Charlotte Wood

Oh, I feel like everything's changed.

I think it was the first interview I did with you, which was great because I felt very safe.

I was so anxious when that book came out about what people would make of it.

whether I would be sort of attacked basically because I'd seen what happened to other women who spoke out about things like misogyny and sexual abuse and so on.

But luckily I discovered that men's rights activists don't read literary fiction so I was kind of...

I escaped all of that, which was a great relief.

What's changed?

In one sense, everything has changed, and in another sense, nothing has changed.

Once that period... I mean, I got a whole new readership.

The book did incredibly well in a way that astonished me.

I spent a lot more time talking about a book than I normally had, so my following book took longer to write.

I think in some ways I developed more confidence but at the same time

I'm only realising kind of retrospectively also was a bit scared about what to do now, kind of thing.

Well, often the emotions that I associate with the book are not the ones that anybody else sees or feels in a book.

But the emotion that I associate with this book now is joy, actually.

Even though it's dealing with some stuff that isn't entirely joyful, like one of your best friends dying is not clearly a joyful experience.

But I wanted to write a book that had lightness and that was funny and that

celebrated something beautiful, which is friendship.

So I feel like The Natural Way of Things was also about a friendship, but that was a kind of survivor's friendship, whereas this is a different kind of friendship.

And I feel that it is a more celebratory book.