Novelist Jem Calder joins Freya to talk about I Want You to Be Happy, his debut novel about two people trying to fall in love while everything around them is engineered to distract them. Jem’s writing career started with Sally Rooney emailing him about the first story he’d ever finished and now his debut is on the tote bag of every literary it girl this summer. He tells Freya why he’d rather write a novel than a memoir (he’s a self-described cagey person who doesn’t like giving too much of himself away) and why he thinks of fiction as a gift, something a reader can reach for in their worst moments. They chat about how quickly a good line about phones curdles into cliché, why he keeps thousands of words of notes he’ll almost never use and why writing within the constraints of a genre is a form of respect for the writers who came before.
A funny, honest conversation between two writers about connection, cringe and what fiction is for.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:44 Book tour vs writing — the "spiritual maths" of promotion
00:04:24 Why Reward System reads like a novel, not a story collection
00:05:17 The novel-in-stories form and Tulathimutte's Rejection
00:06:04 "Limbic capitalism" and the little treats of modern life
00:09:26 Writing a love story when everything conspires against connection
00:10:29 Writing cringe, and the brutal comedy of small humiliations
00:12:08 Turning real life into fiction — the notes process
00:13:41 The anxiety of being judged forever on your first book
00:16:44 When readers over-read symbolism into your work
00:18:15 Cringe as comedy, and fiction that makes you feel understood
00:19:36 Why fiction, not memoir or autofiction
00:22:38 The Cazalet Chronicles and reverence for the family saga
00:26:32 Chuck as a version of Jem who took the other path
00:27:41 Comedy as inspiration, and the sauna theatre reading
00:30:25 Writing an unlikable character you still feel empathy for
00:32:40 The likability question and his Financial Times essay
00:39:30 Why he wouldn't want to adapt his own novel
00:42:09 Annie Baker, plays vs screenplays
00:44:41 Favourite live performers — and a clowning night gone wrong
⚠️ Contains spoilers for the ending of I Want You to Be Happy — skip forward when you reach that section if you'd rather go in fresh.
Links to further reading:
This Substack on writing by Naoise Dolan
Liadan Ní Chuinn – Every One Still Here
Tony Tulathimutte — Rejection
Philip Roth – On writing and re-writing a novel
Elizabeth Jane Howard — The Cazalet Chronicles, including the announcement of the reissue of The Light Years with a foreword by Jia Tollentino
Elizabeth Taylor (novelist)
Ella Hickson – The Writer
Annie Baker – Infinite Life
🎥 WATCH the full episode
📘 Buy Jem Calder's 'Reward System', and I Want You to Be Happy
📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work
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