Elizabeth Day is Super Smart

[1:16]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibby owens. I was so taken with Elizabeth Day, the author of one of us from the first line of her book. I think she is just the smartest, coolest woman. I love, her social media feed, the podcast that she does called how to fail. Her book is just so smart and interesting. She's the author of the party and many other books. She is an influential podcaster because of her show, as I mentioned, How to Fail, which has become a go to hitmaker and has launched authors such as Meg Mason and Glennon Doyle onto the bestseller lists in The UK. She divides her time between London and Los Angeles, and we talked all about podcasting, our similar paths from divorce, failure to recovery, reinvention. And we both use the microphone and the podcast media to change our lives, expand our communities, and create more meaning. And it was a really interesting conversation, one that I wish we could continue and hopefully will do one day. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about One of Us, your novel, and all the amazing things that you do in your life. So congrats. Oh, thank you so much for having me. And thank you also, Zoe, for everything you do to champion books and authors.

[3:18]Elizabeth Day: We would be nothing without you. And I'm so grateful that you are sharing your platform with me and I get to chat all about books

[3:26]Zibby Owens: and life and love and everything in between. I mean, it's fun, right? You do this all the time. Podcasting is like the greatest gig. You just get to talk and learn and meet people and constantly,

[3:38]Elizabeth Day: you know, explore different topics and connect all over the world. It's pretty cool. It's very cool. And you get licensed to ask questions that in other realms would be deemed nosy. But when you're a podcaster, it's just curiosity.

[3:51]Zibby Owens: Totally. I'm like, I know it's been three minutes, but let's talk about your fertility because I saw it as Yeah. A

[3:58]Elizabeth Day: I know. Somehow it's sort of okay. I don't know. Kind of. It's 100% okay. And also I'm a massive oversharer. In fact, don't think there's any such thing as oversharing. I think we need to rebrand the word. I think that vulnerability is the point of all of our greatest connection. And it's what drives so much of what I do. It's a sort of linking thread between the podcast and the books and how I strive to show up in the world. So ask away. Okay. I will. I feel I agree with that, but I think sometimes

[4:29]Zibby Owens: maybe some physical stuff, like when people get really in the weeds on some of the physical, I don't know, bathroom y stuff. I'm like, I don't need to know. Yes.

[4:38]Elizabeth Day: I don't need to know that. No. I'm with you. I'm with you on that. Okay. But emotionally

[4:43]Zibby Owens: points, won't cross. Emotionally, I'm all in. There's nothing emotional I will not take part in, basically.

[4:51]Elizabeth Day: Yes. Ditto. I won't pop my zits on this beautiful show, but I will psychologically

[4:58]Zibby Owens: open up and burst forth. There we go. I love that. That is that is thank you for the analogy. I wanna talk about your book, which is so smart and interesting. You are so oh my gosh. Like, I just from the moment you start reading, you're just like, who is this woman? She is so smart. And I have to admit, Elizabeth, I've not read your backlist, so I literally ordered all the rest of your books. Oh my gosh. Thank you. That means the world to me. Gosh. I am so excited to dive into everything now that I somehow, I just hadn't read you, and I don't know why. But, anyway, I'm delighted to be doing so now. Take us back, first of all, for others who may have been, you know, somewhat in the dark or haven't read your work yet, but maybe they've listened to your podcast. So how did you start the How to Fail podcast? How did you do all the stuff? And I am, like, waiting with bated breath to get the How to Fail for teenagers, for my two teenagers. So thank you for that. Thank you. I will bring some copies with me because I know I'm doing an event in your wonderful bookstore.

[5:55]Elizabeth Day: Let me bring them with me. Okay. I started How to Fail in 2018. And the reason I started that podcast is because I felt like such a failure myself. And to give you a potted version of events, my thirties have been a decade of intense transition where I had got married to the wrong person and then I'd gone through a divorce in the middle of that decade. I had tried and failed to have the babies I so yearned for. So, I'd done unsuccessful IVF. I had the first of three miscarriages. And post my divorce, I got into a new relationship with someone else. And I had such great expectations for that relationship because I thought I'd learned all of the lessons. I thought, life has dealt me a few blows, but I'm definitely making different decisions now. And I'm much more informed about who I am. And that relationship ended out of the blue for me just before I turned 39. And I felt like such a failure because I felt that I was staring down the barrel of my forties with none of the things in place that I thought I wanted. No healthy romantic relationship, no babies. And whilst on paper, my career might have looked like it was going according to plan because at that stage I'd written three books and I was on staff on a Sunday newspaper here in The UK. But internally, it just didn't feel like that at all. And at that stage, social media was at its zenith. So, I was comparing my sadness and my messy neurotic insides with everyone else's seemingly perfect outsides. So, all of those influencers and reality TV stars who are on holiday in Costa Rica with their perfect bodies and their perfect lives. And it was that disconnect that made me feel even more alone. And it was also that that I wanted to explore. So ultimately, I wanted to flip the traditional interview on its head because as a print journalist, I was so used to asking people about all of their successes. But I wanted to know kind of selfishly, how do people cope when things go wrong? And that was the genesis for how to fail. And I was listening to Esther Perel, Where Should We Begin, a lot during that time. And I was actually listening to her in LA. And I remember exactly where I was. LA is a really happy place for me, which I know isn't the case for everyone, but I go there when I need healing and when I need to get away to write in the sunshine, which is not available to me here in London. And I listening to Esther Perel and thinking, Oh, this is a new kind of communication. And the idea for the podcast came to me as I was walking down a street in Los Filos. And I just started it without really knowing what I was doing. I eBayed my wedding dress from my failed first marriage to hire a sound engineer. I drew my logo with felt at Penns one night. And then I asked friends and contacts to be my first interviewees. And I was blown away when those first eight episodes seemed to really resonate. And it's just grown and grown and grown since then. And I'm now so lucky that I've had of the most amazing people in the world on my podcast. I've had Gloria Steinem and Kate Winslet and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Bernie Sanders and Andy Cohen and all extraordinary people. And each of them has taught me something so necessary. And I'll ultimately, they've taught me that failure is not only survivable, but it's an opportunity to grow and to learn. And I'm also super grateful to How to Fail because it brought a whole new audience to my books.

[9:21]Zibby Owens: I love that. I feel like I was on a parallel track with you post divorce, started a podcast, didn't know what I was doing, bought a microphone on Amazon, googled how to start a podcast, started with people I knew or friends of friends who would come on. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm just gonna ask what I wanna hear. And I don't know how I'm supposed to do it, but I'm just gonna do it this way and see what happens. And I feel like it's changed my entire life.

[9:50]Elizabeth Day: How beautiful. That's exactly the same as my story. And it's changed my life too. And I think Zebi, what makes that so special is that podcasting rewards authenticity and intimacy. And so if you're not trying, I mean, not that you're not trying, obviously we prepare for interviews and stuff, if you turn up as yourself and that's what happened to me. I turned up as myself for the first time ever, it felt like where I was willing to say, actually I got this wrong and these are my flaws and can you help? And so many people responded to that and made me feel less alone. And so I'm incredibly grateful to podcasting.

[10:30]Zibby Owens: Me too. I feel the same way. I, like, couldn't get a book published at the time. I had been failing all the time. Like, I just was and every day, I would talk to an author and just think, okay. Well, they did it. But then some days, I was like, yeah, but Mitch Album is Mitch Album. Like, he did he's like he's like, I am not him. Like, maybe it's not gonna happen for me. You know? And it Yeah. Learning from other people is the most amazing motivator

[10:54]Elizabeth Day: ever. Totally. And one of the things that I keep coming back to, you know, when I started writing, I thought I had such a healthy inner critic in my head who was constantly pointing out all of the ways in which I was rubbish. And was also constantly pointing out specifically that I was not Tom Wolf. I was like, I know I'm not Tom Wolf. I wish I was Tom Wolf, but I'm never going to be Tom Wolf. And I just had to let it go and realize that our USP is the fact that no one else on this planet has lived our set of experiences. And that's what means that we all have a story to tell. And so, I'm so glad you found your way. And can I ask you a really nosy question, which is, have you found love again? Are you with another partner? I did find love again. I'm so happy. Me too. You too. Yes. I'm married again to an amazing man who I met on an app. So I'm so

[11:48]Zibby Owens: loving. I met my husband on a tennis court. So there you go. Oh, that's so chic.

[11:54]Elizabeth Day: Was he playing with you or was he the coach? He was the coach. Oh my gosh, that's the hottest origin story ever. That's amazing.

[12:04]Zibby Owens: Oh, love that. More over coffee. I

[12:09]Elizabeth Day: can't wait. I'm getting heated rivalry vibes. I'm not mad about it.

[12:14]Zibby Owens: Okay. Well, talking about your book for a second here. Okay. One of Us, this is what, your eighth book or so? What number is this? No. It's my tenth book, but it's my

[12:25]Elizabeth Day: is it my sixth fiction?

[12:27]Zibby Owens: Okay. Well, Not all of them not all of them are published in The US by the way, so I should say. Yes. There was quite a quite a lag for getting some of them. But Yes. But I know you've had, like, number one Sunday Times bestsellers and all the good things. One of Us, which is coming out in The US and in The UK, it's so smart. The voice that you use and the humor about modern day society and family and just culture. Like, it is it is so clear that you are just the best observer of people and situations, and you do it in such a funny but smart way. Like, you just you give us unique points of view, and yet you tell us everything we need to know. I I found it incredibly delightful and entertaining and just so well written. I mean and and then I was saying to myself, you know, people say that, like, you have to write at a seventh grade level here in The United States to, like, really take off. And I'm thinking, this is, like, the most your vocabulary is great. It's just like it's like a an elegant conversation with, like, a really bright friend. And I I just love I'm

[13:36]Elizabeth Day: sorry. Apologies to the tennis coach, but I think I love you. That is so incredibly generous and so exactly what I would want someone to say about my book. I cannot thank you enough. Thank you for noticing that I do strive to write well and with an extensive vocabulary, but also to be accessible and entertaining, but never at the cost of characterization or plot. Like that's what I strive for. And I'm so delighted to hear that that was

[14:05]Zibby Owens: your take. So thank you so much. That's Thank thrilling to me. Tell listeners who I forgot are even listening at this point, what One of Us is about. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. Addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zibi for free shipping and three sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibi.

[16:57]Elizabeth Day: One of us is essentially about why we fall in love with the people who damage us and why we sometimes elect them to. So the way that I can pitch it to your wonderful listeners is to say that if you like I enjoyed Succession or The Talent in Mr. Ripley or House of Cards or Brideshead You Visited or Saltburn, it's a sort of mishmash of all of those, or White Lotus. I'm obsessed with rich people behaving badly, but I'm also fascinated by why we do elect people who don't care about us and why we keep falling into love with people who don't necessarily reciprocate. And so the plot of One of Us, it's a multi voice narrative, but it opens up with the character of Martin Gilmore, who he's a boy from the wrong side of the tracks who won a scholarship to an elite private school in England. And at that school, he met his best friend, Ben Fitzmaurice, who's from a very wealthy aristocratic background. And he became kind of fixated with Ben and the entire Fitzmaurice family. And something happened when they went to university that forever bonded them in a destructive way. And after the fortieth birthday party of Ben Fitzmaurice, they fell out because it all sort of came to light. And One of Us opens with Martin Gilmore several years later, hell bent on revenge at the same time as Ben is now on course to become the next prime minister of The United Kingdom. And he is unexpectedly invited back into the fold of the Fitzmaurice family because Ben's sister, Fliss has died in what seems to be suspicious circumstances. So that's the opening. And the other voices that you hear from as well as Martin are Serena, Ben's wife, who I really enjoyed writing because she's a woman who is the same age as I am, albeit a mother of four. It was a way that I could explore motherhood on the page. But she's perimenopausal as I was when I was writing it. And I don't see that kind of character enough in fiction. And because she's perimenopausal, she's also sort of assessing her life. She's in this period of great transition. And she realizes that her marriage is not emotionally fulfilling her. And so that raises lots of questions for her as she embarks on this new stage of life. And then we hear from Richard Take, who's a failed right wing politician who he lost his front bench seat because he was caught on CCTV watching porn on his work computer. And he seeks to rehabilitate himself in the public consciousness by going on a reality TV show. And then the final two voices you hear from are Cosima, Ben and Serena's eldest daughter who's an environmental activist, which neither of her parents knows and Fliss, Ben's dead sister. So a lot of her passages are written in flashback and sort of piece together the story of what happened to her. And that's essentially what One of Us is. And I hope that along the way, it deals with serious themes, it's also funny and satirical and entertaining. And although I know I'll never be Tom Wolfe, I do aspire to that kind of epic scope, which tells the story of a society

[20:08]Zibby Owens: in flux through the prism of a family in breakdown. Wow. Well said. Lovely. Thank you. Nailed the pitch. Way to go.

[20:19]Elizabeth Day: That's such a relief to hear because I always think I'm so bad at pitches. You'll know this as an author, it's quite hard to sort of say what you've written.

[20:27]Zibby Owens: Remember it all and, you know, recite it without boring yourself. Anyway, how did this how did you come up with this family with the accident, with the triggers, with some of the scenes? Like, how did you piece together who you wanted to tell the story? How did that happen?

[20:44]Elizabeth Day: So One of Us is a standalone book and you can read it as such. It is also a companion piece to a book that I wrote in 2017 called The Party, which told the story of Ben and Martin's early years. So the wonderful thing about writing One of Us is that the characters I'd already established who they were in my mind. So the voice of Martin Gilmore was such a pleasure to slip back into. And the reason I love him is because he often acts in unlikable ways. But I hope that as the author, I elicit sympathy for him because it comes from a feeling that he doesn't belong, which I think is an intensely human feeling. It's very relatable. He never feels that he's in with the in crowd and it really upsets and hurts him. And sometimes it comes out in this way that even he knows he can't defend himself. But the other reason I love him is because he's a quintessential observer. His background is in journalism. He now lectures in art history. So he's very used to observing and therefore he's a very good sort of entry point for the reader because he's observing this fantastic, glamorous, wealthy world that he's never fully had access to. And as a reader myself, I really love a narrator that can do that. That is sort of slightly unreliable, but you're also rooting for them. And they're sort of explaining this world to you. So that's how Martin came about. And also a lot of him is a lot of me. I also got a scholarship to an elite boarding school in England. I also never felt that I fitted in. And so it was really nice to be able to use him as a vehicle to explore some of those themes. And then Ben Fitzmaurice was the man that I would have had a crush on, an inadvised crush on, because he's someone who's been raised to know the rules of society. He's got incredible charm and charisma. And I think we live in an age where that kind of charisma and that kind of character gets away with so much because they just know how to oil the wheels of social interaction. And actually it masks the fact that often these powerful men and it is overwhelmingly men are monsters and they're out for themselves and they're raging narcissists and they're trying to see what they can get away with. And I knew that I wanted to explore that because it's such a, sadly, such a current moment in our political landscape. And reality TV, whilst it comes in for a lot of criticism is also something that I'm obsessed with and is an incredible set of resources for an author because it means that I can observe alternate lives. And I love The Real Housewives and make no apology for it. But reality TV is also used not only as a means of failed politicians to rehabilitate themselves, but also as a way of getting people familiar with you. And so therefore they think that they know you and then they become easier to elect. And I don't have to tell any American listeners like how potent that force can be and how it shapes our culture. So I also look at what's happening in culture right now, whether it's reality TV, whether it's Gen Zed calling us out for things that we always thought were acceptable. And that's, I look at that a lot through the prism of Cosima, who's a 17 year old environmental activist. That was a wonderful thing to explore. And I also, as always happens in my fiction, I never think that I'm gonna start out writing about how women are so often the cruelly mistreated scapegoats of male excess. But it turns out that I always end up writing about it. So I also look at the double standards for men and women and the duplicity and the ambiguity around a lot of that. And that's how I kind of came up with the characters because I wanted them all to explore those themes. Amazing.

[24:49]Zibby Owens: So are is there a continuation for the characters after like, is this the end or is this part of a

[24:55]Elizabeth Day: a series now? Are you gonna do a third? I'm really tempted to do a third. I'm not doing it immediately. I'm writing another novel actually set in LA. So that will give me even more excuse to come out and spend time in the sunshine. But I left it open ended and you will know because you've read the book that something happens on the final page that I hope is sort of surprising in a satisfying way. And I do want to see what happens to my characters because I love them all. And I also, you know, there was eight years between The Party and One of Us and so much had shifted in that time. And I think I want to leave it as sort of another eight years so that they, again, I can hold them up as mirrors to the society that we're living in. That's great because then you have a long term plan. You don't have to have any Exactly. You'll have a schedule. I

[25:43]Zibby Owens: always like a schedule. I love a schedule. Yes. Ditto. What is the one about LA about? Can you say anything more about it?

[25:50]Elizabeth Day: I'm a bit superstitious about talking about it only because I've only just started writing it. And I'm in that phase where I think I'm absolutely terrible and this is so embarrassing and what am I doing? But it's about, in a way it's about how reality TV shapes us for good and for bad and what that means for families. And I reread The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen recently and I was so re inspired and reinvigorated by that novel. It's just so bold and brilliant that book, because ultimately it's a family saga, but he takes really inventive risks with it. And the way that he writes characters and just really embeds himself in the minutiae of everyday life, but reveals something so profound about each person. That's, again, that's my aspiration. And one can only shoot for the stars and hope one ends up somewhere before the gutter. So that's where I'm at at the moment.

[26:53]Zibby Owens: So with your podcast and your whole Bright Productions and your Substack and all of it, Where do you see all of this going? Like, aside from your book in eight years. When you're like five, ten years, you said you like to plan. Like, what is the hope? Where do you go from here?

[27:12]Elizabeth Day: That's such a huge and important question. And I used to be, whilst I like a schedule because of everything that I went through in my thirties and because the one thing that I thought I so longed for, which was children of my own didn't happen for me. I think I kind of threw out the idea of a five to ten year plan because if I failed to meet the metrics that I'd set myself, I would feel like a failure and I'd internalize that. And the knock on effect of that is that I've become a lot more instinctive in terms of something coming up and interesting me or bringing me joy than I want to pursue it. And so I'm not exactly sure where I see myself in five to ten years time. I'm not entirely sure where I see myself in five to ten years time other than saying the one thing that I will always do is right because it is my passion and my vocation. It's the thing that makes me feel most myself when I'm doing it. It is the thing that nourishes my soul and makes me feel untangled and in flow when it's going well. And it's how I see myself and how I've always seen myself actually. And that's the thing that I will forever continue to do. The thing that I would like to happen in the next decade is for me to find more space, calm, peace, and serenity around all of the wonderful things that I get an opportunity to do because I haven't been very good at balancing my time. I've become slightly obsessed with busyness and work. And I'd like there to be more space to take it all in. So that's a very long answer, which hasn't really led us anywhere. But that's kind of how I see life. It's the whole thing. It's just a learning process.

[28:59]Zibby Owens: I I probably would have answered the question in a similar way. So I totally Really? Agree to That makes me feel I mean, as soon as I gave up having strict things, that's when the good stuff started happening. So Exactly.

[29:14]Elizabeth Day: Yeah. Exactly that.

[29:16]Zibby Owens: Elizabeth, I could talk to you all day. I feel like I have found, like, a doppelganger of sorts, but, like, obviously, far more accomplished in The UK. No. Don't say that. I feel like I found such a kindred spirit. I really have. I've loved this. It's been too short. I know. It's been too short. Well, thank you for coming on. I hope I'm in LA when you go to the store. I'm gonna have to look at the exact date. But thank you for doing that as well. Thank you for having me. Well, you have a new big fan in me.

[29:43]Elizabeth Day: Oh, thank you, Sivi. And I will come bearing books for your kids. Thank you very much. Alright.

[29:49]Zibby Owens: Take care. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.

[30:44]Zibby Owens: This