You are viewing all posts from:
Jane Green
Posted in:
July 31, 2008 1:27 PM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
The first time I met Josh, I thought he was a nice guy but a
transient friend. The first time I met Si I fell hopelessly in love and
prayed I'd somehow be able to convert him.
But the first time I met Portia I thought I'd found my soul mate.
She
was the sister I'd always longed for, the best friends I'd always
wished I had, and I truly and honestly thought that, no matter what
happened with our lives, we would stay friends forever.
Forever
feels like a long time when you're eighteen. When you're away from home
for the first time in your life, when you forge instant friendships
that are so strong they are destined, surely, to be with you until the
bitter end.
I met Josh right in the beginning, just a few
weeks after the Freshers' Ball. I'd seen him in the Students' Union,
propping up the bar after a rugby game, looking for all the world like
the archetypal upper-class rugger bugger twit, away from home with too
much money and too much arrogance.
He-naturally-started chatting up
Portia, alcohol giving him confidence he lacked when sober (although I
didn't know that at the time), and despite the rebuffs he kept going
until his friends dragged him away to find easier prey.
I'm
sure we would all have left it at that, but I bumped into him the next
day, in the library, and he recognized me instantly and apologized for
embarrassing us; and gradually we started to see him more and more,
until he'd firmly established himself as one of the gang.
I'd
already met Si by then, had already fallen in love with his cheeky
smile and extravagant gestures. I was helping out one of the girls on
my course who was auditioning for a production of Cabaret. It was my
job to collect names and send them into the rehearsal hall for the
audition.
Si was the only person who turned up in full
costume. As Sally Bowles. In fishnet stockings, bowler hat, and full
makeup, he didn't bat an eyelid as the others slouched down in their
hard, wooden chairs, staring, jealous as hell of his initiative. And
his legs.
We went in, bold as brass, and proceeded to give
the worst possible rendition of "Cabaret" that I've ever heard, but
with such brazen confidence you could almost forgive him for being
entirely tone-deaf.
Everybody went crazy when he'd finished.
They went crazy because he is so obviously loved, loved, being center
stage. None of us had ever seen such enthusiasm, but even though Si
knew every song, word for word, he had to be content with camping it up
as the narrator, as Helen, the director, said she never wanted to hear
him sing again.
Eddie was a friend of Josh's. A sweet gentle
boy from Leeds who should probably have been overwhelmed by our
combined personalities, but somehow wasn't. He was easy company, and
always willing to do anything for anybody he cared about, which was
mostly us, at the time.
And then of course there was Portia. So close that our names became intertwined: CatherineandPortia. Two for the price of one.
I
met Portia my very first day at university. We were sitting in the
halls of residence common room, waiting for a talk to begin, all sizing
each other up, all wondering whom to befriend, who seemed like our
type, when this stunningly elegant girl strode in on long, long legs,
crunching an apple and looking like she didn't have a care in the world.
READ MORE 
Posted in:
July 31, 2008 1:20 PM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
I had just got married when I started writing my fourth novel. I'd come back from honeymoon, moved into our first house - a gorgeous little carriage house in London - and made my office on the third floor, overlooking the treetops in North West London. I thought, given how my art had imitated my life, I would write about an engagement, the planning of a wedding, the trials and tribulations of suddenly inheriting a new family who weren't exactly what you expected.
I started Chapter One, and sat back, halfway through, running my fingers through my hair. Bored. I was bored and the words I was writing were boring. I didn't want to write the same old first person thinly-veiled account of my life. I wanted to do something bigger. Broader. Something that had some meat on its bones. I wanted to write about friendship, I decided. About a group of friends who had known one another since University, who were now in their thirties and still trying to pursue their dreams.
Cath was my first female protaganist who wasn't based on me. I loved her. I loved her realness, and her friendship with Si. Then Lucy, and Josh - all of them felt, very quickly, like real people and like friends, a sure sign you have got your characterisation right.
Towards the end of the book, Si has a crisis, and initially he was going to be fine, but when I reached that point, his character took over, the course of the story, and I knew it couldn't end the way I thought it was going to, even though that was so much quicker and easier. I put the writing on hold, and spent weeks doing research, and to this day I'm glad I did. The trajectory of Si's life is far more honest, even though it was frightening, at the time, to deal with such a big medical issue I knew nothing about.
For me Bookends marks the start of my foray into commercial fiction, away from what has always been thought of as more traditional chick lit - single girl in the city trips around in manolos looking for Mr Right. From designer labels on every page in Mr Maybe, I consciously avoided them with this, wanting to write something less fluffy, less superficial. Of the earlier books, it remains one of my favourites.
Posted in:
July 31, 2008 12:39 PM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
Nick was never supposed to be The One, for God's sake. Even I knew
that. And yes, I know those that are happily married often say you
can't know, not immediately, but of course I knew. Not that he sounded
wrong-Nick spoke the Queen's English slightly better than myself, but
nothing else was right, nothing else fitted.
There was the money
thing, for a start. My job as a PR might not be the highest-paying job
in the universe, but it pays the bills, pays the mortgage and leaves me
just enough for the odd bit of retail therapy. Nick, on the other hand,
didn't earn a penny. Well, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but
he wasn't like all the other boyfriends I'd had, wasn't rolling in it,
and , although that's not my main motivation, what I always say is II
don't mind if he can't pay for me, but I do bloody well mind if he
can't pay for himself.
And though Nick occasionally offered to
go dutch, it was such bad grace and I used to feel so guilty, I'd just
push his hand away, tell him not to be so silly and drag out my credit
card.
And then there was politics. Or lack thereof, in my case,
might be more appropriate. Nick was never happier than when he was with
his left-wing cronies, arguing the toss about the pros and cons of New
Labour, while I sat there bored out of my mind, not contributing just
in case anyone asked me what I voted and I had to grudgingly admit I
voted Conservative because, well, my parents had.
Speaking of
pros and cons, it might be easier if I showed you the list I drew up
soon after I met Nick. I mean, if I sit here telling you about all the
reasons why he wasn't right for me, it would take all day, and I've
still got the list, so you may as well read it. It might help you to
see why I was so adamant that he was just a fling.
Pros
- I fancy the pants off him.
- He's got the biggest, softest, bluest eyes I've ever seen.
- He's very affectionate.
- He's fantastically selfless in bed. (Make that just fantastic)
- He makes me laugh.
Cons
- He's got no money.
- He lives in a grotty bedsit in Highgate.
- He's left-wing/political.
- He likes pubs and pints of beer.
- I hate his friends.
- He's a complete womanizer.
- He's allergic to commitment.
- He says he's not ready for a relationship. (Although neither am I.)
So
there you have it-far more cons than pros, and, if I'm completely
honest, the cons are much more important, I mean, how could I have even
thought of getting involved with someone whose friends I hated? I have
always, always thought you could judge a person by their friends, and I
really should have known better.
READ MORE
Posted in:
July 31, 2008 12:37 PM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
The love affair that started in New York continued in England for a
couple of months. He was sweet, and young, and fresh, and even though I
was very much in it for the moment, I loved spending time with him. He,
on the other hand, would spend hours sighing and saying he wasn't ready
for commitment, and I would sit there with a smile on my face, assuring
him I didn't want commitment either, and wondering exactly why it was
that he refused to believe this was possible.
I liked his
sweetness and youth, given that my two relationships prior to him
were...not sure how to describe them...ghastly? Dreadful? Ridiculous.
Both were with men far older than I, and both with men who I not only
wasn't attracted to, but could go so far as to say I was physically
repulsed by. So why was I with them? Because they liked me! They adored
me, and pursued me, and treated me like a goddess, so different from
the men I had dated throughout my twenties who treated me like the
doormat I believed myself to be.
How could I resist? Surely, it
would have been rude to say no. So I got involved with, first one, who
I liked enormously for his intelligence, his warmth and his humour, but
physically I couldn't bear him near me, something about his smell, and
then the second, who was just plain peculiar. In fact, the nicest thing
I can think of to say about him was that I loved his house. Seriously.
I think that was the beginning of my addiction to house porn, and I
would lie in his enormous bathtub - rather different from my dripping
shower stall in my grungy flat in Kensal Rise - and think, I could live
like this! This could me mine, all mine (insert evil maniacal laugh and
rubbing hands together in glee if you wish...).
Superficial?
You think? Shameful I would say, but both were older, wiser, and they
saw something in me I wasn't able to see in myself at the time, my
self-esteem being, clearly, at an all-time low. But when I ended things
with the second, I flew to New York, and loved falling in lust with
someone my age, someone who, like me, didn't have a lavish lifestyle,
someone who made me laugh and who I could talk to.
READ MORE
Posted in:
July 24, 2008 7:45 AM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
God, I wish I were thin.
I wish I were thin, gorgeous and could
get any many I want. You probably think I'm crazy. I mean here I am,
sitting at work on my own with a massive double-decker club sandwich in
front of me, but I'm allowed to dream aren't I?
Half an hour to
go of my lunch break. Half an hour in which to drool over my latest
edition of my favorite magazine. Don't get me wrong, I don't read the
features, why would I? Thousands of words about how to keep your man,
how to spice up your sex life, how to spot if he's being unfaithful
are, quite frankly, irrelevant to me. I'll be completely honest with
you here, I've never had a proper boyfriend, and the cover lines on the
magazines are not the reason I buy them.
If you must know, I buy
them, all of them, for the pictures. I sit and I study each glossy
photograph for minutes at a time, drinking in the models' long lithe
limbs, their tiny waists, their glowing golden skin. I have a
routine: I start with their faces, eyeing each sculpted cheekbone,
heart-shaped chin, and I move slowly down their bodies, careful not to
miss a muscle.
I have a few favorites. In the top drawer of my
chest of drawers in my bedroom at home is a stack of cut-out pictures
of my top supermodels, preferred poses. Linda's there for her sex
appeal, Christy's there for her lips and nose and Cindy is there for
the body.
And before you think I'm some kind of closet lesbian,
I've already told you the one thing I would wish for if I rubbed a lamp
and a gorgeous, bare-chested genie suddenly appeared. If I had one
wish in all the world I wouldn't wish to win the lottery. Nor would I
wish for true love. No, if I had one wish I would wish to have a
model's figure, probably Cindy Crawford's, and I would extend the wish
into having and keeping a model's figure no matter what I eat.
READ MORE
Posted in:
July 24, 2008 2:39 AM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
When it came to writing my second novel, I knew I wanted to do
something different. In Straight Talking I had bared my soul, and the
press attention had been overwhelming. There were times when I felt
scared and vulnerable, regretting the articles I had written to
publicize the book, regretting I had opened my life up for all to see.
This time around I decided to do a fairytale, and a fairytale about food.
Jemima
Jones is overweight. Funny, feisty, frighteningly intelligent, she is
on the fast track to nowhere because of her weight. Her bosses overlook
her for prettier, thinner, less-accomplished colleagues, and men ignore
her, treating her only ever as a friend.
Jemima pushes her
unhappiness down with food, secretly binge-eating to try and numb the
pain of not being good enough, until her life is kick-started with the
advent of Brad, a potential online romance who lives across the
Atlantic in Los Angeles.
Like Cinderella before her, Jemima then
has to reinvent herself for Brad. Like all good fairy stories, she
transforms herself dramatically from ugly duckling to beautiful swan,
but it isn't Brad she realizes she wants, instead someone much closer
to home.
Jemima remains the easiest book I have written. I flew
to Los Angeles to write it, stopping in New York for Christmas with my
friend Caroline. We stayed at the Gramercy Park hotel, pre-Schrager
re-invention, but it still felt like a treat, upgrading to a shabby
suite and having cocktails in the piano bar.
We spent hours
shopping in Greenwich village and SoHo, saw movies, theatre, and
laughed ourselves stupid. And then we met up with a mutual friend from
London, and for some ridiculous reason the friend and I decided to
embark upon a holiday romance.
It felt, and was, ridiculously
romantic. We held hands to the top of the Empire State Building and
snogged on the terrace as we looked out over New York. We giggled
through Central Park and shared hot chocolate at Micky Mantle's.
I
left him, and Caroline, and flew to Los Angeles, where I had booked
into a terrible hotel in Santa Monica. Not the gorgeous Shutters by the
Beach, but a ghastly depressing place where the sole window in the room
looked onto a brick wall. I had bought a computer in New York, but once
I got to LA it stopped working.
I had been looking forward to
LA. The last time I'd been I was twenty one. I bought an air ticket,
and flew over, a budding bright-eyed journalist, with a few hundred
dollars and a phone number. I moved in to the Laurel Canyon hippyish
home of an aspiring film producer, and after some weeks moved in with a
girl I met one day at Johnny Rockets. I interviewed TV stars in shows
like Beverly Hills 90210 and LA Law, and filed the stories back to
London, using the money to stay on.
I went out every night, to
bars, parties, clubs. I rode on the back of a motorbike that belonged
to the gay guy across the hall who swiftly became my new best friend.
All these years later, I expected it to be the same.
It wasn't.
I
hated the hotel. I hated being there. The computer didn't work, and the
shop told me it would take some days to fix. I couldn't write, other
than longhand, I didn't know anyone, and I was no longer bright-eyed
and bushy-tailed, looking for adventures, but longing to get back home
to continue my budding romance, and pissed off I couldn't achieve what
I wanted to.
READ MORE
Posted in:
July 23, 2008 4:29 PM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
I was never supposed to be single at thirty years old. I was supposed
to be like my mother, wasn't I? Married, a couple of kids, a nice home
with Colefax and Fowler wallpaper and a husband with a sports car and
a mistress of two.
Well, to be honest I would mind about he
mistresses, but not as much as I mind being single. What I'd really,
really love is a chance to walk down that aisle dressed in a cloud of
white, and let's face it, I'm up there at the top, gathering dust.
It
can't be that unusual, surely, to be thirty years old and to spend most
of your spare time dreaming about the most important day of your life?
I don't know, perhaps it's just me, perhaps other women redirect their
energies into their careers. Perhaps I'm just a desperately sad example
of womanhood. Oh God, I hope not.
It's not as if I haven't had
relationships, although, admittedly, none of them have come close to
proposing. I've come close to thinking they were my potential husband.
A bit too close. Every time. But hey, if you're going to go into it you
may as well go into it thinking this time he might be Mr. Right, as
opposed to Mr. Right
-for-three-weeks-before-he-does-his-usual-disappearing-act.
Sometimes
I think it's me. I think I must be doing something wrong, giving out
subliminal messages so hey can smell the desperation, read the neon
lights on my forehead..."KEEP AWAY FROM THIS WOMAN - SHE IS LOOKING FOR
COMMITMENT," but most of the time I think it's them. Bastards. All of
them.
But I never quite lose hope that my perfect man, my
soulmate, is out there waiting for me, and every time my heart gets
broken I think that next time it's going to be different.
And
I'm a sucker for big, strong, handsome men. Exactly the type my mother
always told me to avoid. "Go for the ugly ones," she always used to
say, "then they'll be grateful." But she landed up with my handsome
father, so she's never had the pleasure of that particular experience.
And
the problem with small men is they make you feel like and Amazonian
giant. At least they do if you're five feet, eight and a half inches,
and a size twelve, or thereabouts, the product of constant dieting in
public, and constant bingeing in private.
Big men are far
better. They put their arms around you, their head resting on yours and
you feel like a little girl; safe from the big bad world; as if nothing
could ever go wrong again.
So here I am, and or your information
I am neither fat, ugly, nor socially dysfunctional. Most people think
I'm twenty-six, which secretly annoys the hell out of me, because I
like to think of myself as mature and sophisticated, and I'm generally
thought of as strikingly attractive.
I know this because the
men-when they're still in the stages of being kind to me- say this, but
unfortunately I've always longed to be strikingly pretty, painting on
on big eyes and looking coyly out from under my fringe, but pretty
can't be attained. Pretty, you either are or you aren't.
I'm
successful, in a fashion. I earn enough money to go on shopping binges
at Joseph every three months or so, and I own my own flat. OK, it's not
in the smartest part of London, but if you closed your eyes between the
car and front door, you might - only might, mind - just think you were
in Belgravia. Apart from the lingering smell of cat pee that is.
Of
course I have cats. What self-respecting single career woman of thirty
who's secretly desperately longing to give it all up for the tall, rich
stranger of her dreams doesn't have cats? They're my babies. Harvey and
Stanley.
They might be stupid names, but I quite like the idea
of cats having human names, particularly ones you don't expect. The
greatest name I ever heard was Dave the cat. A cat called Dave -
brilliant, isn't it? I can't stand Fluffys, or Squeaks, or Snowys. And
the people wonder why their cats are arrogant. I'd be supercilious,
too, if my mother had called me fluffy.
Luckily she didn't. She called me Anastasia, Nasty to my enemies, Tasia, Tasha to my friends, of which I have many.
READ MORE
Posted in:
July 22, 2008 9:54 AM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
I was twenty seven when I came up with the idea for my first novel. Two things had just happened that made me think I could do it. The first was Nick Hornby’s book, High Fidelity, which spoke to every thirty-something single man I knew, and the second was a friend of mine who wrote a book in her spare time, and suddenly signed a publishing deal, for far money than I was making as a journalist on the Daily Express.
I can do that, I remember thinking. I can write about the single thirty-something woman. I can write about what it’s like being single, living in London, wondering why he never calls when he says he will. I can write about my girlfriends, all of whom seemed to be having the same relationships with the same commitment-phobic men.
They say first novels are usually autobiographical, and now that twelve years have gone by, I can finally admit that yes, I drew largely upon my life for the stories in Tasha’s world, although she is not me, too angry, too rough, too raw.
But the good-looking guy I went out with at twenty one, who professed undying love until I found photographs of a gorgeous blonde model in his pocket? He went in. The tall but dim one who whisked me away for a country weekend with all his friends, then told me it wasn’t working in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere? He went in. The one who was pompous as hell and a horrible kisser? But of course…
I had such fun writing that book. I trawled through my memory banks and dredged up every man who’d ever made me angry, made me cry, made me think that I was never going to get it right. READ MORE
Subscribe
Print
Email
Kaboodle
Pop Sugar
Digg
Del.icio.us
Facebook
RSS
