Ben Reeves, EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT + Ariel Sullivan, BENEATH
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling, and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy.
[0:26]Today is a join episode with two authors
[0:28]who look at the world a little bit differently
[0:31]in their fiction.
[0:33]Ben Reeves is the author of Everything Was Beautiful
[0:36]and Nothing Hurt.
[0:37]And the join episode is with Ariel Sullivan,
[0:40]beneath a novel, The Rebirth series, Book One.
[0:44]Ben Reeves lives in Peterborough, UK
[0:46]with his wife and two children,
[0:48]an early draft of Everything Was Beautiful
[0:50]and Nothing Hurt,
[0:51]when the International 2024 Bath Novel Award.
[0:54]His book is told from the point of view of death
[0:58]and it is original and haunting
[1:02]and somehow makes us all want to live better lives
[1:05]in the moment.
[1:06]And then Ariel Sullivan is the author of Conform
[1:09]and Now Beneath,
[1:11]which are both published by Thousand Voices,
[1:13]which is Jenna Bush Hager's imprint.
[1:16]She lives in Connecticut with her husband,
[1:18]two sons and two French Bulldogs
[1:20]and grew up a military brat moving every two years,
[1:24]where she could often observe life from the outskirts.
[1:27]Ariel's book is about a different type of universe.
[1:31]Think The Giver by Lois Louring.
[1:33]Both Ben and Ariel,
[1:35]who I have to introduce, by the way,
[1:37]think about life in different ways
[1:38]and through the use of literary devices
[1:42]challenge the way we think about the world.
[1:44]So taken together,
[1:45]I think this is a really thought-provoking episode
[1:48]and I hope you will agree.
[1:49]Welcome, Ben.
[1:50]Thanks so much for coming on totally book
[1:52]to talk about Everything Was Beautiful
[1:54]and Nothing Hurt.
[1:56]Thank you.
[1:57]Oh, thank you very much.
[1:58]Thanks for having me.
[1:59]Okay, your book is very original.
[2:01]I've never written anything quite like it.
[2:03]Talk to me about what the book is about
[2:06]and tell listeners what they can expect to find.
[2:09]Sure, okay.
[2:10]So Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt
[2:12]is a story about life told by death.
[2:16]So in this story, death is the main character.
[2:20]But he's not like your classic grim reaper type
[2:22]with a herd and a size and that sort of thing.
[2:24]He's just a normal guy in many ways.
[2:26]He wears jeans and a t-shirt.
[2:28]He lives in a apartment building
[2:30]and his job is very much to spend time with people
[2:33]in the last few minutes hours, even days of life.
[2:37]And he never judges them or anything like that.
[2:40]He just listens to them, listens to the stories,
[2:44]comforts them and just offers a listener
[2:48]at the end of their life to ease them
[2:50]into whatever follows after life.
[2:53]And so we see a lot of this throughout the book.
[2:55]We see Travis, I didn't even mention his name's Travis.
[2:59]He spends a lot of time with these people
[3:01]and we see that throughout the book.
[3:03]And you can imagine being death could be quite a lonely job
[3:07]because you know that every single person you ever meet,
[3:11]you're going to watch them die.
[3:13]So you might be very careful about how you would spend time
[3:17]with people and whether you even would spend time
[3:20]with people outside of your job.
[3:21]But the problem is one day Travis meets a little family
[3:26]that lives across the hall, a young single mother
[3:30]called Dalia, who is a midwife and her two daughters,
[3:34]one of whom is eight years old and she's called Laila.
[3:36]And against his better judgment, Travis finds himself
[3:40]drawn to this little family.
[3:41]He kind of falls in love with them and they fall in love
[3:44]with him and he can't help but just spend time
[3:47]with this little family because he just adores them,
[3:49]which is maybe not the best decision for Travis
[3:53]because he knows where, they don't know he's death,
[3:56]but he knows where this is eventually going to end.
[4:00]So we sort of see this relationship unfold
[4:03]and there's the question of what's going to happen
[4:06]because he's generally quite a solitary person
[4:09]and he has decided to pursue this little family.
[4:13]So it's very much a story about life.
[4:15]A story about death could be depressing
[4:17]but I think it's very much about life.
[4:20]It's about cherishing people you love,
[4:23]cherishing your time and deciding
[4:25]how you're going to spend your time
[4:27]and what you're going to decide to pay attention to.
[4:29]And I think it's ultimately quite an uplifting book
[4:32]even though it is very sad.
[4:34]In fact, that's one of the things people have said to me.
[4:35]They've said it is really sad, but ultimately I felt
[4:40]like I was invigorated, which is beautiful
[4:42]and that's exactly what I wanted.
[4:44]Oh, that's wonderful.
[4:46]The only other time I have met a main character
[4:48]of death is in the book thief.
[4:50]Did you read that?
[4:51]I did, yeah, yeah.
[4:52]I love the book thief.
[4:53]I was conscious of that while writing this
[4:55]because I didn't want to just copy
[4:57]but I do think my death is very different
[4:59]from the one in the book thief.
[5:01]He plays much more of a, he is the protagonist.
[5:04]I know that the book thief is sort of narrated by death
[5:06]but he's not so much a protagonist in that book I wouldn't say
[5:11]but in this one he really, he really is
[5:12]and he's called Travis and I wanted him
[5:15]just just be a normal guy
[5:17]because I thought that'd be really interesting.
[5:18]One sort of thing people have said is that they maybe
[5:22]wanted to see a bit more of how his kind of,
[5:27]how he works, how is he death?
[5:29]How does he do these things?
[5:30]But I never really wanted to get too deeply
[5:32]into that I wanted to just keep it very down to earth
[5:35]and he is just death but his job is basically just
[5:39]all for people comfort at the end.
[5:42]While you really do a beautiful job of
[5:44]including both the scenes where Travis goes in
[5:47]and we see him sort of entering different people's lives
[5:50]all at the very end which is kind of heartbreaking
[5:53]honestly one after the next but we as you said
[5:57]the family is like a comic,
[6:00]comic heartbreaking family scene you open with
[6:04]Deli's car breaking down and just trying to deal
[6:06]with the baby and getting her daughter Laila to school
[6:10]and I was like, oh my gosh, I feel like I am in that car
[6:13]in the pouring rain and I get it.
[6:15]And then you have us really get to know them.
[6:17]I love Deli's sentiments about being midwife
[6:20]and the pain of watching one bed birth
[6:24]and that was so vivid.
[6:26]Wait, tell me a little bit more about that
[6:28]and even Delia and her character
[6:30]and crafting that other family and poor Laila's heartbreak
[6:33]when Travis fails on her birthday party, oh my gosh.
[6:37]Of course, so yeah, that is funny you mentioned that scene
[6:41]with the car breaking down because that was very much
[6:42]taken from real life.
[6:43]I remember being a little kid and we didn't have much money
[6:46]and my mom would take us to school
[6:48]and it felt like it was every week
[6:49]but it probably couldn't have been every week
[6:51]but it felt like the car would break down every week
[6:53]and things would get really stressful.
[6:55]She was a single mom as well.
[6:56]So a lot of that was sort of taken from real life
[6:59]and I wanted to really show that she was struggling
[7:02]you know, Delia is struggling in the book.
[7:04]In a similar way, maybe she's a bit lonely
[7:06]in a similar way to how Travis is lonely
[7:08]but she's obviously got her two daughters
[7:11]where it's Travis has got no one at the beginning of the book
[7:14]and I wanted their relationship to unfold very organically
[7:18]throughout the book, you're almost on a first read
[7:21]possibly don't even know where it's going
[7:23]that these characters are gonna become so important.
[7:26]I wanted it to almost sneak up on the reader
[7:28]because it does sneak up on Travis.
[7:30]He's not actively pursuing this.
[7:33]They just sort of, you know, I think the first thing
[7:35]as you said is Layla puts a little birthday
[7:38]invitation for his door
[7:39]and he says, come to my birthday party
[7:41]and he actually turns it down because he's, he can't.
[7:45]He's like, so he would love to
[7:48]but he just knows that he can't get involved
[7:50]with people's lives because it just is just not gonna end well
[7:53]and he does, he just can't help himself
[7:56]but to pursue it.
[7:58]When Travis comes into people's lives,
[8:01]you have it so that people kind of understand right away
[8:04]who he is and sometimes they're like,
[8:06]okay, let me just like finish what I'm doing
[8:07]and are you sure now is the right time
[8:09]and how do people know and where did you even get
[8:13]this whole idea?
[8:14]Do you feel like when deaths are knocks on our doors?
[8:17]So to speak, we all are aware.
[8:20]Like where is this coming from?
[8:21]Yeah, that's interesting.
[8:23]So I guess I tried to really put myself in the shoes
[8:27]of death, whatever that might be, you know,
[8:29]death could mean a lot of different things
[8:30]with a lot of different people
[8:31]but for me, I wanted to really explore,
[8:34]okay, what if he was just a normal guy?
[8:37]What would that involve?
[8:38]And obviously I've mentioned the loneliness
[8:40]but I think also just like that there's a scene
[8:43]in the book where he goes to a guy's house
[8:46]and the guy is a bit of a shut-in, you know,
[8:47]he lives in this kind of squalar,
[8:49]there's mess everywhere, there's a lot of rubbish
[8:52]and this guy's just sort of a bit of a recluse
[8:55]and Travis turns up with a mop and bucket
[8:57]and he's wearing full overalls
[8:59]and he's almost tailored himself
[9:01]to what that person needs in those last moments
[9:03]and there's a few different examples of that, you know,
[9:05]and one scene, he's a lawyer doing, you know,
[9:08]the last will and testament of someone
[9:10]and things like that and he, you know,
[9:12]he really tries to tailor each person's experience
[9:17]at the end and it was a lot of fun actually.
[9:19]I don't know if I remember exactly how I came up with that.
[9:22]It was more of an organic thing, you know,
[9:24]I'd write a scene, I'd be like,
[9:25]oh, he could be dressed as kind of a cleaner
[9:27]to help this guy and it sort of evolved
[9:30]and it was a lot of fun actually really miss writing
[9:34]from the point of view of Travis
[9:35]because it was such a beautiful thing to, you know,
[9:38]I really felt like I knew these people that were dying
[9:40]and it was a really fun space to be in
[9:44]and hopefully fun to read even though it's obviously very sad.
[9:46]Well, the hoarder are seen in particular
[9:49]at the end after Travis helped him clean up
[9:52]and people were like, oh, what a shame,
[9:54]he was finally getting his act together
[9:56]because he had successfully cleaned one of the rooms
[9:58]and he's like, oh, I'm just excited.
[10:00]then it was true. Yeah. And I think that is the nature of deaf in a way. You know, you never quite
[10:05]done. You're not going to be, there's no full stop. It's sort of just an ellipsis and you might
[10:11]be in the middle of something. You might, you might be thinking about what you're going to be doing
[10:14]tomorrow, but deaf is going to sneak up on you. And I guess that's one thing I really wanted to
[10:19]highlight in this book is that I don't think we actually think about deaf very much. What I do,
[10:24]but I think people generally don't think about deaf very much day to day.
[10:29]But I really think that having an awareness of deaf and thinking, you know, actually one day,
[10:34]there is going to be a day where I die. And I don't know how or who I'm going to be with or anything
[10:40]like that. But it's definitely going to happen. We know that for a fact. And I think thinking
[10:44]about those things can actually make your day to day life really precious because, you know, you could
[10:50]easily be scared of it. But I think thinking about it a bit more, you just get more of a awareness
[10:58]for it and little things that would normally annoy you like traffic or anything like that.
[11:04]Don't annoy you quite so much when you think to yourself actually one day that they're
[11:08]talking to end. And even maybe being stuck in traffic could be a beautiful thing if you really
[11:13]think about the fact that this is going to end one day. You know, you can just sit there in the
[11:17]traffic and look around and realize you are alive right now. And that's one thing I really wanted to
[11:22]try and get across in this one. Why do you think about deaf so much?
[11:26]I've always thought about it. I don't know why. I started thinking about it a lot more when I had
[11:33]kids. So my kids are now 12 and seem to be nine and seeing them grow up every year was almost
[11:42]a kind of death because they would just become a completely different person as they're growing,
[11:47]naturally. And, you know, your kid at eight years old, you kind of look back at it when they were
[11:53]four and it's a different person. And I almost kind of grieved it because I missed that little
[11:59]four-year-old. I love the eight-year-old just as much if not more. But I still kind of missed that
[12:03]four-year-old bumbling around and messing up their words and, you know, drawing silly little
[12:09]pictures and stuff. I really missed it. So I was really aware of time passing and that naturally
[12:16]gets you thinking about death. I even I was kind of obsessed with it like I've you ever seen the
[12:22]there's a chart of your life in weeks. So it's like 52 squares is obviously a week a year and then
[12:30]there's like 80 rows and it looks like nothing. There's nothing these squares. There's like hardly
[12:36]anything. And you think, wow, I'm like halfway through that. And it was scary. So I suppose what I was
[12:42]really trying to do with this book was to kind of help myself to think about that and be aware of it and
[12:49]just heal a bit of that and and think that actually maybe it's okay to to think about these things.
[12:55]So with only a limited number of squares to do what you will with why write this book about it.
[13:04]Why become a writer? I've always wanted to write and I think this particular book. I really
[13:09]think literature is something very special and that's not a, you know, it's not a original opinion
[13:16]but I really do think it is. I think that words and stories and characters can really change lives
[13:23]for the better. And I'd love to try and put my little piece in there amongst all the beautiful books
[13:30]that people write. I'd always be a writer even if no one ever read the books but it is nice to have
[13:37]people reading it now. It's it sort of becomes something else then as you probably know like
[13:42]there's one thing of sitting in your room writing this thing and now and then it's out in the
[13:46]world and people have their opinion on it and lots of people like it and some people don't like it
[13:50]and and all of it's all of it's good whether they like it or not and yeah just you know I'd like
[13:57]to write some more and it's just fun to be a part of the the canon just part of part of the world
[14:04]of literature really I really enjoy that. So when you look at your own life knowing that death
[14:10]could come knocking at any moment if it were to come today for example God forbid you know not
[14:15]good what would you be in the middle of what would be left undone? Well I'd like to obviously see
[14:25]my kids grow up that's huge there's a lot of I'm finished business there that yeah I'd love to
[14:30]see every single thing that they're going to do in their lives. I'd be hard about three
[14:36]quarters away through the next book. I'd sometimes think that when a book's going well I actually
[14:40]think to myself I hope it don't die because I want to finish this to something going okay
[14:47]in fact that's how I know that a book is going well. I think I'd probably be in the middle of
[14:52]probably pottering around making something I like making all sorts of things paintings and puppets
[14:58]and random stuff. I'd probably have my hands in something and if he asked me or she asked me or
[15:04]asked me are you ready? I personally know I'm not not ready. I'd like to think that when I die
[15:10]I will be ready which is a tough thing because you could say well you're never ready but I think
[15:15]I think you can't be ready I think you can achieve a piece you know you'd still like to see what
[15:20]happens afterwards but you can achieve a kind of piece where you're just happy with things how they
[15:26]went and you're ready to go. That'd be nice. I've always said I'd like to die with my eyes closed
[15:34]which might seem strange but it just means that yeah I've accepted it at the end. If you
[15:39]die with your eyes open I feel like you maybe you weren't ready to go. I know it's a bit strange.
[15:46]Well interesting. Well lots to think about lots of ways to re-conceptualize life. I feel like anyone
[15:54]who is very familiar with loss and death and and all of that is so eager to like shake everybody
[16:02]else by the shoulders and be like I don't know you don't get it like this is you know this is
[16:06]happening and I feel like this is this is your way of shaking our shoulders and making sure we all
[16:11]appreciate the goodness of life. Yeah and the great thing about doing that through a book is you can
[16:18]stop reading at any point if it gets too much or I never ever with this book wanted to just
[16:25]shove in people's faces or just make you feel miserable for the sake of it. There are sad things
[16:30]in the book a lot of sad things in the book naturally have been about death but I never ever
[16:33]wanted it to feel gratuitous or you know I'm just trying to make you feel sad for the sake of it
[16:42]but yeah being in a book form you can just if it gets too much you can just stop reading.
[16:47]I agree I totally agree. Well Ben thank you so much for coming on and thank you for the thought
[16:52]for booking read. Thank you so much and thanks for having me and for everything you do with
[16:56]books it's it's really good. Thanks thank you. Welcome Ariel thank you so much for coming to discuss
[17:03]beneath your second novel congratulations. No thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure and
[17:08]you know last we were on a panel at the Miami Book Fair and now here we are so here we are. Another
[17:14]book already it's amazing and not not a slim book either like you wrote a full-on big other novel and
[17:21]it's really good and I don't even know how you did that. Oh well I like to like caveat because it
[17:26]was like oh you're so prolific I wrote this back in 2223 and I wrote conform in 2020 and 2021
[17:32]so it allowed me to kind of have this quick turnaround between the two of publishing but um
[17:38]been fun. Wow well beneath is quite different and it's full of soul and rage and sadness and
[17:49]feeling trapped. I mean there's a lot in here physically you have your characters below ground
[17:56]after a nuclear fallout basically. Well why don't you tell I was the same where they've developed
[18:00]this whole new system underground but it's a new way of sort of coping with life and an anger
[18:07]and all of it. Tell me maybe do a better job of explaining you know the plot but that's how I felt
[18:12]reading. That's great I always feel like the plot you can give any synopsis you want but it's really
[18:17]what the reader takes away and feels like that's the true story of the book. This story took place
[18:22]you know I'm taking you back in time to six years right after this war that everybody in
[18:27]conform talks about and the whole society like he mentioned is living underground after a
[18:31]nuclear fallout and life is now about surviving not living and so there's different sectors and
[18:38]each sector has a role for a very like basic idea of what society could look like and you follow
[18:45]the main character in the lane or sorry in the lanes from conform. You follow the main character
[18:51]Sasha who has been she's lost everything she was working in the ward she's known as death
[18:57]she wants to join her family she doesn't really have a reason to live anymore and she's
[19:02]pulled into a secret surface mission with a group from the force and she doesn't want to be a
[19:08]part of it but all of humanity is relying on it and she has to fight not only the elements
[19:15]and the dwindling supplies but also herself really through this mission and she finds a lot
[19:21]at the end of it. Wow well where is all the darkness of this coming? Yeah so I started
[19:27]I've wanted to write since I was eight I moved a lot growing up and so as sad as it sounds reading
[19:33]was really my my consistent friend throughout life. I was able to take the books with me as I assimilated
[19:39]into new schools and try to find new friend groups but I had constantly knew that every hello had a
[19:44]goodbye so it made me an outsider very early on because it hurt worse to dive into those groups
[19:50]and then to be ripped out. I thought about writing off and on I've dabbled I didn't actually
[19:56]get out of my own way and pursue this until I was
[20:00]struggling with postpartum depression in 2020.
[20:02]It just, it hit a new rock bottom for me
[20:05]and it was horrible, but the beauty in it,
[20:08]having now been on the other side,
[20:10]is it really allowed me to silence my inner critic
[20:13]and I allowed myself to just sit
[20:15]with the imposter syndrome
[20:16]and thought, you know, I already feel horrible.
[20:19]I already feel this low.
[20:20]So why not, why not try?
[20:23]What could I possibly lose?
[20:25]And that was really, I brought the fresh air for me
[20:28]and liberating.
[20:29]So I started writing in Conform
[20:30]and I feel like Conform has that feeling
[20:34]of when you're clawing yourself out of a dark place.
[20:36]There's a lot of hope and you're grasping at every light
[20:38]you can find.
[20:40]I think once you heal the hard part about it
[20:43]is you kind of sit and reflect
[20:44]and you think you're gonna be better,
[20:45]but there's all the stuff
[20:46]that you typically dig up when you're healing
[20:49]that you then have to sit with
[20:51]and decide what you're gonna do with it.
[20:52]And beneath is really everything that I had dug up
[20:56]that went, I went to a traditional therapy
[20:58]in a firm believer in saying that it allowed.
[20:59]So people who think they're struggling can go.
[21:01]It's I think the biggest form is self love
[21:04]you can give yourself is to go talk to someone
[21:06]if you need it.
[21:07]And in that, I found all of these little crooks
[21:10]and crannies I had, you know, decorated
[21:12]and made seeing nice within myself to keep going.
[21:15]And so it was really kind of a coming to myself
[21:21]and meeting myself exactly where I was.
[21:23]And there was a lot of darkness and a lot of pain
[21:25]and a lot of struggle that I had just kept running
[21:28]from my whole life.
[21:29]And so beneath is me sitting in it with my main character
[21:32]and figuring out, you know, what do we do?
[21:35]Cause I'd say to people, no one character is me,
[21:39]but I like to give my characters parts of myself.
[21:41]And so I gave Emily in this part of myself
[21:43]I didn't quite understand, but I wanted to.
[21:46]I gave Sasha everything I hated about myself.
[21:49]And I kind of it allowed me to get, you know,
[21:51]in the places that can feel scary in real life.
[21:53]And I think that's the beauty of writing
[21:54]as you can explore thoughts, ideas, feelings
[21:58]that you may be too afraid to say out loud in real life.
[22:00]I mean, one of the things that Sasha says is that she,
[22:05]when she thinks about her family
[22:07]and what she has become since she saw them
[22:09]and what she's had to do to survive,
[22:12]that she has all the shames around it.
[22:14]Right.
[22:15]How do you square the shame of survival
[22:18]and what you have to do with who you believe you are?
[22:21]Yeah, I think shame might be the worst human emotion we have.
[22:26]I think it destroys more dreams,
[22:28]it silences more confessions than it should.
[22:32]And so giving her that, you know,
[22:33]she has to really come to the idea of
[22:36]survivors guilt is a real thing.
[22:38]Or you cannot apply that to so many different areas.
[22:41]It doesn't have to be as doomsday as her situation is,
[22:45]but we carry a lot of shame in our life.
[22:47]And I think that's where it comes out as judgment,
[22:50]whether on ourselves or on others.
[22:53]And so you have this person she's so guarded.
[22:55]And I think that's part of her,
[22:56]the beauty of her is finding those moments
[22:58]because when she finally does let down her guard,
[23:01]she's not as horrible as she seems.
[23:02]She's not as angry as she seems.
[23:05]Levi has a line in there, which I think encompasses
[23:08]who she is in general.
[23:09]He's like, it was never anger.
[23:11]It was always grief.
[23:12]And when you can sit with that, you can move on.
[23:15]And so she really has to tackle
[23:17]so many different levels of survival
[23:19]and try to make new relationships.
[23:21]And so it's a heavy book,
[23:22]but it was by far the most cathartic I've ever written.
[23:26]She also says repeatedly this refrain
[23:30]that she's never gonna forgive her dad for leaving.
[23:33]Yeah, I think when I, on a personal level,
[23:37]when I went to therapy and I looked at things,
[23:39]there were boundaries that I had drawn in my life
[23:43]that I didn't even realize were hurting me
[23:44]as much as they were.
[23:46]And there were things I had said
[23:48]that I thought that I had to, almost like you draw this line,
[23:52]you think you have to live and die on it.
[23:53]It's a hill that you think that you have now,
[23:56]it's become a part of who you are.
[23:58]And so this has become a part of who she is
[23:59]and she carries that.
[24:00]And again, it touches on that shame and that guilt.
[24:03]And I think there's a big part that wishes she hadn't said it.
[24:06]And it's funny that we as humans typically can forgive others
[24:10]pretty easily and like forgiving yourself
[24:12]is always a very sticky, very hard situation.
[24:16]When you're stuck with a situation where you feel helpless
[24:19]or that you have no control
[24:20]and you tend to spew that pain onto others.
[24:23]And the beautiful thing about the people
[24:24]who love you the most is they typically accept it.
[24:27]But you have to live with it later.
[24:28]And she has no way to fix this emotion with her father.
[24:32]She has now said it, he's gone and there's no resolution.
[24:35]And I think that is by far one of the most painful things
[24:38]humans go through when you realize that you can forgive yourself
[24:41]while you want, but you're never gonna have that conversation
[24:43]with that person to say, I'm sorry,
[24:46]or to hold the hand out and say, I shouldn't have.
[24:48]And so I think that weight of that alters every decision
[24:52]because she's so afraid of doing it again.
[24:54]What do we do with all of this fury that is on the page?
[24:58]Yeah, I think one of the emotions women aren't permitted
[25:03]to feel or encourage to feel from a very young age
[25:06]the same way as our counterparts are is anger and rage.
[25:10]I think there's a narrative around like, be a good girl
[25:13]or like, you know, you don't.
[25:15]Yeah, there's all this stress.
[25:16]And I wanted to write a woman who was just angry
[25:20]because I think a lot of women feel it.
[25:22]I think that's why people like drift to her is
[25:25]cause she gives life to the parts of ourselves
[25:27]that we may try to be like, you know, tamper that down.
[25:30]That's not appropriate.
[25:32]And she just rages.
[25:33]And I think that's also a beauty of her being 23.
[25:35]Cause at 23 we can, although she is like mentally more mature
[25:39]than that based on her circumstances,
[25:41]but she is able to just rage at everything
[25:44]that she doesn't like that she doesn't want.
[25:46]And I wanted a home for that
[25:48]because I think feminine rage is a very powerful thing.
[25:52]And I wanted women to come here and feel like, okay, maybe,
[25:56]you know, you relate to so many different characters
[25:58]for so many different things.
[26:00]Not a lot of people see a woman who's just rageful
[26:02]and she's trying her best.
[26:04]And I think rage is easier to hold and agree.
[26:07]And so as the way she expresses it,
[26:09]instead of sitting there and realizing,
[26:11]there's no changing this outcome.
[26:13]I am alone.
[26:14]I have a lost everybody.
[26:16]Instead of sitting with that, it's so much easier
[26:18]to just say I hate everything and I hate everyone
[26:22]because she really hates what she's been given in life.
[26:25]But what do you do once you say that out loud?
[26:27]Like where do you go?
[26:28]And so I think this is her shield.
[26:30]This is her way of saying that what I truly hate,
[26:34]I can't give life to or it might bury me.
[26:37]So I'm just going to hate everything.
[26:40]And hopefully that can allow me to keep going
[26:43]because she does keep going despite odds
[26:45]where she, if she gave up, everybody would understand.
[26:49]So do you consider this fantasy?
[26:52]Is this fantasy?
[26:53]Or is it just dystopian?
[26:54]I wouldn't really say this is fantasy.
[26:56]I don't have any magic.
[26:57]I have no magic coming because people keep being like,
[26:59]when's it gonna happen?
[27:00]I'm like, it's not, there's no magic in either timeline.
[27:04]I would consider this dystopian.
[27:06]There's definitely a romance angle to it.
[27:08]And I love love in general.
[27:11]There's a reason we all keep writing love stories.
[27:13]It's the most basic human need ever to be loved
[27:16]and to be seen.
[27:17]But it's much more than just the romantic scenes.
[27:20]Like within this book, I love the romance.
[27:23]I am obsessed with the soul, like platonic mates
[27:27]that you have within this book of people
[27:29]who just keep showing up.
[27:31]Because I think friendship love is a love
[27:33]that needs to be talked about more.
[27:35]It's not the flowers and the gifts and the anniversaries.
[27:39]It's just another person seeing you expecting nothing
[27:42]and showing up over and over again.
[27:44]Have you read the giver?
[27:45]If I let her.
[27:46]There was something tonally very similar in this book
[27:50]in a way of just, flattered.
[27:52]Yeah.
[27:53]Yeah.
[27:55]Right, it's like this, this other construct of a world
[27:59]where you have to learn to live and you know
[28:04]that there was something else and yet you can't access it
[28:07]and only certain people can access it and I don't know.
[28:09]I feel like there's definitely, I mean,
[28:10]I'm thrilled that was in there.
[28:12]I love so many of what I consider the classics of dystopian.
[28:16]I joke all the time that reform is like a 1984
[28:20]and a brave new world sandwich put together
[28:22]where you have one group that's so indulgent
[28:24]and one group that's completely deprived.
[28:26]So yeah, I would love a love being considered among a book
[28:30]like the giver because it is beautiful in the way
[28:32]that they do have to search for what wasn't
[28:35]and what is the human need to survive
[28:38]and make sense of it is the story we're all looking for.
[28:41]So I'm thrilled.
[28:43]This notion also of a death angel
[28:45]essentially like a death doula of sorts.
[28:49]Tell me about that.
[28:50]Have you like, where is that coming from
[28:52]and do you find comfort?
[28:54]Do you think there is really comfort in the last moments
[28:57]and how impactful can we be when someone is dying?
[29:02]I mean, so it's a deep thought of mine
[29:05]and something that I sit with a lot of the idea of,
[29:07]and I've got a 10 year old who has been obsessed
[29:10]with what happens what comes next.
[29:11]We have a lot of philosophical talks at pickup
[29:14]or at six in the morning over coffee
[29:16]when I'm not quite prepared to answer them.
[29:18]But I think that's another thing
[29:19]that humans are drawn to is what comes next.
[29:21]You know, like there's this idea of here we are
[29:24]and everybody has different beliefs and religions.
[29:27]And in this book, you kind of lose,
[29:29]you see humanity losing that.
[29:32]And I was like, well, what would step in it
[29:33]if you didn't have your faith to cling to,
[29:35]if you didn't have all these things.
[29:38]And for Sasha, there really is that moment
[29:40]where she has lost everybody
[29:44]and she makes a very single one line comment
[29:47]and I made it that way because hopefully the reader just sees it
[29:51]when her mother passes, she died utterly alone.
[29:54]And for the rest of the book, I think we do that
[29:56]when something happens much like her father,
[29:58]you spend the rest of your life trying.
[30:00]to fix something that will never fix that moment.
[30:03]And so she's kind of chasing this,
[30:05]and she's looking for ways to help.
[30:07]And everybody is separated.
[30:09]And I think that it shows for as angry as she is,
[30:12]she has such a huge heart
[30:14]because the idea of anyone being alone in that moment.
[30:18]And I think more than it helping,
[30:21]I just think it's a vulnerable one.
[30:23]And I would like to think that whenever my time comes,
[30:25]I'm certainly not alone,
[30:27]because that sounds incredibly scary.
[30:29]And so she just sits in a space
[30:30]that I think a lot of people would want to run from.
[30:32]And that is a power of her and her strength,
[30:34]and it's kind of more of the quiet side of her strength,
[30:37]rather than this loud, vengeful, angry side.
[30:41]But yeah, I've always been intrigued with that moment.
[30:44]They say your life flashes before your eyes.
[30:47]What is it people are looking for and who stands in it?
[30:50]If you were to speak to someone grieving today,
[30:53]who maybe is feeling the rage,
[30:55]but maybe is it another phase?
[30:58]How would you, what would you say?
[31:00]Oh gosh, mostly that there's no right way to handle it.
[31:03]I think, and I don't think grief has to be
[31:05]the loss of a human, either.
[31:07]I think that we don't give ourselves enough credit
[31:09]that the loss of a relationship,
[31:12]a loss of a way of life, a loss of a path
[31:14]that you thought you were on.
[31:16]All of that is a huge upheaval to who you are
[31:18]and the plans you had.
[31:19]So I think that it's to give yourself enough grace
[31:23]to feel wherever you're at,
[31:25]however it is that it manifests.
[31:27]Amazing.
[31:28]Well, Ariel, thank you for this really deep dark
[31:32]and yet somehow bizarrely satisfying,
[31:36]you know, like emotional maelstrom.
[31:40]I'm going to read my bio and it's going to say that.
[31:43]OK, go ahead.
[31:45]Anyway, thank you.
[31:46]Thank you for this.
[31:47]Yes, thank you so much for having me.
[31:49]That's my pleasure.
[31:50]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi.
[31:53]Formerly, mom's don't have time to read books.
[31:56]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[31:59]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[32:02]and spread the word.
[32:03]Thanks so much.
[32:04]Oh, and bye the books.