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The Guardian
22-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Emma Barnett: ‘People ask, is that the radio you or the real you?'
At school, I was the girl who wanted to dissect sheep lungs. I had a lack of horror around gore, I'm not squeamish at all, which was helpful when it came to all those needles for IVF. I thought about being a surgeon. I also thought it would be interesting to become a fishmonger. I'm fascinated by fish – I don't know why. As an only child, radio was my companion. I had a little battery-operated radio at the table next to my cereal bowl. I broadly exist on six hours sleep. After Today, I've got about half an hour of chat left in me before I need to be silent. The goal in every interview, the absolute dream, is fresh snow. You're walking somewhere no one has gone before. I wasn't a rude child, but I was certainly inquisitive. I have a curiosity. Sometimes, in conversation, people say, is that the radio you or the real you? Radio me is me. I routinely work through bone-grinding pain. Work is my salvation from endometriosis. It fills my brain. Being a parent teaches you how to not be the main character in your own life, to play a different role in your own existence. When you're forced to learn that, you're also forced to relearn what made your life enjoyable before, and how to access that. I was left with two kids when my husband returned to work. I decided to survive the week by writing down everything I felt – a portrait of maternity leave. I hadn't expected to have a daughter and thought it would be a great map for her should she ever go down this road. On radio, you need to think of someone to talk to, so I think of my Auntie Jean, always a crafty fag on the go, on the white wine by 6pm, maybe a champagne cocktail depending on the night. I thought of her the first time I did Question Time, the first time I did Woman's Hour and the first time I stepped out seven months ago and did Today. She meant so much to me, and that has helped me in moments of doing something new. There are parallels between maternity leave and lockdown: only being able to get out once a day to your local park, knowing your area better than you ever have before, there being limited things you can do, wondering who you are, having an existential crisis. The thing I find hard is toggling between work and parenting. The jaggedness comes in the gear changes between my different roles. It's almost like relearning a dance step every time. Remember that those who matter don't mind and those who do mind don't matter. I have a job where I can get judged on a moment in time, and it amazes me how judgments can be formed without the full picture – but that's the world we're living in. You've got to back facts, you've got to back yourself, you've got to have people around you that you trust. Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Frontline of Maternity Leave by Emma Barnett is published by Fig Tree at £12.99. Buy a copy from at £11.69
The Guardian
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Róisín Lanigan: ‘I moved to London and got bedbugs'
Róisín Lanigan, 33, grew up in Belfast and studied at Queen's University Belfast before moving to London to work as a journalist. She previously covered pop culture at i-D magazine, and is now contributing editor at the independent quarterly the Fence. Her absorbing debut novel, I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There (Fig Tree), remakes the haunted house genre for the rental age, following a millennial couple, Áine and Elliott, as they first move in together. Soon, Áine begins to think the flat is against them, and Lanigan incisively tracks her character's very modern descent into despair. Up until now you've worked as a journalist. Did you always want to be a novelist?I always wanted to write fiction, but it's one of those jobs that feels so out of reach. It took me a long time to take it seriously and to believe that I could do it, especially when it comes to making up characters. It's a strange departure from one where everything is factual and you can't make up quotes. Where did the idea for your novel come from?I started writing it in 2022. I had just moved back to London after being in Belfast for part of the pandemic, working remotely. So I had to re-engage with the London rental market. At that time, landlords were desperate for you to move into their flats because they'd been empty, so their prices were quite low. If I'd left it six months later I would have really struggled. I've lived in London for 10 years now, so I've seen all the permutations of the London rental market – the book came out of that. Why was horror the right approach?I'm a big horror fan. I was reading a lot about haunted houses, and thinking about how all haunted house stories are essentially about owning property and the huge burden that places on you psychologically. And then I was thinking, I wonder what the equivalent is for us, as millennials who rent? Alongside that, I was seeing a lot of my friends – and myself – beginning to live with their partners much earlier than we had been conditioned to think you might do so, for financial reasons. That then brings complications, if you're not quite ready to make that step. So the book is a ghost story set in the rental crisis, but it's also about this young woman's experience of a situation that she finds increasingly intolerable, and how she has no outlet to express that. Your protagonist, Áine, is pretty unlikable. What was your intention?When you look at traditional horror and ghost stories, the women are always selfless. They're often wives and mothers. They hold everything together. That always annoyed me. I wanted to write about the people I actually saw. There are a lot of young women like Áine who are listless and uncertain and aren't driven towards domesticity. The dialogue feels very realistic. Did you borrow much from real life?I have this really bad habit where, if I hear someone say something ridiculous, I write it down in the notes app on my phone. I wanted the dialogue to be naturalistic and spiky, to reflect how people actually speak to each other. The other part that is based on reality comes in the long section where Áine is scrolling through Rightmove and is terrified by the rental listings she finds. Those are all taken from real Rightmove ads. In fact I kept coming back to them over the course of writing the book because what I saw kept getting worse, so I would replace them with even crazier ones. What are your worst rental stories?I moved to London with just a suitcase – it was the most Irish thing in the world. I moved into someone's spare room and immediately got bedbugs. I had to throw away everything and start again. It was an inauspicious start. But I think the worst experience I've had is the crying woman, the banshee. She was our landlord and was constantly crying that we weren't looking after the house the way she wanted us to. I eventually took my revenge: she left a case of champagne under the stairs, and I drank it. How can the rental crisis be solved?I think there are certain things that will help, like the renters' rights bill, if it ends no-fault evictions. Currently there is this massive power that landlords have over tenants – it feels like they can do whatever they want. It's also about housing stock: we just don't build enough houses. And I think there's a problem in the way we talk about property ownership culturally. It's completely poisonous the way some people aspire to be landlords; that there are young people who want to build property portfolios, who want to flip houses and rent them. If we talk about that as a normal career choice, that is a sign of a deeply sick culture. What books do you think best depict millennial life?One of the things I read when I was writing my book was Common Decency by Susannah Dickey – it has a lot of interesting themes around surveillance in the community, and obsession. I also loved Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna. It's about knowing when the party's over and when you might have to leave London. I found that very relatable. What's your favourite literary horror story?I really like Daisy Johnson's Sisters, and The Yellow Wallpaper [by Charlotte Perkins Gilman]. They're not necessarily horror stories, but stories about young women experiencing things that are not quite right, and how people around them react to that. I also like the melodrama of The Amityville Horror [by Jay Anson]. What books are on your bedside table?I'm just about to start Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte because next I'm interested in writing about loners and 'incels'. I want to write a novel about violent male crime and how we metabolise that as friends or people who knew the person, but also as the machine of journalism – how we turn those things into spectacles. I also have a copy of the new version of Andrea Dworkin's Right-Wing Women, which feels very prescient. I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There by Róisín Lanigan is published by Fig Tree, £16.99. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The best science fiction, fantasy and horror
Old Soul by Susan Barker (Fig Tree, £16.99)A chance encounter between two travellers who've missed their flight reveals a strange connection: each is haunted by an unexplained death. Although Jake's best friend Lena died in London a decade ago, while Mariko's twin brother died more recently in Japan, the circumstances were similar. In both, a rare physical condition that should have been known since birth was only found postmortem. Both had been recently involved with a female photographer, a European in her 30s or 40s, who disappeared soon after the death. Jake suspects it was the same woman and is determined to track her down. Through the testimony of others, the mystery deepens, as the story moves back and forth in time, from Japan to Germany, from rural Wales to the artistic circles of 80s New York, and Jake assembles a picture of a seemingly ageless woman behind a series of inexplicable deaths. An immersive, stunningly weird tale that closes like a trap round the reader. Model Home by Rivers Solomon (Merky, £18.99)Can a house that's never been lived in before be haunted? Gender-fluid Ezri and their sisters carry scars from terrible experiences as the only Black family in a gated community in Dallas. The parents remain after their children are grown. When phone calls go unanswered, Ezri, now settled in London, fears the house has killed them, and must go back to Texas to confront the truth about the past. A disturbing, brilliantly twisty psychological horror exploring family dynamics, memory, gender identity and sexuality. Mother of Serpents by John R Gordon (Team Angelica, £13.99)The latest from the award-winning author has something of the feel of classic Stephen King. The set-up is traditional: married couple with a small child leave their familiar urban environment to relocate to a spooky old house on the edge of a strangely silent forest in rural Maine, where the little boy speaks of nocturnal visits from an 'owl lady' who warns of danger. But this is a same-sex marriage and the stay-at-home spouse is a Black poet who fears his husband will attribute his increasingly weird experiences to the return of an earlier psychotic break. The fully realised, believable main characters exist in the real world, and the strong writing and specificity of detail make for a gripping read, with a genuinely original monster. Symbiote by Michael Nayak (Angry Robot, £9.99)The author of this debut novel has worked at an Antarctic research station, and excels in capturing the wonder as well as the fear it inspires. The first volume of the Ice Plague Wars series opens with the arrival of Chinese scientists – one dead – at the American station. They are seeking refuge, but the US and China are at war, so they must be confined until a military authority is informed. And the Chinese have brought something incredibly dangerous with them: an infection spread by touch, triggered by extreme cold to ignite a murderous rage in the host. A grim, violent tale, as hard to resist as the rapidly evolving symbiote. Waterblack by Alex Pheby (Galley Beggar. £20)The conclusion to the Cities of the Weft trilogy begins some years before the events of the first book, introducing new characters and a fresh angle on the power struggle between the Master of Mordew and the Mistress of Malarkoi. The right of those magical god-like rulers to exist is contested by an Assembly with a different view of reality, gearing up for the Eighth Atheistic Crusade. Their chief target is Nathan Treeves, returned to a life-in-death as the Master of Waterblack, the underwater city of the dead. There is much to enjoy, but it doesn't work as well as the first two volumes, marred by occasions when the omniscient narrative voice becomes a hectoring bore, and the apocalyptic finish dribbles away into appendices.
