Briefly tell us about your book.
The Opposite of Success is a contemporary comedy about a single, unhinged day in the lives of two women, best friends Lorrie and Alex. They are both in their late thirties, and on this particular day they find themselves dealing with a range of professional, romantic and existential crises—Lorrie is a working mother who has applied for a promotion she’s not actually sure she wants, and Alex is a single documentary-maker who finds herself drawn into a messy romantic situation that also involves Lorrie’s rakish ex, Ruben. Both their stories come to a head at a big work event that Lorrie has organised—and which doesn’t exactly go as planned.
If I looked at your internet history, what would it reveal about you?
My internet history would reveal me to be a hypochondriac who divides her time pretty equally between looking up cake recipes, laughing at cute animal videos, and stressing about climate change/the potential end of all human civilisation.
Tell us about your background and what led you to writing this book.
I started writing this book on the Notes app on my phone a few months after I turned 40. I was working as a lawyer, but my legal career had kind of stalled after I had kids. One night I was lying in bed, feeling depressed about the fact that I was not, in fact, immortal, and didn’t have endless time to do all the things I wanted to do, and it occurred to me that if I wanted to be a writer then I would actually have to write something!
I decided I would write this novel or die trying. To combat a bad case of self-doubt, I gave myself permission to write whatever I felt like without worrying about whether I was just wasting my time. Once I turned off my inner critic, writing became much more joyful, and the novel came surprisingly easily.
Who are some of your favourite authors? Or favourite books?
I am omnivorous when it comes to books—I love everything from Bridget Jones’s Diary to Middlemarch. Some of my favourite international authors include Bonnie Garmus, Zadie Smith, Elif Batuman, Edward St. Aubyn, Kate Atkinson, Lorrie Moore, Anne Tyler, Andrew Sean Greer and David Sedaris. Closer to home, I love the work of Kate Mildenhall, Liane Moriarty, Nam Le, Helen Garner, Charlotte Wood and Toni Jordan.
Are you able to switch off at the end of a day of writing? If so, how?
I am pretty good at switching off—it’s the switching on that’s the hard part! My current favourite way to finish the day is with a couple of episodes of the awful and engrossing TV that is Vanderpump Rules, a reality show that follows the lives of a group of fame-hungry hospitality workers in LA. On one level, it’s pure trash, but if you squint a bit you can also read it as an epic Shakespearean tragedy.
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