Zibby chats with #1 internationally bestselling author Marian Keyes about MY FAVORITE MISTAKE, a warm-hearted and deftly plotted page-turner about a woman who, in full mid-life crisis mode, switches Manhattan and a big-deal PR job for the Irish town of Maumtully, where she helps her old friends set up a luxury retreat… and bumps into an old flame. Marian delves into her novel’s themes of aging, midlife love, regret, and self-forgiveness. Then, she shares reflections on her own life, including her decision to pursue IVF and her experience as an alcoholic in recovery.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Marian. Thank you for coming back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss My Favorite Mistake.

Marian: Thank you for having me back. 

Zibby: Oh, it's my pleasure. Okay. Tell listeners about your latest book. 

Marian: Okay. It's a sort of a midlife pivot book. It's about a long term relationship between two people. It's gone on for almost 20 years and it's been all, you know, they've had a series of almosts. They've sort of been in love with each other for most of that time, but never really.

Simultaneously, then they both got married to other people and now they're, Anna is in her late forties, Joey's in his early fifties, and they finally reconnected. And so it's about, you know, that people fall in love, you know, we don't grow out of it, that falling in love isn't the preserve of 20 somethings or 30 somethings.

It's also about the fact that by the time we get to middle age, we have all accumulated, you know, certain amounts of legitimate shame. We've all done things in our youth that, um, you know, if we had the choice to do them now, we wouldn't, you know, when we know better, we do better. And it's about navigating those things we've done to people we love and to ourselves.

How particularly that impacts somebody who knew you when you were younger and less clued in. So it's about, I think, I mean, in many ways, it's about realising that there's very, very little we can do about the mistakes we've made. We make amends if we can, but many of us, we don't have that opportunity or things, things have happened as they happened.

And it's about forcing ourselves to forgive ourselves and, and remember that ultimately we are all human beings. There isn't one person alive who has not got at least one of those mortifying events, that they just wish that they could time travel. They just wish they could go back and erase it and start afresh.

We can't do that. So it's about it's a kind of a mature thing to do to kind of say, yeah, I messed up, but I'm living now, you know, I have relationships now, including the relationship with myself, am I going to kind of shackle myself with shame or do I just, I don't know, live well and love well in the now?

It's a tiny, tiny little thing about, you know. menopause, perimenopause. It's not a book about menopause at all, but it acknowledges that, you know, for, you know, maybe 50 percent of the, uh, of the population, it's something that if we're lucky enough to live long enough, it'll happen to us. And it's, again, it's about how, how women are sort of infantilized when it comes to, their own health care, were treated as children and you know, the boys know better, the grown ups know better.

And, and it's a little bit angry about that. But you know, it's, it's, you know, it's simply, I tried to reflect as many experiences as I could in, in the book because, you know, we, You know, opinions vary and I really think that whatever anyone wants in the situation is the right thing for them. It's also a book about family.

I have, uh, written about these five sisters in the past. They've all had their own starring moment. But it is very much about how they are. They're enmeshed with each other. They, they like to be involved in each other's lives. They love a drama. They love when somebody else is going through it. They may not be able to provide the right kind of support, but they will be, they will be very, very upset to be left out.

So it's a comedy. It's a love story. It's, uh, it's in many ways, it kind of acknowledges the post COVID world where like a lot of, a lot of us thought, you know, This is hard. The way I was living was really, really hard. And I would like it to be not so hard when this awful strange time passes, because I know so many people who left their jobs or, you know, are toned down a lot.

I think a lot of us are living in different ways or wish we could because hard and all as lockdown was, there were things that personally speaking, I found, I found kind of nice, you know, not having to get dressed, not having to talk to people all the time. You know, I love people, but I, I need a huge amount of recovery time when I've been with people.

And those, those days when it was just me and my husband, they were kind of hard to get through. But now I look back and I think, yeah, you know, wouldn't mind one of them now and again. So it's kind of a book, a book for our times, I suppose. 

Zibby: Wow, that was a great explanation. Thank you for the plot and the themes and all of it.

You know, when you were talking about things that we regret from our past, you know, now everybody's regrets are on social media. At least I feel like the things that happened when I was young, at least they just like disappeared. But now, you know, my kids are, you know, they don't have that luxury. 

Marian: You're right, it's brutal, it's absolutely savage.

I mean, there are so many things that I am so grateful that maybe only me and two other people in the whole world know about, but you are absolutely right that social media is an unforgiving beast and, um, you know, we're going to have to find some way to to manage it or to kind of accept that. Yeah, people are making these mistakes in public, but they're also, you know, nobody, you know, nobody can throw a stone.

We have all you know, it's kind of coming back to that thing that like we are all human beings. Nobody has the right to be judgmental unless we are perfect and sadly none of us are. 

Zibby: Yeah, I'm sort of working on, I'm trying to write this book now about this and how really we all need to get back to some level of kindness and that we can't just keep canceling each other.

I mean, who said that was okay? Why did that even start happening? 

Marian: I mean, I agree. It's horrible and it's almost it's very Middle Ages , I think, you know, there's no kind of room for grey, you know, everything is so black or white, you know, we are all flawed and we all say things in the moment that, you is not fully thought through or is not fully articulated.

You know, we can't just judge a person on a sentence or we can't judge a person on a headline lifted from an interview. We, and we are so quick to do that. And, you know, I think, the people who invent these apps understand that kind of very lizard brain impulse in us to kind of find somebody who is worse than us.

You know, it's the very kind of thing of, I'm, you know, I have shame, but oh my God, I have just seen the person who was, has said something far more stupid or far worse or far more hurtful. And let's all point the finger at them because they're while they're jumping on that person, they're not looking at me.

And yeah, we have to find a new way of, of, of discourse, of public discourse, of personal discourse, and of social media discourse. Like we need a new language and we need, we need new etiquette to, to handle this. Because people say things online that they would never say face to face. And we have to. Find a way to stop ourselves judging people online, um, that we wouldn't do.

If somebody said something really crass to me in real life, you know, once I got over the shock, I would say, well, did you really mean that? Or, or was that exactly what you meant to say? Or would you like to kind of elaborate on it slightly? We have to give people room to elaborate before, before we judge.

And, you know, and that thing of cancelling, it's, it's, it's, It's not like people decide, yeah, you know, I'm just going to kind of tone down my friendship a little bit with this person. It's so all or nothing that people can't be allowed to exist in a quieter way. You know, that one self needn't involve ourselves with the person who upset us, but no, we have to see that we have to kind of preside over their total annihilation and that is it's not healthy for anyone.

And and also we have to look at how we behave that this is not, you know, we have had several millennia of civilization to get to the point where we don't kill people who disagree with us, you know, where we manage to coexist and live peacefully, pleasantly, you know, where we can all exist and coexist in our differences.

And we're kind of in danger of throwing that all away. Like, the way we are all suddenly thinking is so primal and destructive. You know, the word life is hard enough and we don't have to be offended by everything. That's another thing. We can just say, okay, I don't like what they said, but it's not going to ruin my day.

And I'm not going to get into a slanging match with them. Let them do them, and I'll do me, and I'll just live my life, and they can do theirs. 

Zibby: Yes. True. All that. Yes. Underline. Exclamation point. Well, for Joey and Anna, fortunately, they had no social media back then, and so their past sort of resounds of, you know, passing by each other in bars and this and that and missed opportunities.

Fridge moments. The whole thing can be sort of in, in the past and recreated here in your book. Tell me about creating this sort of sexual tension, if you will. Talk about the backdrop, because I love the whole retreat, high end boutique retreat situation and the locals not loving that because there is that whole sort of bougie movement, you know, gentrification of different places.

Tell me about some of those themes as well. 

Marian: Oh, I loved writing this book so much. First of all, it's set in a beautiful place. It's set in a beautiful, small little town on the West Coast of Ireland in Connemara. And I mean, I am I'm obsessed with rich people. And I love, you know, I love reading about them. I love imagining what their lives are. You know, I love thinking about how they go on holidays. I love how they sort of now have started to eschew anything sort of overly glamorous. And Um, you know, the whole quiet luxury thing. And, you know, so yeah, in my head, I created this retreat where like, there isn't a swimming pool.

They go swimming in the, in the cold ocean instead. There isn't a gym instead. They go like marching off in the Irish rain up the side of a hill. But at the same time, it is immensely, uh, curated and very kind of hands on like the whole, all the luxury comes from the personal attention, I think. But yeah, the idea of creating this like luxury retreat on the edge of a small town. It can create, well, obviously, a lot of excitement because it means work or whatever, but, there are other elements at play and so the idea of kind of whipping the locals up into a frenzy of suspicion and resentment interested me because of, again, how people are manipulated.

And so yes, Anna, Anna does her post production. Covid pivot leaves her like very fabulous, incredibly stressful job in New York in beauty PR and comes back to do a kind of troubleshooting between the luxury resort and the locals who have been upset and she comes into contact with Joey and it was really important for me that these two characters were not, were not 19 or 27 or 34 that they were, you know, kind of if their children knew about it, they go, Ooh, and Like, as I've got older, you know, and the people who surround me, I see that like our ability, our capacity to fall in love or to get crushes on people or to fancy people or to just kind of enjoy a little flirtation with somebody. It doesn't stop. You know, I thought that like, I don't know, I would get 39 and it would just suddenly, you know, dunzo, kaput, nothing, dead from the neck down.

No interest in that sort of thing at all. But that is not the case. And. Shocker, you know, people do continue to have sex after the, you know, after one of those ages. And I suppose I also wanted to push back slightly against this myth that like women don't actually ever enjoy sex. Sex is only something they do when they want to get their grass cut or when they want to get like shelves put up, like that it's a bargaining chip.

You know, I mean, it's, you know, men kind of say it a lot, like, oh no, women don't enjoy sex but like, yeah, she'll push out if she needs something. That, again, everyone's experience is unique, but I know plenty of women who, who do enjoy it and who do enjoy the whole, it doesn't have to be the full affair or infidelity, but the idea of a flirtation can kind of make the week go quicker.

You know, if you're in an office and there's somebody and you like the look at them and, you know, there's a little bit of eye contact and smiliness and you look nice, you know, whatever, you're looking well, have you had a good night's sleep, whatever, it's just. What's the harm? God, am I going to be cancelled for saying that now?

Zibby: I was like, is there something, is there something you want to tell us? You are not going to get cancelled. 

Marian: But you know what I mean? Suddenly people are like, no, you can't have flirtation in the workplace because it's, and I mean, maybe not, you know, I know people, you know, vulnerable people have to be protected and from, from the abusive power of other people.

Um, I'm just saying that. There was no harm with having an occasional twinkle. You know, it makes me smile. 

Zibby: Yes. Tell me how you came up with, so the reason why Anna is back and trying to help out this family is their daughter has, is very sick. And tell me about that because of course there's nothing more terrifying than the idea of it.

of a sick child and like just even reading, not that that, you know, tell me about that. 

Marian: Yeah. No, I understand. I mean, I don't have children, which was a great sorrow of mine, but I have seven nieces and nephews and I'm really, really close to them. And it is that terror of, I mean, even small things, you know, when I, when they were younger and I used to get in the car and they were in their car seats and everything, like the absolute terror that something would happen to them while I was driving them.

It just, they are so precious. It's a love like no other. I think it's so powerful. And the idea of them being hurt and me not being able to protect them or to ease it or make it stop is so enormous. And so like, that was, it was painful to write, but it was also, I mean, I felt it and I, I meant it like Bridget and Colm are the parents and like Bridget has become this sort of tiger, you know, to protect her daughter, uh, Queenie.

The husband, Colm, has gone into like a profound depression and is utterly incapable. Like that's how it's affected him. I can, you know, as I say, I don't have children. I can't imagine how much worse it is when you're an actual parent to have a child who gets sick, there isn't a terror, there isn't a word large enough to describe that howl of, I reject this, I reject this totally.

But it was part of, like it had to be part of the story. There had to be, yeah, there had to be, what do they call it, an inciting incident. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Marian: And that was the inciting incident and it had to be something bad enough to make everything else to kick off the kind of the, the rest of the, the, the book. I hope we didn't upset you.

Zibby: No, no. I just mean, you can relate. You know, you feel that. 

Marian: Yeah. 

Zibby: That image of Colm on the back porch, sort of his head in his hands. I mean, it's powerful stuff, you know, but then you of course have the love. I mean, there's so many different dimensions of the book, which of course, is what makes books great, right?

You feel all the feelings, you feel the terror of this, and then you move on to the joy of that, and you know, how do you solve this problem, and oh my gosh, and right, that's what, that's what makes reading so, so much fun. 

Marian: Yes, it's so effective. Yeah. Yeah, you get the full gamut. Yeah. I mean, you know, I write love stories, but this is more than just that sort of love story.

It's not just a kind of a romantic love story. It's about, it's about the love of children and about the love of family and about the love of neighbors and people who are kind to you in the supermarket. I mean, I wanted really to write a hopeful book and a book that kind of made us feel, I don't know, hopeful, loved, to believe in love and to believe in our capacity for kindness and goodness rather than anything else.

Zibby: Yeah, 

Marian: Because when I started writing this book, I had, we were just coming out of COVID, you know, yeah, it was early 22. And then Russia invaded Ukraine and it was like, Oh no, I need, I need to be, I need to write about a beautiful place, about people being, you know, ultimately decent and good and kind to each other.

And that's, I really hope that that's the feeling that people will take away from having read it. That like, you know, most of us are good and trying our best. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Marian: And yeah, we'll be, we'll be decent. 

Zibby: And you, I know you mentioned a minute ago that not having children was a great sorrow of yours. Can you talk about that anymore?

You don't have to. 

Marian: Oh, I mean, it's fun, like even now, my husband and I. We'll talk about what it would have been like, you know, and we were so naive. Like we decided like we would we wanted six. I mean, obviously, you know, anyone who decides they want to have six and then they have two, you know, they decided that that's enough.

That's perfectly fine. We're you know, we're just about coping here. But I come from a family of five and I love the dynamics of a big, noisy, messy family. And so we just kind of assumed it would be part of our of our journey and, and we, it didn't happen and we tried various things and we got to the point of IVF.

And both of us decided separately then together that this, and this is, this was just for us. This is just our story. We decided that we had already been given so much by the universe. Like, I mean, that we had found each other and that I had been, you know, I'd been able to, I, because I, I'm an alcoholic in recovery and, you know, so I, I'm over 30 years sober, but that I had been, you know, relieved of the compulsion to drink.

And so that we had a happy, sober, mature relationship. And, and then I had my job and he was able to work with me. We already felt that we had been given so much and my feeling was that I was afraid of tempting fate that like, you know, I would suddenly call the attention of the gods to me and they'd be like. 

Oh, you. All right, then. Yeah. I've been meaning to get back to you. And he's not like me. He wasn't brought up in a, in almost theocracy as Ireland was at the time, but he still felt that kind of thing of, okay, let's see if we can live a different, you know, a different life and we have managed to live a different and happy life.

And there is still that kind of flash of the ghost children, the children that didn't come. I write about children a lot, like I write about families a lot. I write about families with kind of interesting, opinionated kids and I think that's definitely me working it out. And he he is very, also very close to my nieces and nephews.

I mean, you know, like we spend a lot of time, we get a lot. We have so much fun with them and then the older ones kind of treat us as. The people they will ask for advice who aren't their parents, you know, that they can kind of come to us with stuff that they might be a little bit uncomfortable about bringing to their, their own parents, you know, so we feel.

Well feel it in that way, but like we, we, we acknowledge that our lives are different. And I suppose we try and look at the positives, you know, that we, we survived that vacuum, that loss, and, and that we have remained companions, good friends to each other. And yet we've been enough for each other, I suppose.

I'm always kind of afraid of saying things like that in case suddenly I'll be smited, you know, the god of the smug women will, but like, you know, basically you do what you can with what you're given. And we kind of had a lot of disappointments by the time we considered IVF, and I didn't think it would be helpful for us to kind of court anymore, but I do know people who have done IVF and who have had children, you know, so like it's, it's.

I'm only offering my story and I would never judge. Like, whatever anyone has to do. Because I've seen people like, being gripped with that. I know I am going to go keep going till I run out of road. You know, and I, me and him, we stepped off the path. And that was just, that was just so what was appropriate for us at the time and like anyone who's gone through it, my God, I wish you, I wish you every comfort and joy and happiness and I feel you, you know, I, I, we talked earlier about the worry of a sick child, but that hunger for, for a child of your own, it's, again, it's primal, you know, and I kind of think, well, obviously it's primal, it's, you know, how we're still here, but no, I'm okay now.

Most of the time I'm like really okay and he's okay and I think we, we very much made the decision to kind of, let's be grateful for what we have rather than what we haven't. 

Zibby: Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's it's not at all. It's also great to hear. I mean, I feel like there are a lot more stories that come out now about the decision to do IVF and far fewer about not doing it, deciding to stop.

And so I think it's great that you can share that openly and help people. 

Marian: Yeah. I'm, I'm glad. I mean, I never had any boundaries and it was, it's both a good thing and a bad thing. But I mean, I suppose the idea of kind of talking about things that would be regarded as taboo, it's not always a good thing to keep silent.

You know, there is something so comforting I find about realizing that another person has been through exactly what I've been through or is going through and that they're okay. You know, it's that kind of shared, I was along, further along the path and I'm fine now. 

Zibby: Yes. Even Anna's breakup and feeling like she would never find her path in life again, that what was she doing unemployed and back home and breaking up with the so so boyfriend and, you know, she didn't have to take that path.

And yet you found a new path for her, and she is able to reinvent and start that next chapter. And I think that's also, you know, a very hopeful message. 

Marian: Yeah, I mean, I think any change, I mean, I really, really dislike it intensely and any changes uncomfortable because yeah, we're breaking out of our literal comfort zone.

And there was always that terror for me anyway, of the path ahead that I cannot see. But the path will build itself, like sooner or later, we have the opportunity to, I don't know, forge new connections or find something new to do that we love. I don't mean just for work. I just mean like pastimes or passions, you know, for as long as we're alive, I feel we have the capacity to have a good life or a new life or that we at least have the opportunity to try, but there will be times in everyone's life when it kind of all falls away. I mean, it's happened to me several times where I just think, oh my God, I'm back here at this, at this, in this empty, strange, awful, loveless place again. And I don't know if, if there's any, anything ahead for me.

But so far there always has been, but there will be times when it will be like we've been annihilated. And all we can do is wait it out and be available to whatever, ever opportunities or people come our way. Yeah, I thought I would grow out of those feelings. And I've since learned that we don't grow out of any feelings.

They can be dialed way down for decades and then something can happen and those feelings are up again. It's the fear of abandonment, you know, the fear of being loveless, the fear of being without a purpose or a role, the feeling of, yeah, I was once. I once mattered and now I matter a lot less and none of them are nice, but you know, we survive.

But it's, I think it's really nice to know that, you know, there is nothing unique about these things and nothing protects us from them. You know, not any kind of age, experience, not, not success, not wealth, not people around us. There would be always times in my life when I am still, I don't know, three years of age and terrified.

And that is fine, so long as I remember it, you know, that this is not really about the now. It's worth it then. Oh my gosh. That was beautiful. 

Zibby: Oh my goodness. This is like so emotional. This episode. Oh my goodness. Thank you. I mean, it's wisdom. You know, it's, it's wisdom mixed with humor and just such authenticity that is what we all need right now.

I mean, forever, but really, I mean. This is it. Like cutting through all this stuff. So thank you. 

Marian: Yeah. Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I think that's one of the great things about being 60. It's kind of thinking, oh, I see all those things those people told me are actually true. Yeah. We don't, we never outgrow anything and we never get there.

The destination will never be reached. We're always just cycling through experiences and feelings and hopefully understanding ourselves and everyone else a bit better. 

Zibby: Yes, I love that. Marion, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing and being so open. Thank you for this fabulous book that I completely enjoyed, devoured, loved so much and thank you for your time today. 

Marian: An absolute pleasure, Zibby. Thank you so much. Bye, Zibby. 

Zibby: Bye.