Yahoo Lifestyle Nicola Dinan on feeling jaded, the big 3-0 and new novel Disappoint Me
"Are you the same age I am?" 30 year-old Nicola Dinan asks me over Zoom one cold November afternoon. I tell her I'm 27. "That's the age I [was when I] started writing the book. That's the time where I noticed a shift in the air around me. People started talking about their relationships in a different way to how they were talking about them before. And they're talking about the future for the first time, and not the next year future, but the future future."
The book in question is Dinan's new novel, Disappoint Me. Less than two years on from the release of her cult classic Bellies, the author returns with the story of Max: a 30-year-old published poet working as an over-paid legal counsel. When she falls down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party, she decides to shake up the year ahead and commit to dating. Which is when she meets Vincent, who feels almost too good to be true. But no one is perfect, and Vincent has baggage of his own, which we uncover during various flashback chapters.
The novel is an exploration of everything that happens as you approach the 'big 3-0'; a time when people are trying to figure out their friendships, family, romantic relationships and health challenges. Dinan took inspiration, she says, from "noticing the change around me in how people spoke about the future in relationships. And being a trans person myself, not really knowing how I would fit into these futures that people were imagining for themselves, and finding that highly anxiety inducing."
So how do you cover those life-changing conundrums in less than 300 pages? We caught up with Dinan to discuss her approach to tackling these areas, the pressure of the second novel and the reality TV show she uses to unwind from writing.
Cosmopolitan UK: Hey Nicola! Bellies was a massive success, did you feel a pressure this time around in the writing of Disappoint Me?
Nicola: I started writing Disappoint Me over three years ago, and so I was still a couple of years off the publication of Bellies. I'm so glad I did that, because I was able to bring in all of the lessons that I'd learnt in terms of writing Bellies - the voice I wanted to inhabit as an author and how to tell a story.
It's a lighter novel in terms of how it reads, but also still achieves the same depth. I was able to take those lessons on, without being weighed down by expectations. Had I started writing Disappoint Me after having published Bellies, and having had people say such lovely things about it, I would have felt a lot more anxious writing it.
Disappoint Me was a really effective way for me to work through some of the anxieties that I had in the lead up to the publication of Bellies. When we meet Max at the start of the novel, she’s recently published a book of poetry, which, in her words, The Guardian ‘shat on’. She doesn't feel satisfied in her ability to create meaningful art anymore. And I think that was a way for me to really meditate on, 'What might happen if Bellies doesn't go well?'
You’ve spoken about the quote ‘The first book you write is the one you have to write, and the second one is the one you want to write.’ Was that how you felt with Disappoint Me?
I felt a huge sense of urgency with Bellies. It's reflective of where I was in my life. I was working at a job I really hated, and was desperate to find a creative outlet. I wrote the first draft of Bellies in seven months, and ended up having it published less than three years [later]. So I definitely approached the second book with more patience and a real consideration of, ‘Okay, what's the story I really want to tell here?' Rather than feeling I have this story that's been brewing inside me that I'm just going to regurgitate onto the page, which is sort of what Bellies felt like.
Bellies is so much to do with the turbulence, the excitement, the endless possibility of being in your early 20s, and that rush of being at that stage of life, and I wrote it with a similar rush. Disappoint Me is about feeling a bit jaded by the time you reach the end of your 20s. Feeling jaded in respect to love, having experienced a great deal of disappointment, feeling a bit unsure and unsettled in one's career. And that's not the story you write in a rush.
The novel perfectly features real life references, without being cringe, such as the Spitalfields Second Home [a co-working space] location…
It's always nice when people who live in a similar world recognise those small things. I had something very similar with Bellies, where I described this polka dot dress from Zara that everyone was wearing in 2019. It felt so good for people to be like, ‘I remember that dress’ and to write something that relates to the current moment.
Disappoint Me has a focus on masculinity and a consideration on the ‘enlightened man.' How did you approach this?
I started thinking about the ugliest parts of one's past, and also about certain norms around masculinity, particularly those existing at the time of Vincent's plot line in 2012, and [which] also seem to be growing now with the rise of certain social media influences promoting a very regressive form of masculinity. [I thought about] what it means for men who have partaken in that and grown away from it, but it's still existing in them to a certain degree.
We see a dissociation within Vincent between himself and acts committed in the past that is totally unsustainable. I was interested in that specific untenability of denying one's past self in order to believe in this new, enlightened self, which I think a lot of people do.
I love that you told Vincent and Alex’s (the pair meet on holiday while backpacking in Thailand) story in depth, because there could have been a world where we only hear about their relationship from Max’s point of view…
It wouldn't have worked for me to not have Alex as a fully realised character in the novel. Alex represents the locus of a lot of Vincent and Fred's shame. She’s also someone who suffers greatly and is a victim of many disgusting acts within the course of the novel. It would have been irresponsible of me to not give her the presence and voice that she deserved.
This novel is about two relationships which are more than 10 years apart, and we experience the ways in which Vincent's relationship with Alex echoes into the present in his new relationship with Max. And I don't think we would have really understood those echoes in a deep, meaningful way, if we hadn't experienced Vincent's story in 2012 in full.
Reading Disappoint Me, it’s very easy to feel protective over Alex, do you ever think about where the character is now?
I like to believe she's okay. The whole storyline with Alex was so hard to write, particularly as a trans person, and I think any trans person or woman reading those sections with Alex will naturally be deeply affected by the themes of violence that feel uncomfortably familiar.
When it comes to Alex, she wants to be cared for and loved so much in a way that I think a lot of readers who are in their late 20s or early 30s do. Or however old, [people] will be able to look back at their younger, more vulnerable selves, and feel a great deal of sympathy for, you know, having been that young and experienced a great romantic betrayal or disappointment for perhaps the first time.
The story also touches on concerns around the body and also fertility. What drew you to that topic?
It's hard to write a book about trans people and women in their 30s and not have any discussion of the ways in which we feel that our bodies betray us. I think that's a sentiment that a lot of trans people will understand quite deeply with their relationship with their bodies.
But it's also something that a lot of cis women experience very deeply when expectations around children become heavier and more prevalent in one's life. People feel enormously betrayed by their biology, and that really comes to a head when we're considering our options for our future. I don't think I could have written a novel about heteronormativity, about this stage of life, and not touched on that.
Speaking of being betrayed, when did the novel’s title come into the writing process?
Very early on. I love the title. I hope I can say that about my own book, but I think it’s quite sexy in a way. It has a ‘come hither’ vibe to it, but fundamentally, you know, it’s someone asking someone else to disappoint them. When one becomes so inured to disappointment, they may spend their lives just waiting to be disappointed. Because if you ask to be disappointed, it's less painful than being disappointed unexpectedly. And we meet Max at a stage of her life where she is just constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. In her relationship with Vincent, she just feels as if it's slightly too good to be true.
The book begins on New Year’s Eve and was released in January. Do you have any resolutions?
We meet [Max] at a time where she's lost a sense of enjoyment in her life, particularly when it comes to writing, [but] over the course of the novel, she develops a more positive relationship to art. And when I’m looking at the year ahead, I think it’s sometimes easy for me to feel what Max is feeling at that New Year’s Eve party, and I can lose sight of why I enjoy what I do. Once this book is published, I'm just going to really take some time to connect with why I love what I do.
What will you be working on next?
My next book is a novel set in 1987, so 10 years prior to the handover in Hong Kong [on midnight on 1 July 1997, the United Kingdom transferred Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.] And it's about stewardesses who are given the mysterious task of collecting cigarette butts from the ashtrays of first class passengers on their planes and a broader plot in which they find themselves and their husbands implicated.
When you need a break from writing, how do you switch off?
I always describe writing as being something which often empties the tank, and then you just have to fill the tank. And I find that I have to consume as much media as possible. I talk a lot about the Real Housewives, and I love it.
On one level, I just enjoy it, it's funny. On another level I feel like this is an amazing absurdist comedy. How the storylines are set up, the humour, the things they say to each other - it's incredible. And I think you find some of that quality in Disappoint Me. That scene at the house in France where things sort of go to t**s up. There's something so absurd about it.
And finally, what book would you recommend to everyone?
My two favourite books that I've read [last] year were probably the Bee Sting by Paul Murray and Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. And then two of my favourite books of all time are Another Country by James Baldwin, and I will always recommend the Outline trilogy by Rachel Cusk.
Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan is out now
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