the window.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  And I was like, oh, great. But I do think, probably, I mean, what do you think? I think parenthood probably has made me, well, definitely has made me less precious and maybe has made me more efficient.

• 26:37Fearne Cotton?

  You have to be.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Because if they're at nursery, you're like, well, we're paying for nursery and I feel a bit bad that they're at nursery.

• 26:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, you have to work.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, you use the small bits of time really, really, I think it forces you to actually push yourself into places that you would never normally go. Like, I was the same as you, not necessarily with writing, but any work. Like, I had a real routine before I had kids where I'd get up, I'd have a coffee. I used to smoke a cigarette back in the day too, slightly back, back in the day. And I would get all my work emails done and it would be the first thing I did and I'd feel all organised and bum, bum, bum, I'm done. And then I had a baby and I was like, what, I, I don't get to like have my coffee and do, I have what? And I, and now, obviously, so deep into parenting, I just work around their routines and how, and you manage it and you, you make things happen, but you have to become so efficient with the little bits of time that you have.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think, um, again, I don't know how you feel about this, but I think the way that you write, like, I, I've written all three of my novels quite differently because the first one I wrote when I was still in a full-time job. So it was really in scraps of time here and there. And the writing is quite scrappy in a way that really suited the story. And then the second one I wrote during Covid when I didn't have much work on and it's sort of a slower, more thoughtful book, which again, kind of worked out well for what was going on. And this one, this one, I don't know, kind of was a bit in between. I'm, I'm, I'm an art critic as well as a novelist, so I'm freelance and I'm sometimes writing,

• 28:12Speaker 04

  you know, really quickfire pieces and sometimes I'm working at a slower pace on a book. But this one felt like kind of a happy medium.

• 28:20Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Um, and a bit more, I guess, a way of working that is a bit longer lasting.

• 28:26Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Maybe now because I also am in this phase and like this is, this phase is what it's going to be for a while.

• 28:33Fearne Cotton?

  Eighteen years?

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly, for a while, I'm confident.

• 28:38Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, obviously not eighteen, maybe like thirteen, something like that.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  He'll be self-sufficient within a few, won't he?

• 28:44Fearne Cotton?

  They're four, they better be.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  He'll be fine.

• 28:47Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, but it's so interesting how then that can start to inform how you write and you learn new things about yourself through that process. It's so interesting.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, yeah, it can, it can be really, um, yeah, just like a happy coincidence, I think, the way that it, that work, works out.

• 29:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, one thing I, I really am left with after reading this book is this feeling of a world that you've created that's still sort of existing somewhere. I don't, I don't always get that with novels. Sometimes I'm just like, oh, that was good and I leave it and I can remember fragments of characters or storylines, but I can so picture the chateau, I can so picture or like feel the heat of it. I can, I can just imagine that whole world existing somewhere. I very much had this when I read Candice Carty-Williams' book more recently too, that these people, I might sort of like bump into them in the street. I can really imagine them. And I wonder if you were cognisant of that whilst you were writing it? And if you know what that little magic ingredient is that creates that?

• 29:46Fearne Cotton?

  Because it's not every novel that you, you're left feeling like that's a world that exists somewhere.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I guess when it comes to both the characters and the setting, what I sort of.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Love when I'm writing and also when I'm reading is just really digging, like burrowing into all the details, every detail. You know, sights, sounds, smells. I often, I don't know whether it's because I write about art, but I often find my writing ends up being quite visual.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  So I guess that helps when it comes to setting. But yeah, really thinking about how the characters feel as well. I mean, I'll now I'll tell you, the, the place is real.

• 30:32Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, wow.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  So, or at least it's heavily inspired by a real.

• 30:37Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, well, that helps because you know, the smell of it, the feel of it, the sounds when you walk through a corridor, like you know it.

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Exactly, yeah. So that, that can only help.

• 30:46Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, there is that old fashioned phrase, write what you know. And I think there is something for it, whether it's an experience or a place that you can really bring it to life because you know every little detail, like you, it's part of you, every little detail of that place. And that does help build that whole picture.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think also with the characters, like whether or not you're conscious of it, whether or not I'm conscious of it when I'm writing, I think it, and you know, they end up being kind of, it's like that surrealist game, The Exquisite Corpse, where you sort of like do a head and then you turn it over and you do, and you end up kind of like picking and choosing little bits from whether it's people you know or people you've kind of interacted with at some point. I mean, there are definitely things that crop up in the book, like the Roland obsessively opening, closing the windows that my stepdad was like, right, so that's me, is it?

• 31:38Fearne Cotton?

  That's so funny.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  And I was like, well, I guess it kind of is.

• 31:43Fearne Cotton?

  That's so brilliant. But of course your brain just stores it all and thinks, yeah, plot that in.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Cause you think that's such a great tick.

• 31:49Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  And you know, something that marks you out and says a lot about you as a person.

• 31:55Fearne Cotton?

  Did you find that you had a pretty steady flow when you were writing or were there bits where you, I don't know, moments of distraction or moments where you're like, oh, I just, I can't get over this road bump?

• 32:05Speaker 04

  Hmm. I, when I was writing, it really did flow. I, with this book, had troubles starting in the first place. So I didn't experience the dreaded second book syndrome.

• 32:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  I think because I wrote my second novel before my first one was out, so I was kind of still in that like blissful, you know, ignorance is bliss, not thinking about readers, reviewers, what people want, just thinking about what I wanted to say. And with this one, I was kind of like, it's my third novel. If I'm gonna write a third novel, it needs to be really good. It needs to be really original. It needs to be this, this and this. And I was paralyzed for a while before I started writing. And I kind of ended up doing things that aren't, don't come naturally to me as a writer. Like I started really trying to plot it all out. And I think I work better when I kind of, I have a vague sense of what's, what's going

• 33:05Speaker 04

  on, what's gonna happen, but I basically follow the characters.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  And it was only when I just sat down, I, I think I got to a point where I thought, okay, I just need to spend time with them on the page and see if this is gonna work or not, because the planning and the plotting was making me lose my confidence.

• 33:22Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  And then when I started writing, then it, I was happy.

• 33:25Fearne Cotton?

  Sometimes it is just, you just have to open the laptop and just start.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:30Fearne Cotton?

  I have so, like, I'm so with you on this because I've, I'm usually pretty fluid. I've only written one novel, but my non-fiction, I'm normally like, I know exactly how this is gonna go and I'm so excited that all I wanna do is that. And I, and it flows and I'm so excited about it. I'm in this weird pickle at the moment where I started writing a fiction and then life happened and some big life stuff happened. And then I didn't write for ages. And then I was like, I can't go back to it. I, I don't, I don't remember it and I, it scared me. So I started another book that was another good idea that I thought, I've committed to this. Then I started to lose confidence, not in the book, but in like how I would talk about it, because it was quite a dark subject matter. So now I've gone back to the first one.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Well, maybe they will end up evolving in tandem.

• 34:15Fearne Cotton?

  Maybe, maybe.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  And feeding off one another.

• 34:18Fearne Cotton?

  I've never done that. I'm usually quite like a Virgo, organised, and this feels like chaos.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:25Fearne Cotton?

  But I was so scared to even go back to either of them at one point. Literally last week, I just watched, have you seen the film, The Invite?

• 34:33Speaker 04

  No, but I'm desperate to see it.

• 34:35Fearne Cotton?

  You're gonna love it.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  It sounds so good.

• 34:36Fearne Cotton?

  It's very four characters in a dynamic, it's brilliant. It's two couples, it's genius.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:42Fearne Cotton?

  And I felt so inspired afterwards. I started rewriting the start of this book at like 10 o'clock at night, which is the most, I go to bed at like half nine.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  Okay, good.

• 34:49Fearne Cotton?

  I was like, who am I? I've never written a word after like 11 a.m. Like what, who am I? But I felt so inspired by it. So now all I need to do is just open my laptop and just start again. So I'm back, hopefully in a flow of doing it. But I've never had that, like it was a sort of a paralyzed feeling of I can't, I can't do it, I can't go near either of them, but I'm over it now and I'm, I'm back to it. Thank God.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  Well, I'm excited for you that you are back in it.

• 35:17Fearne Cotton?

  Me too.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  It's so hard, isn't it? Because on the one hand, I think sitting with an idea is such a valuable thing to do.

• 35:23Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  But there also is such a thing as overthinking.

• 35:28Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  And over planning. Yeah. And you do ultimately, even if it's bad, like if you've got something on the page, you have something to work with, whereas when you've got a blank page, that is terrifying.

• 35:40Fearne Cotton?

  It's the worst feeling ever. It's the pits.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:43Fearne Cotton?

  Well, look, we have all loved reading this book. The whole team have read it and we've just all been chatting about it and loving that level of escapism to this chateau in the south of France with these brilliant characters. So thank you so much for writing such an enjoyable book. What I'll end on is asking you, where is your happy place?

• 36:02Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't know if this is just gonna sound really cheesy, but it's the first thing that's popped into my head.

• 36:08Fearne Cotton?

  That's, that's the answer then.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  It would be with my husband and our son. Wherever, wherever that may be, at home, as long as it's not in that awful hour after nursery before bed, when it's like hell.

• 36:22Fearne Cotton?

  Any hour but that hour.

• 36:23Speaker 04

  Any hour but that hour.

• 36:24Fearne Cotton?

  I hear you. I get that. Well, look, thank you so much, Chloe, and congratulations on your brilliant book.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 36:31Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, Chloe, thank you so much for your time. It was so great because I love that book so much. Just getting to chat about it felt like a real treat. I'm almost tempted to read it again. So it was good just to be able to sort of flesh it out and talk about the locations, the characters, the love stories, all of it. Okay, we're heading into a new month, which of course means a new book for us all to read in the Happy Place Book Club. In September, we're reading new novel, Death Writ large by Susie Dent. Susie's actually gonna be joining me on stage at the Happy Place Festival in Tatten Park next weekend, which I can't wait for. I'm gonna get super nerdy about all the language that she uses in the book, the new words that I learned. It's a brilliant book.

• 37:14Fearne Cotton?

  You'll be able to hear that conversation on the podcast next month if you're not coming to the festival. In the meantime, Death Writ Large is the book that you wanna be reading in September. And then we can all chat about it on Instagram, so head over and join our book club. It's at Happy Place Book Club on Instagram. Okay, until next time, a massive thanks again to Chloe and to you, you lovely little bookworms.

• 37:59Fearne Cotton?

  Happy Place is researched by me, Fern Cotton. The producer is Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios with studio engineering by Basil Oxtaby.

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