Daisy Buchanan

And then noticing that the traditions that they have sort of loved has become a little less shiny and everything's getting a bit tired and everyone's getting a bit restless.

And it's a really, really quiet book, but it will stay with me forever.

It's amazing how funny and how resonant it is when it was written almost 100 years ago.

Yeah.

Well, I don't think I'm allowed to say too much about this, but spookily, that is very much the subject of my next novel.

Because I do think, especially for women who have participated in the working world for decades,

not such a long time.

And I know I've just started rereading more Marion Keys.

Is anybody out there?

Because the heroine in that book, Anna, has a sort of fabulous job as a beauty PR.

And what I love about the writing in that is the wish fulfillment element.

There's a book I really love by I think Lisa Owens called Not Working.

It's about a woman who quits her job to do something more meaningful and really doesn't know

what that is.

I think it's such a beautiful, poetic exploration of the tedium of work and how important it is that we fill our days with something and how I think so many of us are really addicted to work as something to numb us, that we feel as though if the right circumstances sort of came along, you know, we'd be fulfilled and we'd be doing some work that really made us passionate and excited.

And actually the truth of it is that

work is for a lot of us I think uh you know a marker and it's how we kind of justify doing the things we want to do um I know that it's the anniversary of Bridget Jones Diary coming up and I think that's really great on that subject as well and the sort of it's like a sort of a ecological system that no matter what you want to do and how much you want to do it in an office it's

You are often sort of thwarted at every turn.

Everyone's so obstructive and everyone kind of has an agenda.

And so much of it is just sort of being patient and trying to put up with things or think around things.