Lisa Jewell, THE FAMILY REMAINS: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now
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[0:53]Lisa Jules is back for another episode with the family remains
[1:02]Lisa is a number one New York Times best-selling author of 19 novels including the family upstairs
[1:07]And then she was gone as well as invisible girl and watching you her novels have sold over 10 million copies internationally
[1:13]And her work has also been translated into 29 languages
[1:17]Welcome Lisa. Thank you so much for coming back on moms and have time to read books to discuss the family remains
[1:23]Lovely to be here. Thank you for asking me
[1:25]I know that so many people were begging you to write the sequel and while I didn't beg
[1:30]I was so excited to see that you had done it and here it is and and all of that
[1:35]So tell listeners a little bit about
[1:38]Why you decided to write a sequel to the family upstairs?
[1:42]I know you said it was a very reluctant sequel, but you're glad you did it
[1:48]Everyone cuz I had already written one sequel in my career
[1:52]And that was a sequel to my first novel Ralph's party which came out in 1999
[1:56]And I did a sequel ten years after that and I really really did not enjoy writing it
[2:01]And I really really don't like that book
[2:03]And the fact that I wrote it has always upset me a little bit
[2:05]Or is it why did I write that book and it sort of absolutely made me even more determined that I was never going to write another sequel
[2:13]Because I always say my favorite thing about writing novels is creating starting novels and creating a whole new world and introducing
[2:20]myself in the reader to a whole new cast of characters. So yes having said for many many years
[2:25]I've never write a sequel. I let my readers talk me into this one
[2:31]And it kind of was my fault in a way because I then did the family upstairs on a note that suggested
[2:36]There might be a sequel even though that wasn't my intention in the least
[2:39]But of course a lot of readers took that to mean that there was going to be a sequel and wrote to me on social media
[2:44]Is there going to be a sequel please tell me there is going to be a sequel adventure
[2:47]Eventually I just got ground down a bit and started saying yeah, all right. I'll do one
[2:52]But yes, it was a much much happier experience and outcome
[2:59]I'm glad I let myself get bullied into it
[3:02]Well, it was so neat. I mean I hadn't read honestly a sequel to a book in for it
[3:07]I mean I can't even think of the last sequel I read so it felt like taking up with old friends and
[3:12]I mean kind of odd friends in your book but anyway and you know just like getting to live life fast-forwarded
[3:18]And only a couple years so it was very neat readerly experience for anyone who's read the first book
[3:23]But I'm sure that you could just jump right into this one
[3:25]It's designed to be read as a standalone
[3:28]But I do I do secretly tell readers that they'll have more fun with it
[3:31]They've read the first one as well
[3:33]Yes, and you do back up and explain a lot too in it, you know, you're very funny way, you know, you're like
[3:39]You know, I can do like to do
[3:43]I don't know
[3:44]You have to have a very soft touch with with those otherwise they found a bit like info dumps
[3:49]Yes, so yeah, I have to be quite careful with those
[3:53]So why I was sort of confused as to how should cargo got thrown into the mix here?
[4:00]How did you enlist that city to the of the key player here?
[4:04]Right, so there's an interesting background to that in as much as the end of the family up there
[4:09]It sounds very much as if Finn is in Botswana
[4:13]And if that Finn is in Botswana and Henry our character from family upstairs is obsessed with Finn
[4:19]And is delighted to finally found that where Finn is out 20 years of trying to track him down
[4:24]And thus I thought going into writing a sequel that Henry would be going to Botswana to find Finn
[4:31]And then the pandemic hit and I thought
[4:34]I can't really write about
[4:36]Finn works as a big game ranger
[4:38]A safari park in Botswana
[4:40]And I thought I can't write about this if I have an experienced it
[4:44]So obviously I'm going to have to go to Africa and go and go on safari and have that experience
[4:49]But could I couldn't do that because I couldn't travel
[4:52]So I had to sort of back pedal pretty quickly and think okay
[4:55]Well, if he's not going to either he's not in Botswana, where is he?
[4:59]And because in the back of my head
[5:02]I'd always assume that Finn was gay even though that's not stated explicitly in the first book
[5:07]But in my head he was gay
[5:09]I just kind of randomly thought of a place that it was associated in my mind with
[5:14]Big gay community and that was you know parts of Chicago have very yeah very big LGBTQ communities
[5:21]So that was where Chicago came from
[5:24]Very random a decision made in a split second
[5:29]And then I it wasn't I don't think I'd realized quite how much of the book was going to actually
[5:35]Yes, it is a pretty full-on Chicago novel
[5:40]Do you sniff people's
[5:42]Heads to see if you're compatible. I have to ask because you have
[5:46]Read this you said Rachel turned and quietly sniffed the crown of Michael's head
[5:50]If you liked the smell of someone's scalp
[5:52]She'd always theorized then you were probably sexually compatible
[5:55]And she did like the smell of Michael's scalp
[5:57]It had the scent of someone who shampooed daily who never slept in grubby spilla gazes
[6:01]Or pulled on a sweaty baseball cap or ate a cheap burger and then ran their fingers through their hair
[6:06]It had so quickly squinky clean tones of sand on wooden citrus
[6:09]But just enough musky hormonal tang to differentiate from a spray of cheap room perfume
[6:14]Now that is quite a scalp description
[6:16]That means I had no idea I spent so much of my book to discussing Michael's scalp
[6:24]And particularly as I don't think I'm that that obsessed
[6:27]I tell you my husband is obsessed with the smell of scalp. He should love the smell of scalp
[6:33]I don't I think you shouldn't be able to smell a scalp
[6:35]I think if you get near someone's hair and you can smell
[6:39]What's underneath their hair? I don't I don't like it. So for me no smell is ideal
[6:44]But yeah, I don't know about the sexual compatibility. I guess if you like the way someone smells full stop
[6:48]It's a good thing. That's probably yes
[6:52]You also had this other funny line just because I love how you write and this is further forward
[6:57]But when we're talking about Finn and Henry and you said he told me when he was 15 years old
[7:01]That he was going to be a safari guy one day
[7:03]I have no idea what route he took from the house of horrors we grew up in to get there
[7:07]But he did it did I want to be the founding partner of a trendy boutique software design solutions company back then
[7:13]I was a child. No, of course. I didn't I wanted to be whatever life threw at me
[7:17]The thing that I would be after I'd done all the normal things that people do when they haven't grown up in a house of horrors
[7:23]And then spent their young adulthood living alone in bed sits with no academic qualifications
[7:28]No friends and no family. I wanted to be that thing
[7:33]Henry is so sad well for all of them. It's so sad. I know that is also a thing
[7:39]I often think when parents have their children are small and their child shows some sort of talent or propensity for something
[7:46]And the parent immediately thinks oh, they might be a surgeon or they might be a ballerina or they might be a writer
[7:53]Or they might be an actor and they've all these sort of like these fantasy roles that you imagine that your child could fulfill
[8:01]And taking their innate skills out into the world, but most people end up
[8:05]with jobs with
[8:08]Really, really long and unwieldy typos that don't really mean anything and just they most people have ended up working in office
[8:15]Thank you for bottom line. So yeah, and that's obviously what will happen to Henry with all his other options taken away from him
[8:22]Okay, last funny line and then I'll stop quoting lines that I liked but he said luckily
[8:26]I have my mother's physique
[8:28]But sadly more than my fair share of my father's course facial features
[8:31]I have done my best with what nature gave me money can't buy you love
[8:35]But it can buy you a chiseled jar perfectly aligned teeth and flumped up lips
[8:41]Well, there you go
[8:43]You need to know about love and life and money and other else
[8:46]And that's also but that is actually you know, that's a massive part of Henry's character in this sequel is
[8:53]You become much more aware in the sequel of how obsessed he was within
[8:57]So all those things he's done to his face have been an attempt to make himself look like Finn
[9:03]So in reality if you were actually to see Henry lamb on the street
[9:07]He'd probably be slightly thrown by the look of Finn because he's
[9:10]A little bit too much to his face over the years. So yeah, it's kind of it's funny, but it's also quite sad
[9:17]I think one of my favorite moments was like the cringe worthy scene when he was trying to track down
[9:23]Then in the apartment and the this poor young landlord like showed him inside
[9:28]You know the guy and he wanted to take the pictures and then
[9:32]You know and then
[9:35]Should we hang out after it? He was like no, thank you. No, I'm good
[9:40]Yeah, that's right when he finds Finn's apartment, but he's not living in it. Yeah
[9:46]I really enjoyed writing that scene because it was a perfect opportunity to capture how uncomfortable Henry makes other people feel
[9:53]Yes, so the reader feels a slight connection with Henry and there's maybe even a slight fondness, but it's good
[10:00]put him in situations where the reader is reminded that actually if you were in a room with Henry,
[10:04]you'd be feeling very uncomfortable and wanting to leave.
[10:06]Yes. Well, I don't want to give away things towards the end, but how you tied everything up,
[10:12]I was not expecting for, I mean, it was just well done.
[10:15]Was it a chef's case?
[10:18]Hey. So tell me, so you decided to write a sequel, did you, how did you even approach this?
[10:26]Did you, did you know, I mean, was it all as haphazard as your choice of Chicago, or did you?
[10:31]I think that was really pretty, pretty haphazard.
[10:34]Yeah, I just jumped in. I knew without any shadow of a doubt that Henry was going to be my star
[10:39]turn, obviously, and his pursuit of Finn was going to be the main thrust of the novel.
[10:45]And even at the beginning, I wasn't sure if I was going to revisit Lucy.
[10:48]I wasn't sure how much more their gassa was left in the tank of her story.
[10:52]So she came in, I made that decision quite late on in the process.
[10:56]The only other thing I knew for sure was I wanted to explore Rachel's relationship with Michael.
[11:02]So in the first novel, and the family I've said, Michael is killed by Lucy in an act of self-defense,
[11:07]and it's mentioned briefly that his wife Rachel is in London, and that's why she's not there
[11:13]in the house in France at the point at which Lucy kills him. And it always occurred to me that
[11:18]there was a whole story waiting to be played out there. Who is Rachel? What does she think when
[11:24]she finds out that somebody's murdered her husband, is she going to be sad? Is she going to be
[11:27]elated? Was he as bad to her as he was to Lucy? What's the story of a Rachel? So that was
[11:34]I kind of knew that, and you were going to definitely going to have Rachel, and we're definitely
[11:37]going to have Henry. I thought about Lucy as she was the last minute decision. Another huge surprise
[11:43]in the novel is Samuel Lewis in my London Detective, who I had not for a moment suspected I was
[11:51]going to have a whole police procedural thing playing out in the background. I knew that I wanted
[11:55]this scene where these bones are found on the shores of the River Thames, and I wanted to write
[12:00]that scene and that involved creating a detective who was here at the scene of this discovery of
[12:06]these bones, but then he sort of stuck around for the rest of the novel. So yeah, I wrote my very,
[12:11]very first literary detective I've never written one before. Yeah, so it was haphazard. It did all
[12:16]come together in a kind of clanking, amazing, thrilling mess. Oh, what am I going to do now?
[12:25]I'm and then, as I always write, because I don't write with a plan, and I do just sort of throw things
[12:30]into the mix as I go, had to find a way to sew very, very neatly tie up or sort of messiness
[12:36]and chaos into a lovely neat hem at the end so that everyone would feel satisfied and there'd be
[12:42]no loose threads, and that was challenging, but I think I did it. You did it. Bravo, it was great.
[12:49]Really satisfying, very satisfying, amazing. And now what are you doing now?
[12:54]Oh, and so at some point between finishing that book and starting my next novel, I was also invited
[13:04]to write a full length novel in another genre, which I can't talk about because it's highly
[13:09]confidential at the moment. And it was an irresistible offer, but in accepting that offer to write
[13:15]another different genre full length novel, it's meant that I've had to write, because I write a
[13:22]novel a year. I now write, need to write three novels in two years instead of two novels in two years.
[13:27]So I've had to very quickly turn around the novel that comes after the family remains, which is
[13:32]coming out next summer, and it's called None of This is True, and it's totally different to the
[13:38]family remains. It could not be more different if it tried. And now I've just started writing this
[13:44]out of genre special project, top secret novel, which needs to be finished by April, and then I'll
[13:51]start writing my next normal, least dual novel, which will be finished by the end of 2023.
[13:59]So not long down time going on for me at the moment. Oh my gosh. So how many hours a day do
[14:08]you have to write to crank all of this out? Because don't you take big breaks and things like,
[14:12]I felt like, well, I did take big breaks, but I just realized when the minute I accepted this extra
[14:17]project, I thought the big breaks are not going to happen. They're not going to be happening for me
[14:20]this year. And that's fine. I'm very happy. You know, I can sleep when I'm old. It's fine.
[14:26]You have to say more about this secret project. What did it came to you? Like somebody
[14:31]thought of an idea for a project in my London age and phone me up with a slight tone of disbelief
[14:39]and his voice and said, I thought I was going to explain this to you. So I'm just going to read
[14:44]this to you, this email that's just arrived in my inbox. And we were both all laughing,
[14:49]never see, because it's a massive, I'm trying to talk about this without letting you know what it
[14:54]but it's a project that it's something that's never been done before for a fictional universe
[15:03]that's very, very famous. I can't really talk about this. But it's, yeah, it's an experimental
[15:09]brand new thing. There's never been a novel in this genre before. It's never been a novel in
[15:14]this genre before. And mine will be the very first novel in this genre. So it's kind of an experiment.
[15:20]And it's going to be exciting. It's just a sort of thing where you just think you're only on
[15:26]this earth once. And if somebody offers you something where you're going to be part of something that's
[15:32]so huge, you can't say no, you can't say no, even if it does mean you don't get to take a nice
[15:38]big summer break. I normally do. So it's exciting and it's challenging and it's pushing me and it's
[15:45]making me do things. I don't normally, I don't, for example, I never normally do any research at all.
[15:51]But for this project, I'm happy to do research. So it's, yeah, you think you have different
[15:56]different things going to here. And I'm trying to guess the, this is, you probably have, I think
[16:03]you've probably already guessed it. I have not guessed it. I have not guessed it, but I don't know
[16:09]anything. Okay. I'll leave it at that. Well, that's amazing. I'm really excited about all of that.
[16:18]So how are you going to, like, how do you balance it when you're, okay, you'll sleep later,
[16:23]but like, what are you going to do to make sure you don't know? Because I, what I can't
[16:28]write all day anyway. So even at this writing at this pace, at this level of productivity,
[16:35]I'm only going to be writing for maximum of four hours a day. Okay. Three, three usually.
[16:41]Okay. But what it means is it's like less of those sorts of weeks where, if your friend says,
[16:47]what are you doing on Wednesday? I'm in town. Let's go for lunch. You don't say yes, you say no,
[16:52]I can't because then I won't get my three hours of writing in. So it's less that I'm working around
[16:58]the clock and staying up all night and burning the candle and all that sort of business and more
[17:03]that I just have to be much more professional, much more present and much more disciplined about
[17:10]being at my laptop for three hours a day, three or four hours a day. So don't feel too sorry.
[17:14]Okay, I want to go out. I've got a missed lunches. Sounds good. All right, exactly.
[17:19]Do you find time to read? Do you make reading and priority? God, and this is the title of your
[17:24]podcast and it's such a difficult thing for me at the moment. And this sort of, it was something
[17:32]clicked when the pandemic started. And I think a lot of people in the pandemic started and
[17:39]they were forced to be at home all the time. Cool. I can get going on my TBR pile. I'm going to just
[17:45]read my way through this pandemic. And I just, I went the other way. I just became addicted to my
[17:52]phone, I think, during the pandemic because everything I really wanted to know about all the stats
[17:57]and reports and announcements and everything, they were all on my phone. And I just lost the habit
[18:03]of reading. And now I find it really, really difficult. The only time I can read happily and
[18:08]such as that truly is on a sun lounger on holiday. And then I can, then it's, I can't really look
[18:13]at my phone properly in the sunshine. So that's probably why. So yeah, I've really struggled to read
[18:19]at the moment. It's really sad and terrible. And I'm hoping it's something I can fix. Not least because
[18:25]I have literally, I think about 250 books in my TBR pile, all of which I want to read because
[18:32]yeah, I only put them on that pile if I seriously want to read them. So yeah, so don't feel bad.
[18:40]You've acknowledged the problem. Yes, acknowledge the problem. That's the first step to solving it
[18:48]exactly exactly. There's a season for everything. It sounds like you're super busy, but you know,
[18:54]that's a nice way of thinking about it. Yes, I have to visualize myself in maybe a year's time,
[18:59]or two years time, sitting in an armchair, flying through the pages of books reading happily
[19:06]when my phone nowhere to be seen in another room. It is true. I mean, sometimes I look up from my
[19:12]phone long enough. It was like the hair placed yesterday. I took my daughters both to get their
[19:16]haircuts. And like every woman in the line getting the shampoo before the haircut had a phone
[19:22]like held up while having their shampoos done. And I was just thinking like we can't even like
[19:28]let's see equipment. I'm taking a shower, right? It's like you can't even stop long enough
[19:32]to get the like five minute, two or two minute like shampoo. Do you know, like what's going to
[19:37]hang out in two minutes? But I do think that it's like really is that productivity really that
[19:42]important right then? Well, I don't even know if it's to do productivity and just to do with the
[19:47]the fact that we're not used to just staring into space or closing our eyes or just not having
[19:53]anything to look at. It's scary. Yeah. It is. It is. It is scary since it is.
[20:00]and it's a habit, I hoped to break that, like you say, acknowledging the problem is the first step.
[20:06]I would hear it for you, Lisa, that you're reading rehab. Yeah, absolutely.
[20:14]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Oh, God, it is so...
[20:18]Yeah, I mean, it's really hard. It's really hard because I think every aspiring writer
[20:22]comes to writing with a different sort of mindset, and so some can want to write a book,
[20:29]but not know how to start, and some can want to write a book that had too many ideas and not
[20:34]know how to decide which is the idea. Some have the wrong motivations for it, you know, wanting
[20:40]to write a big book and have a huge bestseller, and some people have been writing all their lives,
[20:45]but never quite got to the point of writing a novel, and some people haven't written a word,
[20:49]but just want to just break out onto the page, and there are just so many different types of
[20:53]want to be writers out there with different motivations and points of view, but all I can talk about
[20:59]is how I manage to do it, and for me, it's about it's almost like that, like, dances if nobody's
[21:07]watching kind of thing. It's just, you've got to be really unselfconscious, and really, oh, just
[21:15]like in the moment, you've just got to be in the moment and not think about the market and not
[21:18]think about that book that just came out, the sold a million copies or not think about what so and so
[21:22]would think if they read it or not think about, you know, will you be judged or do you sound silly
[21:28]or is it literary enough or just be in the moment and present with your book and just concentrate
[21:36]on getting words onto the screen, because that's the only way it's going to happen.
[21:40]Every time you type a word, you've done a good thing, and don't need to worry too much about
[21:44]that word or what it means, where it's all going, just keep making those words appear on the screen
[21:50]until you have got a draft. And then once you've got your first draft, you just need to polish it
[21:56]into those things. So yeah, I think a lot of writers starting out over think it's all a bit
[22:01]much and think there's more to it than there is, and there really isn't that much to it
[22:04]pop me putting words on the screen. So. Okay, do that thing. Is that thing? We will do that thing.
[22:14]Well, amazing. Thank you for writing the family remains and tying up so many open questions and opening
[22:20]up a few new ones, I guess. Oh, I'm not too many. I mean, we've heard one. Yeah, I can't believe,
[22:28]you know, full circle, we started each other right before the pandemic, and now here we are and
[22:32]glad at least I got to meet you in person before all that happened. And anyway, absolutely everything
[22:37]happened before that felt like it was just such a gift. I am so true. Anyway, delighted to chat
[22:45]with you again. And good luck on your secret project. I can't wait to hear what it is. Thank you,
[22:50]hopefully, hopefully I'll be allowed to tell the world about it soon. But yeah, thank you so much
[22:55]for having me. It was a wonderful chat. All right, thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of
[23:03]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and
[23:08]at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign
[23:13]up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to
[23:17]Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon
[23:22]Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.