Louise O' Neill - "I was standing in the ashes of my former life"
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What sparked Louise O'Neill to write her memoir *A Bigger Life*?
Uh Louise O'Neill, good afternoon. You're in exile in in London today, I know.
I I am. And now Brendan, I'm feeling under pressure after hearing that text saying about like that they were very relieved that your last guest didn't say once, as I wrote in my book. So now I'm really afraid that in this interview I'm gonna say multiple times well, as I wrote in my book.
Okay, but you know what, we're gonna get so into this conversation that you're not even gonna be thinking about that kind of thing. Because you your new book, you're a hugely successful uh novelist, but your new book is something different, right? It's a memoir called Uh A Bigger Life and can I tell you I loved it. Um like it's very honest, but it's a very funny too account of a breakup that kind of broke you and then how you fixed yourself, which was in no small part uh through the medium of dating. And now look, I wish I could see you now. To judge your body language 'cause we'll there will be intimate parts to this conversation, but we we'll see how we go. Was it a big decision to go with the kind of the messy truth in all its glory of your journey over the few years?
Yeah, do you know, uh listen, this is my first memoir. This is my last memoir. It is like I I definitely think I feel safer um with writing fiction. Like I think there's something incredibly vulnerable um about writing non fiction and about being, I suppose, as honest and revealing as I have um in a bigger life. But I suppose the thing is is that I wrote the book that I would have needed to read when I was in like the very early stages of my breakup and I felt devastated and I felt like my life was over and I would never meet anyone again. Анатик ад но ідея. Like the fun and the adventure and the joy that was waiting for me on the other side of like recovering from that. And and you're right, like that is so much of what the book is about.
Is that sense of fun, is that sense of hope. Um and yeah, I mean I I feel like really proud of it, but slightly terrified about it going out into the world as well. It feels like I've sort of photocopied like thousands of copies of my diaries and I'm just like handing it out to like strangers on the
street. Yeah, and any anyone who's ever known you or or seen you or had a thought about you. Um so look, uh a few years back you had it all on paper, successful career, you were in a relationship for five years, you'd bought a house, uh, you broke up. How does that leave you feeling initially?
Mm. I mean, look, Brendan, I think from the from the outside, look it probably looked as though, you know, I had everything. You know, as you said, we'd you know, we'd bought the house and we had, you know, our rescue dog and you know, I I think I I really felt like I knew what the next chapter of my life was going to look like. And then, you know, the relationship ended and I was devastated and I think like what I was grieving wasn't only that relationship, it was the future that I thought was gonna come with it. Like, you know, I don't think there's ever a good time, you know, to go through like a a breakup like that. But I think particularly for a woman in your late thirties, I was about to turn thirty eight, like that feels extra complicated because all of a sudden, you know, it you're like, well, maybe I won't have kids.
Like, you know, marriage, family, this whole imagined life that I had, it felt like it fell apart and I suppose for a while I really fell apart as well. And yeah, like that did become the starting point of the book. But Eventually I suppose I had to ask myself If that version of my future is gone. what do I actually want my life to look like now? And that's really like what a bigger life is about. It's it's not the details of why your relationship ended. Yeah. But it's really about what you do when the life you thought you were going to have just disappears.
Yeah. So you had it all mapped out, the assumed kind of life plan and all of that and it's gone out the window. And look, there shouldn't be, but is there a sense of kind of
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What sparked Louise O'Neill to write her memoir *A Bigger Life*?
0:00–4:19
2
How did the breakup and loss of a planned future affect Louise’s sense of self?
4:19–9:01
3
Why did Louise decide to confront her eating disorder and childhood trauma before moving forward?
9:01–13:13
4
What healing practices did Louise try in Thailand and how did they shape her recovery?
13:13–17:45
5
How did Louise use intensive dating experiments across Europe to rebuild confidence?
17:45–20:50
6
What did Louise learn about love, scarcity mindset, and the ‘soft‑life’ myth from her dating journey?
20:50–25:21
7
How did the encounter with the billionaire prospect challenge Louise’s ideas of a ‘bigger life’?
25:21–29:16
8
What are Louise’s final takeaways about authenticity, risk, and living beyond romantic love?
29:16–30:44