What is the last book that made you cry?
There are so many great books that have made me cry. The most recent was Expectation by Anna Hope, which explores female friendships and the hopes women have for their lives at different points of adulthood. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but there’s a scene towards the end that took me by surprise and made me cry.
What is the last book that made you laugh?
I had Tina Fey’s Bossypants on my ‘to read’ list for years, and when I finally got around to reading it I adored it. There are so many great lines in it – I kept stopping to read out lines to whoever was near me at the time. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much at a single book – with the exception of a book I wrote aged five that my mum recently fished out of the attic. It’s called Lucky Lump and is about a sentient lump who wears a hat made of flowers and is very unlucky. She gets rained on through an open bus window, which it seemed to my five-year-old mind was one of the worst things that can happen to a sentient lump.
What makes a good story? What do you think is an essential ingredient in your writing?
I think all good stories have a truth to them, even if they’re fiction. For me, writing The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot started with my own fear of dying. There were two things that really got me thinking about death. （I’m so fun!） The first was at a routine medical appointment when a doctor found （to her alarm） that my resting heart rate was around two hundred beats per minute. I had scans and tests （including one where I had to run on a treadmill stripped down to my bra while connected to an ECG machine – not my finest hour）， and while I was at the hospital for these appointments, I found myself thinking about how scared I am of dying. Around the same time, a fellow student passed away. I didn’t know her well, but she had spent years living in the face of death and her courage was another thing that led me to think about what it might be like to know you were going to die.
In my own writing, I’m drawn to characters who are missing something, and I’m especially drawn to loneliness. When we meet Lenni, she’s very lonely – she’s not only without her parents, but she’s without any true friends. And it’s not necessarily a reflection of her, it’s just the way things worked out. I think Lenni’s journey out of loneliness shows who she is as a person – she assembles a ‘found family’ in Margot, Arthur and New Nurse. When she dies, she’s surrounded by love, and it’s love she’s found for herself.
Lenni and Margot resist convention in every way. Where did the inspiration for these wonderful personalities come from?
I love unconventional people. A lot of the books, films and TV programmes I love feature unusual, quirky characters, and in real life I definitely gravitate towards people who are eccentric in some way or other. It was only when I started talking about Lenni and Margot during the editing process that I realized how many of my characters have little quirks or personality traits that I’ve seen in other people or myself.
When I started writing, it really felt as if Lenni had come to visit me in my head. I feel like I should be wrapped in scarves and holding a crystal skull to say that. But honestly, her voice was so clear in my mind. I knew how she’d react to things, how she’d push people’s buttons, how she would respond to kindness and to indifference. I mentioned earlier that the first words I wrote are more or less intact in Lenni’s opening chapter. Throughout the editing process, so much of the book has changed, but that first scene with Lenni has stayed the same. It makes me happy that the reader’s first meeting with Lenni was also my first meeting with Lenni.
Meena is a fascinating character. Where did she come from? Do you know anyone like her in real life?
In the early stages of writing, Meena was inspired by a person I knew briefly in real life. What was magical about this person was that she just didn’t care what people thought about her. She was very free. I’m the opposite. I’m very selfconscious and I want everyone to like me. If a stranger is rude to me, I’ll think about it for days. From that starting point, Meena evolved into her own person, but that unselfconscious spirit and energy is where I began. I also didn’t want Meena to be too idealized – she can be selfish and undependable, but Margot sees those things in her and loves her anyway. One of my favourite parts of the book is when Meena is finally able to tell Margot how she feels （in Vietnamese, of course, because Meena has never done things in conventional ways）。 If Lenni had been able to grow up, I think she would have been a bit like Meena as an adult – very free, unapologetic.