Monica Ali, LOVE MARRIAGE: A Novel

2022-07-03  ·  27:44  ·  Monica Ali  ·  Podcast Audio

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[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
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[0:44]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Z cast podcast network.
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[0:58]Monica Ellie is the author of love, marriage, and novel.
[1:02]Her best-selling work has been translated into 26 languages.
[1:06]She's the author of five books, Brick Lane, Alan Tejo Blue, in the kitchen, untold story, and now love marriage.
[1:14]Monica is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2003 was named as one of Grandma's best of young British novelists.
[1:22]She has been nominated for, among others, the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize,
[1:28]and in the U.S. has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
[1:34]She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, where she was a visiting professor, and from 2015 to 2018,
[1:41]she was a distinguished writer and residence at the University of Surrey.
[1:45]Her novel Brick Lane was turned into a feature film produced by film four, starring Tan Heish the Chatterjee, directed by Sarah Gavron, and written by Abby Morgan.
[1:55]Sorry if I messed up all those names. Monica is currently adapting her fifth novel, Love, Marriage, for Television, in conjunction with new pictures.
[2:02]Welcome, Monica. Thank you so much for coming, and moms don't have time to read books to discuss your latest novel, Love, Marriage.
[2:09]Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to it.
[2:12]Oh, it's my pleasure. I read Brick Lane as many people have, and I couldn't wait for this book when I saw it was coming out,
[2:20]and you did such a great job, as you always do, of immediately getting me into the characters head and a setting.
[2:28]I felt like I was in the vaccine with the cartons of food all over me sweating, going to the in-laws house, and right away, you're just so good at it.
[2:40]Anyway, I just wanted to.
[2:42]Thank you. The towers of Tupperware.
[2:45]Yes, the towers of Tupperware, yes, the towers of Tupperware.
[2:50]Okay, would you mind explaining for listeners what Love, Marriage is about?
[2:54]Yes, so it is the story of Yasmin Garami, who is 26 years old.
[3:01]She's a junior doctor at a big London hospital, and she is engaged to be married to Joe.
[3:08]fellow doctor. He is handsome. He's charming. He's also rich.
[3:14]And he's very kind and sensitive.
[3:18]So he's seemingly perfect, but then he does the unthinkable and cheats on Yasmin.
[3:24]Then Yasmin does something which shocks herself even more, which is that she goes off and engages in revenge.
[3:32]And Yasmin is someone who's always been a follower of the rules.
[3:39]She's a good and beautiful daughter. She's a good girl. She's a good person.
[3:44]She's got a very strong moral compass.
[3:49]So this secret, because she doesn't reveal this to her fiance, is kind of eating her up, you know, it's torturing her.
[3:58]That little does she know that Joe is actually nurturing an even bigger secret of his own, which perhaps we'll get on to talk about a little bit later on.
[4:09]But basically at the start of the book Yasmin is kind of pretty sorted.
[4:15]There's a lot of anxiety around the two families meeting for the first time. Nevertheless, her life's pretty sorted.
[4:21]And then a series of things happen, which means that everything kind of implodes and explodes all at the same time.
[4:29]Amazing.
[4:30]Well, Joe's mother is sort of, to me, she sounded like the Erica John, fear of flying type of mom, like a feminist who is always up for discussing everything and shocking and, you know, just changing all the norms around sex, basically.
[4:47]And poor Yasmin's mom is so, you know, you paint the picture of how sex is just not something discussed at all at home.
[4:55]And you have this one image of her just dropping the other in love's mom's book into the trash can, because it's like so crazy, which I just loved.
[5:04]And by the way, you also have the great character for the brother who I'd love the way you wrote his dialogue and how every other word was yeah.
[5:12]And when he has his own little secret going off on the side too, I feel like you have so many. How do you keep all the secrets straight? How did you even come up with this family and the plot of it and like where did this particular story come from for you?
[5:26]Well, actually, I started off, I was writing two separate stories and one of them was about Yasmin and the other was about Harriet, who's Joe's mother Harriet, thanks to you just mentioned.
[5:39]She's this kind of famous feminist icon intellectual, academic and she's written this memoir about her or her lovers or the men and all the women that's the book that Mar Yasmin's mother.
[5:56]Trash and I wasn't sure that either story was going to end up being the novel that I was going to write and then I had this like flash bulb going off in my head and I thought what if I put them together.
[6:13]I mean, Russia is like 99% perspiration and one percent inspiration, but this was part of the one percent, you know, I just as soon as I thought that I knew that was the book that I had to write and I knew it was also going to be a lot of fun to write because Harriet is kind of larger than life and I mean, I had my fun with her, but I'm also very, very fond of Harriet, you know, at a surface level.
[6:39]I guess it would be possible to read her or misread her in my opinion as I think just just an example of white privilege.
[6:47]You know, she sort of does this kind of integration by steam roller, you know, that's kind of good liberal that she is, but she's also got her problems right she's thinking about aging.
[7:01]She's worrying about losing relevance. She's a single parent of an only child, her son's about to leave home. She's struggling with loneliness.
[7:11]And she's also got all her demons and her background, you know, with her own family and upbringing.
[7:17]So yeah, I've got a lot of time for Harriet and Harriet's got a good heart as well as well as being really annoying sometimes.
[7:27]She was so into the idea of Joe marrying an Indian woman that she wanted them dressed in traditional saris at the first meeting which then was disappointed that like they were actually just going to wear like a pretty dress either the mom would wear a dress or a suit or whatever.
[7:42]Yeah, she wants to knicker which is the traditional Muslim ceremony and journey asthma just been planning to have a really small do with a registry office, you know, not a religious ceremony.
[7:56]And Harriet is so keen to prove that she's not an Islamaphobe and to out some of her Islamaphobe friends that she sort of engineers.
[8:07]And she starts interfering. And so she's an Indian mother-in-law, you know, yes, I mean, it was dreading this coming together families, but she was driving it actually it turns out for all the wrong reasons because there isn't a clash of cultures.
[8:21]So you're beginning you sort of build up this expectation. Oh, it's going to be two very different cultures like a clap, but actually the very opposite happens and Harriet just embraces.
[8:32]Yeah, so go around me and that turns into Yasmin's worst nightmare.
[8:38]Careful what you wish for.
[8:41]I also loved Yasmin's relationship with her father. I mean, you have such a clear picture again. I feel like I see all these people in my head, which is probably why this is about to be a TV show, which I want to hear more about as well.
[8:53]But how he just quietly calls her over and they play the game. They're both in the medical field. She's trying to be a doctor and you know what playing the game of like guess this diagnosis and how he calms her down and her most worry some moments.
[9:10]It's really a lovely little depiction of a father and daughter. Tell me about that relationship.
[9:16]Yeah, you know, I did an event at the British Library last week for the Jaipur literary festival, which the biggest actually it's the biggest literary festival in the world.
[9:28]And it takes place in Jaipur every year, but then they have this offshoot in London.
[9:33]And it was really interesting there because everybody with lots of people with Indian heritage of background of that.
[9:39]And everyone was commenting on how it's usually the sun who is the favorite one and who has that relationship with the father that Yasmin actually takes that position.
[9:52]And that's because, well, it's partly because Eric, the younger brother is a bit of a rep.
[10:00]or he's like the black sheep and the family.
[10:02]He's got a degree in sociology for God's sake,
[10:04]which is a no use to human kind according to his father.
[10:09]So Yasmin kind of resents that she
[10:14]has to live up to all of the expectations.
[10:17]And at the same time, she's eager
[10:19]to live up to all those expectations.
[10:22]So she has this kind of very intricate relationship
[10:26]with her dad, where at one moment she resents it
[10:28]and the other moment she's so proud of everything
[10:31]that he's achieved and everything that she is also achieving.
[10:35]I know that the game that you refer to actually
[10:37]comes from the New England Journal of Medicine.
[10:40]They have these case challenges.
[10:42]You have to identify.
[10:44]You have to make the diagnosis from the collection
[10:48]of symptoms and often photographs as well.
[10:52]So that's his favorite father daughter activity.
[10:59]She gets raped and shaved.
[11:02]Oh, wow.
[11:04]It sounded like the way you were writing about all the medical
[11:06]stuff and all the scenes that take place in hospitals
[11:09]and everything that you had your own medical degree,
[11:13]which it doesn't look like you deal from your bio.
[11:15]So tell me about how you immersed yourself in this world
[11:19]and was this just like finding information on Google?
[11:24]Like how did you craft such a believable medical background
[11:28]with the correct terminology and all the stuff?
[11:32]I like doing research.
[11:34]I mean, I feel like I'm fully qualified now as a doctor.
[11:37]I think I could set up a clinic and move.
[11:39]I would see you.
[11:41]I'll be your first patient.
[11:45]I did do an awful lot of research.
[11:48]And some of that was popular nonfiction books
[11:52]by doctors and nurses because that's
[11:54]been really quite a thing over the last 10 years,
[11:57]certainly in the UK.
[11:59]Also, everybody here has experience of the NHS,
[12:02]the National Health Service.
[12:04]And that's personally or through friends.
[12:06]Yeah, I've been working on a geriatric ward.
[12:08]My maternal grandmother was 96 when she died.
[12:11]She was at an adip hospital.
[12:13]And then a lot of subscriptions to medical journals
[12:17]and interviewing doctors, spending some research time
[12:21]in hospitals.
[12:23]I still get emails from subscription departments
[12:26]of journals like the New England Journal saying,
[12:28]come back and re-subscribe and click on your own.
[12:32]I've done with all that.
[12:35]The challenge with research, though,
[12:37]is always that you don't let it dictate or dominate.
[12:41]Yes.
[12:42]Whether you do the research to give you enough confidence
[12:45]that you can, but when you have to get basic facts, right.
[12:49]And I've got Dr. Friends who are kind enough
[12:52]to check all the medical facts.
[12:53]But the really important thing is to get
[12:55]the atmosphere, that the dynamics of the hierarchy
[13:00]within the hospital, all of that.
[13:02]And that's what is, you know, in a way more tricky.
[13:07]And that's what I feel sort of proud of
[13:10]because I've had doctor, you know, doctors who've been readers
[13:15]or in a couple of places,
[13:17]interferes, who've just,
[13:19]that how did you get all that?
[13:22]You know, where did you get that from?
[13:24]So yeah, that's been really gratifying actually.
[13:27]I feel like it's similar to historical fiction
[13:30]where you have to know everything that's happened.
[13:33]And I feel like you can always tell when a fact gets thrown
[13:36]in just so the author knows that you know that they know.
[13:41]And you're like, that's totally irrelevant.
[13:43]Okay, great.
[13:44]You know, it's like, you know, a student
[13:47]just like raising their hand out of context and, you know,
[13:52]and I think in, you know, in the olden days
[13:54]as my children would call them, you know,
[13:59]there was something impressive about the acquisition
[14:02]of facts.
[14:03]You had to go to the library.
[14:05]You know, you had to spend some time looking things up.
[14:07]I mean, now facts are cheap.
[14:08]Information is very, very easily available.
[14:11]You know, you started off by saying, was it Google?
[14:13]I mean, you know, so information is freely available,
[14:17]but there's an art to use the information.
[14:21]Yes, very true.
[14:23]How do you feel about infidelity?
[14:25]This sort of courses through the novel.
[14:27]LAUGHTER
[14:30]That's what you got.
[14:31]You want to put it to me quite like that before.
[14:36]Yeah.
[14:37]LAUGHTER
[14:42]Oh, that's great.
[14:43]So I mean, say sex is the backbone of the novel
[14:47]and narrative terms.
[14:48]That is undoubtedly true.
[14:50]I mean, it's a novel about love and marriage,
[14:52]and that's the title.
[14:54]But there is every major turning point kind of hinges
[14:58]on sex and one way or another,
[14:59]whether that's infidelity, as you say,
[15:02]or revenge sex or sexual addiction or sexual violence
[15:09]or questions around sexual identity.
[15:12]Sex is how the protagonist, Yasmin and Joe kind of grapple
[15:17]with our identities or mature into those identities.
[15:21]And this is, you know, as you said,
[15:22]this is a book about secrets and eyes and guilt and shame
[15:26]and time, and sex is most often what fuels that.
[15:30]It's also about the converse, you know,
[15:33]about exploring one's boundaries, about play,
[15:37]about identifying your own desires.
[15:41]And again, sex fuels that.
[15:45]But, you know, the question that I would try to get around
[15:48]is when you said, how do you feel about infidelity?
[15:52]LAUGHTER
[15:54]I've just sort of stomped me.
[15:57]I think it's complicated, you know.
[15:59]That's, I guess that's why I'm a novelist,
[16:02]because I don't have easy answers to anything, really.
[16:06]I like it's not all right, you're all the way.
[16:08]I mean, infidelity equals bad, right,
[16:12]and big capital letters.
[16:14]That's generally how we think about infidelity.
[16:17]But in Joe's case, it's way more complicated than that,
[16:23]because he's struggling with his sex addiction.
[16:26]In Yasmin's case, yes, she is eaten up by this fair
[16:32]that she has.
[16:34]And yet, it allows her to really,
[16:40]I mean, she's someone who's been all sort of repressing
[16:43]you know, large parts of herself.
[16:45]She's been organizing principles of being around
[16:49]what other people have expected of her
[16:51]or what society has expected of her
[16:53]or what a father expects of her.
[16:55]And it was really crucial to write,
[16:58]I mean, there's only a couple of sex scenes in the book.
[17:01]It's not full of, although there's lots of issues around sex.
[17:05]It's not a 50 shades of gray.
[17:08]It's like two sex scenes.
[17:11]Those are really, really key to her character development.
[17:15]You know, to who she is as a person,
[17:19]who she wants to be, who she is as a woman,
[17:22]how she can be in this world.
[17:23]You know, what place does she have in this world?
[17:26]So that was sort of about the sex itself.
[17:29]It's about what is released or explored through the sex.
[17:35]Including, you know, having sex on her period,
[17:37]which is her arm, you know, it's forbidden in Islam.
[17:41]So it's not just the question of the messiness
[17:45]or the, you know, embarrassment that she might feel
[17:49]because it's the first time that she slept with this man.
[17:53]It's also carries a really antique weight.
[17:56]You know, it's sort of, it brings a lot more to it
[17:59]about questioning how she was gonna live her life
[18:03]and by whose rules.
[18:05]So I don't know if that answers your question.
[18:09]I feel like I'm scurrying around.
[18:11]That's just complicated.
[18:15]You just left that sink in for the rest of the day today.
[18:20]You know, you know, you know, email me an answer if you...
[18:26]Okay, so wait, first, what is the status of this becoming
[18:31]a TV show?
[18:32]What, where are you?
[18:33]Are you adapting it yourself?
[18:34]Where are we in the process of that?
[18:36]I'm adapting it myself.
[18:38]So it's, I mean, it's exciting.
[18:40]There was an eight-way auction for the TV write.
[18:45]Oh my gosh.
[18:47]Very much fun.
[18:48]It's in development with the BBC.
[18:50]I am writing the screenplays.
[18:53]I mean, it's been 10 years since my last book came out.
[18:56]And during part of that time,
[18:58]what I was doing was trying to write for TV.
[19:01]And I worked with a number of production companies.
[19:04]And I learned a lot.
[19:06]And I taught, yep, because I was teaching myself
[19:09]how to write TV scripts.
[19:10]Nothing ever made it to the screen,
[19:12]but I really, really enjoyed it.
[19:14]I love the collaborative process.
[19:17]So different from the solitaryness of writing an novel.
[19:21]And now, you know, I feel like all of it,
[19:24]I sort of view that as my apprenticeship.
[19:26]And now it's not been wasted because
[19:28]now I get to spend more time with Yasmin and Joe.
[19:31]And it was also a much longer book and first draft.
[19:38]And some things had to be cut just for length.
[19:41]But TV is a very story-hungry medium,
[19:45]as I sure that you know, eats up stories so first.
[19:48]So for instance, I had more of the Sandor storyline.
[19:54]Sandor is Joe's therapist.
[19:57]And I can now bring that.
[20:00]you know, those parts of the story said it's I'm just laughing doing it.
[20:06]I love you said it wasn't wasted. I feel like there's this this in writing it's so it's not a straight line right you write all this stuff you delete it you write this whole novel you don't sell it you try this you try that and it feels like it's a waste but without all those things you can never get to the next point anyway.
[20:25]So I feel like people just have to be like there isn't in writing there is no such thing as wasted words right yeah yeah yeah yeah but it can feel like that you know yes that can be I thought I was going to feel like that when I was writing this book it came out in a very very different way than previous novels in which I'd written fairly.
[20:48]Pretty tight first draft because I had a lot as I go along because I felt much more in control of the structure and with this book.
[20:56]It just didn't work like that I just wrote and wrote and I ended up with two hundred and forty thousand words and I can't worry my guys.
[21:04]So that we don't put people off it's nowhere near that long now.
[21:08]We're nobody panic normal size it's nothing.
[21:13]I thought it was going to be very painful to do all the cuts but there might it came to it it was not at all I actually and I kind of relished for doing it you know quite aggressively and see cutting off the sort of the fact and seeing that the structure was.
[21:33]there underneath and that I think I just keep learning as you say you just keep learning and what I learned from that is that it's not about my process and how my process has to work it's about what each book needs as a process you know that it the book kind of dictates the process.
[21:56]Well I read that you were a huge book lover no surprise as a child and escaped into books all the time to get out of your own family in the ten situations there and I completely relate as I know many people listening I'm sure do as well as we all love books so much.
[22:14]Tell me how reading is helping you these days as you go through your wonderfully successful career and all of that are you still turning to bugs is it something that keeps you sort of grounded or just what is your relationship to reading like these days.
[22:30]I think it's hard to replicate that reading experience so particularly sort of adolescent reading where you totally disappear into the text.
[22:42]And I think that's why I write because I do feel like get that something similar in terms of experience that I disappear and the day disappears and everything disappears i'm just inside it reading is harder to find i'm always reading.
[23:00]With my critical analytical brain switched on and it's hard to get rid of that, but then a book will come along and blow me away like I recently discovered Natalia Ginsburg and I don't know how I've got to this age without having read her before that you start reading I started with family lexicon which is an autobiographical novel and.
[23:24]I just thought, oh my god, this is life changing, you know, it was I just could not put it down so still that experiences.
[23:33]Wait a second i'm always sort of ravenous for it, you know, I totally totally understand I just have I have a memoir coming out very soon and in it I sort of pay homage to all the books of the past and how each book gets me through a different.
[23:47]Part of my life and they're sort of intricately interwoven so.
[23:51]Oh, how exciting when is it coming out what's that called it's called book ends and then where I love loss and literature and yes, I will send you a copy i'm trying to reach everybody who's been on my podcast to send them a.
[24:03]A copy to say thanks but yeah, anyway, but yes, I feel I owe so much to books for getting me through so much and taking me so many places and.
[24:15]Anyway, speaking of what book are you writing on now.
[24:19]Well, I'm working on the the screenplay so I don't have another book in progress i'm writing a short story for a.
[24:28]Or go collection for I guess my publisher in the UK they are marking their 50th anniversary next year and so putting together a collection of original short stories i'm writing something for that and i'm working on an idea for a play.
[24:45]So sorry, I should never seem book I shouldn't I don't know I guess I was just it was just wishful thinking that there would be another book coming along but i'm sure at some point.
[24:55]Yeah, give me only give me another 10 years all right i'll hang in there.
[25:00]Last question, what advice would you have for aspiring authors read.
[25:07]It's like three things you're going to do read read and then read I mean I teach creative writing from time to time and it never ceases to amaze me it when there's a inspiring writer doesn't actually read that much.
[25:24]I think you can't hope to be a serious writer without being first a serious reader you don't need to pay money to go on a an MFA.
[25:36]You don't need to pay money to go on an evening course I mean if that if you could afford it and it benefits you then that's great but really all you need because I grew up in house for that books we didn't have money for books but I had a library card.
[25:53]And that's free you know I don't know whether it's still free in the States but I hope it is.
[25:59]But if you can get yourself a library card you have the key to everything that you need to learn to be a writer and you can do that three reading and the other essential.
[26:11]ingredient is curiosity you know fiction doesn't look inwards you know it's not all about naval gazing you have to be curious about the world about other people about events big and small about you know how a baby can start let's self awake about what's going on and you know society or whether that's at a local level or an international level you just have to have a thirst I think for for finding out.
[26:41]I love that a thirst for finding out it's perfect Monica thank you so much sorry I I threw you so much with my other question.
[26:50]But I really enjoyed I enjoyed the reaction so much I could just watch you you know squirm so that was awesome.
[26:58]I should have asked you how you feel about it fidelity but you didn't so there.
[27:04]Thanks for coming on mom's turn to read books and I hope to stay in touch.
[27:12]So much.
[27:13]All right.
[27:14]Bye bye.
[27:15]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books don't forget to follow me on Instagram at the be Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books.
[27:25]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week.
[27:32]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.