Sarah Vaughan, BASED ON A TRUE STORY: A Novel
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:27]Sarah Vaughn is the author of based on a true story, a novel.
[0:31]Sarah is the Sunday Times, an internationally-best-selling author
[0:35]of Anatomy of the Scandal Little Disasters
[0:37]and Reputation, plus two earlier novels.
[0:40]Translated into 26 languages, Anatomy of the Scandal,
[0:44]was a Richard and Judy book of the decade
[0:47]and a global number-one Netflix-limited series.
[0:52]Then Little Disasters was a number-one Paramount Plus series
[0:56]while Reputation is being developed for TV.
[0:59]Before writing fiction, Sarah spent 15 years
[1:01]as a journalist, including 11 at the Guardian
[1:04]as a political correspondent and news editor.
[1:07]Brought up in Devon, she lives in her Cambridge, England,
[1:09]with her family based on a true story.
[1:11]Is her sixth novel.
[1:13]Welcome, Sarah.
[1:14]Congratulations on based on a true story.
[1:17]Welcome.
[1:18]It's really lovely to be young.
[1:19]I'm sorry I'm not in person.
[1:20]I'm not your party in person.
[1:22]I really regret it.
[1:23]Another time.
[1:24]There'll always be another time.
[1:26]Tell listeners what based on a true story is about it.
[1:29]So based on street stories, a cyclical drama
[1:32]about how allows money and family narratives.
[1:36]It starts with a body found on a warm,
[1:38]storm-lational core beach.
[1:40]Best-selling children's all per day,
[1:42]men in the kingdom has gathered together
[1:43]her family and friends to celebrate her 70th birthday party
[1:46]and her latest number-one bestseller.
[1:49]Somebody's been sending her emails
[1:50]threatening to unmask her in the narrative
[1:53]she spun for half a century.
[1:54]She's got a TV crew arriving to produce what she assumes
[1:58]is going to be a really glowing documentary.
[2:01]And she's sort of determined to sort of unearth an emphasis
[2:04]before they get to her.
[2:06]So it's kind of about how, like my previous books were,
[2:10]but in a domestic setting, kind of a feminized clean layer
[2:13]and it's kind of a Christie for an Instagram age.
[2:15]I want to share a bit more on the puzzle.
[2:17]Amazing.
[2:18]Amazing.
[2:18]Well, as you mentioned, wealth and career and power
[2:22]and all of that come into play.
[2:23]And you start off with Eleanor, you know, saying to Ned,
[2:28]one of the other characters in the book, you know,
[2:30]Ned, do you even know what it's like to be hungry?
[2:32]Like, do you ever, give you ever felt that?
[2:34]And then we go on to much later in the book
[2:37]where she's like, we hold on.
[2:38]I'm just going to read this, this passage if that's okay.
[2:41]Is that okay?
[2:42]It says Eleanor is furious and hurt if she is entirely honest.
[2:46]She's hurt.
[2:46]All anyone wants from her these days is money
[2:49]an open checkbook or rather bang transfer.
[2:51]That's how she is perceived.
[2:53]So there's a huge trajectory there with the characters.
[2:56]Talk a little bit about that.
[2:58]And even the effects of fame and trust.
[3:03]Yeah.
[3:03]So Eleanor is a pretty cool same thing
[3:06]over in the States.
[3:07]Do you have Boomer?
[3:08]So she was born in 46.
[3:10]And she is part of my parents were both born in 46 as well.
[3:13]And she's part of that generation who have over here
[3:17]through education, through the wealth and state,
[3:19]through free grants has been able to go through a massive
[3:23]social mobility property price have also gone up.
[3:25]So she has in a way that Jen said and millennials now
[3:30]and don't feel that they can.
[3:31]She has managed to accrue wealth.
[3:34]She's also managed to get through her in talent.
[3:36]So she's come from a very humble background.
[3:38]And she has completely reinvented herself through her skill,
[3:42]through her writing.
[3:43]She's got an ex-husband who has come from a much more
[3:45]managed background.
[3:47]He's the son of a judge.
[3:48]She's kind of been at Cambridge, which is kind of your Ivy League.
[3:51]And she hasn't done that.
[3:53]And she's more of a graft.
[3:55]And she's gone to a very good London University.
[3:56]But she's, while he's been writing beautiful literary novel,
[3:59]she's been writing stories, women's magazine.
[4:02]She's really sort of pulled us up from her bootstracks
[4:05]and sort of reinvented herself.
[4:07]And a mast.
[4:08]She's sold 40 million books.
[4:10]She's got four properties.
[4:12]She's really, she's a success story.
[4:14]But she is also, she's, she's, she's always kind of conscious
[4:20]of that hunger of her roots.
[4:22]And I was really struck actually talking to actually a late
[4:26]neighbour who, who had had quite an unsettled childhood,
[4:31]you know, bailiffs at the door of things.
[4:32]And he'd been very wealthy later in life.
[4:34]But his wife said to me, he never forgot that sense of being
[4:38]unsettled, you know, and moving on from one property to another.
[4:41]So property became a former security.
[4:43]So, so we see that with Ellen as she has kind of reinvented
[4:46]herself.
[4:47]And it's kind of slightly surprised me because some people
[4:49]have, she is narcissistic.
[4:51]You know, she's a difficult woman.
[4:53]I was interested in writing an older woman who was a strong
[4:56]woman and who wasn't necessarily nice all the time,
[5:01]you know, it was because I think actually to have succeeded
[5:04]as a 70 year old in that world to smash those glass ceilings.
[5:08]She's had to be quite ruthless.
[5:09]And that's something that as a sort of people pleasing woman
[5:12]and middle-aged woman doesn't come very naturally to me.
[5:15]But actually I think it's to be admired.
[5:18]But yeah, so she's had to do that.
[5:20]And yeah, I've just, I've just, but she's always got this,
[5:22]this, her daughter said that, you know, she sort of uses
[5:25]out of date milk or, you know, save the heels of bits of
[5:29]parmesan, which they can't understand that for a galaxy.
[5:31]But I think if you've probably come from not having that
[5:33]and you're always slightly conscious of that hunger.
[5:35]So I wonder if that was one of the things I want to do.
[5:37]It's more, yeah.
[5:38]So interesting.
[5:39]You also have someone quite threatening who is sending her
[5:44]emails and I was wondering if you had gotten that email address
[5:47]from Google because if you have not, you better go do that
[5:50]like right now.
[5:52]It's actually a line from a Shakespeare, but play, so it was,
[5:55]it's a line from, so there's lots of sort of literary
[5:57]Shakespearean illusions throughout, particularly it's a kind
[6:01]of, it's a feminized layer, but that's quite likely done,
[6:03]hopefully there are a little bit of Macbeth in there.
[6:05]And so it's actually a line from, I think it's twice
[6:08]more stuff.
[6:09]Yeah.
[6:10]So maybe I should go and navigate, do you think?
[6:13]Yes, that's what I'm saying.
[6:14]You should go and navigate.
[6:15]Absolutely.
[6:16]But anyway, she is getting these threatening things and you keep
[6:19]alluding to what is lurking in her past and all of that.
[6:22]And you give us little clues.
[6:24]And then at one point later in the book, you say, well, there's
[6:27]a good plot twist for you or something like that.
[6:29]So I was like, oh my gosh, how funny is that?
[6:31]But then you have this part here.
[6:32]And I'll, can I read one more little tiny second.
[6:35]Yeah, I love this.
[6:35]He said, let's face it.
[6:36]She thinks as he pours Lapsang, why did I pick a part?
[6:39]I can't pronounce Lapsang, Sue Chong from the top.
[6:41]Yeah.
[6:42]Or even greater fear beyond him remembering this and revealing it,
[6:45]is that he is lied about no longer possessing the manuscript.
[6:49]There has only ever been one version of her un-publishable
[6:52]first novel, hammered out on a Remington Idol typewriter
[6:55]because she didn't have the resources to make a second.
[6:58]The thought seems unimaginable, but it was perfectly normal
[7:01]in those pre-digital times.
[7:02]When he rejected it, she was so grief-stricken,
[7:05]she refused to take it back and then he claimed it was lost.
[7:08]It didn't matter, she told herself, it was unreadable,
[7:10]a baggy massive pretension, more of a confessional
[7:13]than a novel and not entirely honest.
[7:15]Based on a true story, her first attempt at rewriting her life,
[7:18]besides it was all her fault she knew his office
[7:21]was notoriously disorganized and chaotic.
[7:23]Only during the legal action, she became convinced
[7:26]he had retained it as a form of collateral
[7:28]that he was intent on playing the long game.
[7:31]That, that, that.
[7:32]Interesting.
[7:35]Oh my gosh.
[7:37]It's so fascinating seeing the bits that you picked out
[7:39]because I haven't been asked about these questions before.
[7:41]So it's really fascinating seeing the bits that resonate
[7:43]and it makes sense that, you know,
[7:44]if you were to write her in a bookshop owner and CEO
[7:48]of all of this would be picking on the bits
[7:50]about writing stories and, you know, the plot twist
[7:53]from a little aside.
[7:55]And it's quite interesting.
[7:55]I just interviewed Evelyn Clark on their tour in the UK.
[8:00]And I think it's really interesting
[8:02]that we're all getting, we're all interested
[8:04]in the art of writing and we're creating books
[8:07]about the act of writing.
[8:08]It's a bit meta, but I mean, I think that's,
[8:10]I think that's what we're all trying to do.
[8:13]We're trying to understand ourselves as we write
[8:15]and that made sense to make a character like that.
[8:16]Anyway, I'll stop interrupting you about to ask the question.
[8:19]No, no.
[8:19]I mean, just talk a little bit about this notion
[8:22]of the first draft that is in the, you know,
[8:25]what can happen with what we create
[8:28]at different parts in our lives.
[8:29]And I think that in today's day and age with AI
[8:33]and all of these things, like what does it say about us
[8:35]that we have IP essentially that we haven't released
[8:39]and it's there and can be used against us.
[8:43]But whatever, like who owns what?
[8:45]I don't know.
[8:46]Just talk about this whole thing of the unpublished.
[8:51]Well, I thought what's so interesting is that in that era,
[8:53]so we're talking about she's in her 20s, so she's now
[8:56]when she, she creates her first novel, which is, you know,
[8:58]first novel tends to be quite sort of confessional,
[9:00]certainly I think.
[9:01]And she hadn't disguised it very well.
[9:04]And her agent kind of says, it's a bit of a spoil here,
[9:07]but you know, that's untouchable.
[9:08]And I think you might be kind of betraying something
[9:11]that might have happened dumb, dumb, dumb.
[9:12]If we do publish it.
[9:14]So we know that she's kind of, there's effectively
[9:17]a confession, I mean, in that novel.
[9:21]But of course, in the days when she wrote that,
[9:22]that's three computers or pre, you know,
[9:25]computers being widespread.
[9:26]So it is a typed out document.
[9:29]And I spoke to authors who were, you know,
[9:31]writing 40 years ago or whatever.
[9:32]And they did say, you know, yes, we didn't make.
[9:34]We didn't photocopy them.
[9:35]That was it.
[9:36]You know, you heard of people losing their copy.
[9:38]So that is one form that hasn't been
[9:41]altered of change from a computer, has it?
[9:43]Whereas, you know, if you look at all my drafts,
[9:44]they're kind of all merged into one, really.
[9:47]And you'd be quite, I was just clearing out a couple
[9:49]actually earlier.
[9:49]And I found a writing script at the moment.
[9:52]And I'm trying to work out how many drafts I've done.
[9:55]And I've done at least seven,
[9:56]but I was kind of looking all the different iterations of it.
[9:58]You know, like, have this great,
[9:59]am I pre...
[10:00]It's the max I am old school, as well as old student being,
[10:02]but they may only have shifted subtly from one draft or another,
[10:06]but they're constantly being altered,
[10:07]whereas back in the day,
[10:09]if you had that physical one copy,
[10:11]I suppose that's one interpretation.
[10:13]But she, I think towards the end of the book,
[10:14]she also talks about, there's a quote about,
[10:17]isn't that what everybody tries to do,
[10:18]we write their story and sort of become a better version
[10:21]of themselves.
[10:22]And I think I was really interested in exploring that.
[10:25]I'm side-swept,
[10:26]it's a swipe in your question about AI
[10:28]because I don't feel,
[10:29]apart from being absolutely terrified about AI,
[10:31]I don't feel equipped to answer that in a pithy way.
[10:35]No, that's okay.
[10:36]I don't know, it's been on my mind lately.
[10:38]Yeah, I mean, we're terrifying, isn't it?
[10:41]My boy put in put in to chat GBT,
[10:44]writes an opening chapter in the style of Sarah Vaughan,
[10:48]involving a character with his name and his girlfriend's name.
[10:52]And it was scary how quickly something came back,
[10:56]which wasn't quite me,
[10:58]but it was a thriller,
[10:59]and it did involve those and he put in the idea.
[11:01]And, you know, I was a bit furious,
[11:03]but then chat GBT's now got my idea in it, you know,
[11:07]but yeah, it was quite, it was quite scary.
[11:10]Yeah, but I have to hope that actually,
[11:12]the novels with heart at the moment, you know,
[11:15]you can still detect,
[11:16]but I think the problem is it's gonna get more and more
[11:18]sophisticated, isn't it?
[11:20]Yes.
[11:20]Okay, well, we can just table that conversation.
[11:23]Yeah, well, you mentioned the script you were writing,
[11:25]and you've had like blockbuster hits
[11:27]with previous novels, Paramount Plus and Netflix,
[11:30]and Natalie Mavis-Gandal, and every,
[11:32]I mean, it's just amazing what's gone on.
[11:34]When you sit down to write another book after that,
[11:38]and I'm not sure exactly when this book began
[11:40]versus when those aired and everything,
[11:42]does that make you nervous?
[11:44]Does it, do you feel like you're trying to write
[11:48]for screen now or like how do you?
[11:50]So I think they're very distinct speech,
[11:53]and I, you know,
[11:55]and that who was scheduled was auctioned
[11:56]in February, 2018, it came out in the February,
[12:00]and it was, it came out as a book in the January.
[12:03]And when it was auctioned,
[12:04]I'd already had my first novel optioned,
[12:06]that is my third novel, and nothing had come of it.
[12:09]And I knew very much that, you know,
[12:10]not supposed to be an optioned,
[12:12]and I think there's only like a five percent chance
[12:13]that it's ever gonna be made.
[12:15]So it's very much like taking the money, you know,
[12:18]it's the most of the extra,
[12:19]probably nothing gonna happen.
[12:20]Don't go your hopes, I'm talking to you.
[12:23]But obviously, it asked me, did get made,
[12:25]and that was obviously life changing.
[12:28]And I would say that the fact of the,
[12:31]the squits have influenced my writing a lot,
[12:34]but I don't write with a view to things becoming scripts.
[12:38]So for instance, when anatomy was,
[12:41]the scripts were being written,
[12:42]the filming was actually delayed
[12:44]because the pandemic happened.
[12:46]So it was meant to start filming in June, 2020,
[12:48]and it actually started beginning in November.
[12:51]So that meant that I was an executive producer,
[12:53]and I had a lot more sort of bite of different drafts of scripts.
[12:56]And I really felt I learned from reading their daily scripts,
[13:00]really learnt from reading them,
[13:02]and I was writing reputation, which is my fifth book,
[13:04]while I was reading them.
[13:06]And I know that that influenced my writing at the book
[13:09]because I sort, it sounds really naive,
[13:13]but I think my books translate quite well to screen,
[13:16]because I write multiple points of view,
[13:18]and I have strong female characters,
[13:19]and I have a really strong sense of place.
[13:21]And so I think I hadn't realised that those were all things
[13:25]that producers really liked, and obviously quite a lot of plot.
[13:28]And so when I was writing reputation,
[13:31]I, and I was looking at the anatomy scripts,
[13:34]I was consciously thinking,
[13:36]I did that bit of London's really pretty,
[13:37]or I had shorter chapters,
[13:39]or I switched points of view more often,
[13:41]or I ended up on a cliffhanger a bit more often.
[13:43]So that's sort of influence reputation.
[13:45]And, you know, it would be disingenuous to say
[13:47]that when I was writing this,
[13:48]I wasn't thinking, okay, cool, really pretty.
[13:51]And I have a, I've got a ticking clock,
[13:54]I've got, I really tried to make this correct proposal.
[13:57]If, you know, I've got a sense of threat
[13:58]in the sort of B story involving Tom, the son-in-law.
[14:03]And I've got lots of different strands
[14:04]that are sort of gonna be quite complex.
[14:06]I mean, people have said it's a slow burn,
[14:07]but I think it kind of speeds up towards the end
[14:09]as they all kind of get woven together.
[14:12]So I was sort of consciously thinking
[14:13]that as I was writing that.
[14:15]I've been said that, I think the books.
[14:18]So two of my books,
[14:19]and that's me, and little sisters have become TV shows.
[14:22]And, and that me is very faithful.
[14:25]I would say, although Sophie becomes the more
[14:27]she comes back to tech,
[14:28]if she's a more iconic character.
[14:30]But with little disasters,
[14:31]we needed a lot more plot that we had,
[14:33]although there are four women in it.
[14:35]In the book, it's kind of a duo that are really important
[14:38]and we kind of expanded the arcs,
[14:40]the more female characters,
[14:42]and we also changed the villain.
[14:43]So we altered that a lot more, I say.
[14:46]We, I mean, the writer did,
[14:48]and the book's a producer, and okay with it all.
[14:50]So, yeah, so I think very much of the books
[14:53]and the shows as distinct entities,
[14:56]even though that is very faithful to it.
[14:58]And I think that's a positive thing.
[15:00]And I'm not writing the book thinking
[15:02]this has become a TV show.
[15:03]Otherwise, I would just be writing it
[15:04]as a script to start with, wouldn't I?
[15:07]I think it's a sort of distinct thing,
[15:09]but obviously it's really lovely
[15:10]if it finds a bigger, much bigger audience,
[15:13]if it goes on TV.
[15:15]And what compelled you to start writing to begin with?
[15:18]Like, why do you write?
[15:19]And what does it do for you emotionally?
[15:21]Oh, I think, I mean, I think you're not meant to,
[15:23]and I think it might be a line in the book as well.
[15:25]I think you're not meant to use this therapy, are you?
[15:28]But I think I've certainly exercised
[15:30]some forms in my writing.
[15:33]I've drawn on a lot.
[15:33]I mean, when I finished writing the first draft
[15:36]of anatomy and I'm on the record of saying this,
[15:37]I realized that I was sort of working
[15:40]through a section of thought I'd experienced
[15:41]in my early 20s that happened to a party,
[15:44]and I told a school friend, male friend, I'd gone with,
[15:48]and he didn't believe me.
[15:50]I think he took the police,
[15:51]and it wasn't a rape, but it was horrible.
[15:54]And I realized that after everything in anatomy,
[15:57]that's what I was dealing with.
[15:58]And little disasters, I didn't realize
[16:00]until I finished the first draft,
[16:01]and I'd given it to my then editor,
[16:03]that I was writing about what we then call maternal OCD,
[16:06]but now you call perinatal OCD,
[16:08]which I had after I had my second baby.
[16:11]And so I think the two really sort of major things
[16:14]that really impacted on me in my life,
[16:15]I've kind of obviously worked through.
[16:18]But I think I've always, when I was a child,
[16:20]I wrote stories, when I was 10, I won
[16:23]Dev and Young Writer of the Year,
[16:24]which actually was just my third local county.
[16:28]But it was actually, they gave me 75 pounds in cash
[16:30]and 50 pounds in book fractures,
[16:32]which was, you know, you could get a book
[16:33]for a pound in those days.
[16:35]I bought all the GD Blues.
[16:37]And I'm in the home.
[16:38]And I'm, and I'm the band of Senator Jane Austen's
[16:42]that my mum insisted her by.
[16:44]But then I, in my teens, I was quite academic,
[16:46]so I didn't write, I stopped writing,
[16:48]I just did sort of school work,
[16:50]went to University of Reading English,
[16:52]did not occur to me at all, but I could write a novel
[16:54]because I went to Oxford,
[16:56]and of course, it's very traditional,
[16:57]you didn't have to read anything after 1832,
[16:59]and sort of they were all from, you know.
[17:01]And so, and I was also reading lots of sort of literary,
[17:03]I was reading in a marsh name as me,
[17:05]and the Q, and then Graham Swift,
[17:06]so I kind of thought that fiction was something
[17:10]that was written by old men, I mean, sounds awful,
[17:13]but you know, I hadn't really discovered commercial
[17:17]with inspection there in the talk.
[17:18]And then I think, but I knew I wanted to be a journalist,
[17:21]though I knew that I wanted to write for a career,
[17:24]though I had a, you know, 23, I went off to be a journalist,
[17:27]did a journalism course, and then had a stuff,
[17:29]but job at that.
[17:30]And then it was, wasn't until I was forced
[17:33]by a fact difficult second pregnancy during which I couldn't walk
[17:37]to take voluntary redundancy.
[17:39]At five years, I've tried to freelance as a journalist
[17:42]and hating it, because it may call the internet come along.
[17:46]And so, you know, it was suddenly very,
[17:49]and I think you probably know about this,
[17:50]being at home with little children, you know,
[17:52]your identity has completely changed,
[17:54]your confidence has completely changed.
[17:56]I was pitching ideas and being told by people, you know,
[17:59]15 years younger than me or 13 years younger than me,
[18:01]that that wasn't a news story.
[18:02]And I knew it was, or then trying to pay me less than there,
[18:06]any J-rates, because they could get away with it,
[18:08]but they could get away with that.
[18:10]You know, so it was very, very unsatisfying.
[18:12]And I ended up writing, you know,
[18:14]little pockets of time while my son was a nursery,
[18:17]when I should have been writing my speech, my article,
[18:19]that weren't selling.
[18:21]And I ended up standing up at my 40th birthday,
[18:23]which was the same week that my youngest started
[18:24]primary school.
[18:26]And someone said, what are you going to do this year?
[18:28]And I said, I'm going to write another and get it published.
[18:31]So that was my real.
[18:32]So I think I'd had a real,
[18:34]I knew I had to get a proper job, another job.
[18:37]And I sort of negotiated my husband.
[18:39]I said, look, I've, there's still a bit of redundancy,
[18:42]many left, you know, I'm not getting any of these features written
[18:45]published, you know, can we just manage for a year with me,
[18:50]you know, not buying any clothes, what do you think of them?
[18:53]And I think I thought it's really good idea.
[18:56]And so I did it.
[18:57]And I think it's like a 40, I was listening to that podcast.
[19:02]I think it was when you did the Elizabeth Day,
[19:03]one of your sessions, and you were talking about how you're
[19:05]focused, I mean, look what you've achieved in your 40s.
[19:08]I think it was a real sense of, OK, I mean,
[19:13]my kids were four and seven when I started writing my debut.
[19:17]So you still slightly feel like you were in the trenches of that
[19:20]sort of, you know, you have to be there from all the time, don't you?
[19:22]But actually, it's being a decade where I learned to write.
[19:25]And I think, well, this is my sixth book.
[19:27]And, you know, I've been a little slower than I'd like to be,
[19:29]but I've had a couple of TV shows and I'm trying to write one
[19:32]so I'm saying, yeah, it's been an exciting time.
[19:34]Oh, yeah, it's amazing.
[19:35]But I think we do really, I think we do really notice us.
[19:37]And I think I've brought a lot of that to Ellen,
[19:39]actually, my character, that she has had to,
[19:42]she's been a sit and not a single man,
[19:44]but she was a single man.
[19:45]And she has had to adapt to be resilience.
[19:48]And she has had to think, OK, I want to write,
[19:51]I've got little children, so I'm going to write stories
[19:55]for children because I don't like reading roll dolls.
[19:57]She's really sexist, so I'm going to write my family.
[20:00]I'm going to write the sort of things that I think women like me would want to reach their children.
[20:05]So she's very practical and she has a lot of time for our beautiful history.
[20:09]Of course, she's going to write children's stories and she's then in place of class love.
[20:12]Amazing.
[20:13]Oh my gosh.
[20:14]Well, I love how you structured the book.
[20:16]I love, as you mentioned, the multiple perspectives and even how some people's perspective came in later.
[20:21]Like it wasn't an even, I'm going to alternate and keep it throughout, but it's like, oh, okay.
[20:26]Well, now we're going to this perspective and look at this.
[20:28]Oh my gosh.
[20:29]I mean, and I'm trying to talk about that.
[20:31]Yeah.
[20:32]Oh my gosh.
[20:33]Anyway, so that was that was quite interesting.
[20:35]Anyway, I found the book to be so propulsive and I am embarrassed to say this is the first book of years that I've read.
[20:41]But now I have to go back and read the previous ones because it's just so immersive.
[20:46]It was hard to put down.
[20:48]And lots of really interesting themes layered on with family and daughters and marriage and betrayals.
[20:56]And, you know, control.
[20:58]I mean, there's so much in here we can talk all day.
[21:01]So anyway, Sarah, congratulations on based on a true story.
[21:05]And it was a delight to talk to you.
[21:07]Love you, Jackie.
[21:08]I love you talking.
[21:09]Let me just speak to you for that.
[21:10]I thank you.
[21:11]That's the best response for somebody to say, I need to go and read one of your others.
[21:14]That's, that's, yeah, we didn't talk about siblings.
[21:16]Did we all run my vote or anything?
[21:18]I know.
[21:19]There was so much more.
[21:20]I don't know.
[21:21]I don't know.
[21:22]Anyway, we part two to come.
[21:23]I don't know.
[21:24]All right.
[21:25]Thank you, me.
[21:26]Lovely to hear.
[21:27]Okay.
[21:28]Okay.
[21:29]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone after time to read
[21:33]books.
[21:34]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[21:40]and spread the word.
[21:41]Thanks so much.
[21:42]Oh, and buy the books.