Magic Classical Book Club: "Enough" by Dawn French

Today’s guest on the Magic Classical Book Club is Dawn French who will be talking to Tim Smith about her new book : "Enough"

Etta is sixty-eight years old. Happy, healthy and an active participant in her world, she’s gathered her family together for an unforgettable weekend.

Tick.

At 5am that Saturday morning, Etta wakes her daughter, her granddaughter, her son and her daughter-in-law up to lead everyone down to the beach. To ‘Etta’s Hollow’, where a roaring fire has already been lit. Drowsy but delighted – the sun is just starting to rise for a glorious dawn – Etta’s family bask in the beauty of the moment. A memory to be cherished forever.

Tick.

Until twenty minutes later, when Etta announces to her assembled beloveds something as shocking as it is alarming. ‘I have brought you all down to the beach this morning to tell you something important. You see, the thing is, today is my last day alive.’

Boom.

Over the next twenty-four hours, Etta and her family are about to have the most surprising, affecting and life-affirming day of all their lives.

Tim firstly asked about the book and about how Dawn face a fear writing it:

“As I get older, I'm just trying to make sure that I write about important big things, but things that, that are important to me anyway. And I know that when I'm authentic like that, it's true for other people as well. That's been my experience in the past. So I decided to write about a big taboo, difficult thing, which is suicide.

And although that doesn't sound very cheerful, my intention was to write a life-affirming book about end of life, if you like, and about control. So my character, gathers her family together at the beginning of the day and tells them that by the end of the day, she won't be there anymore, and she's made this decision on their behalf really, and for their benefit, it, so she thinks.

So she's decided that that's what she's off, and the rest of the book really, which takes place in twenty-four hours, is her family arguing against it.

_"And when I set out to write it, I decided that I wouldn't know what the ending of the book was, which was a bit frightening for me. I felt a bit unanchored doing that."_

But I thought that will encourage me to properly enter into every character and enter into every argument correctly. So then on we go with all the arguments and stuff, and I really enjoyed that part of it. And I thought, "I wonder what is going to happen." It's a bit of a worry- I liked when the author's out of control like that.”

Tim asked about the main character, Etta, and how she changed throughout the book:

“What I had to do was consider why she was so decided. I think I understood that, but I thought, "Well, I need to find the cracks, I need to find the cracks where she hasn't really thought it through." And there's an element here where her son starts to understand that perhaps she's got a kind of loneliness, and it's not the lonely... She loves her family. She's got friends. She's well-connected socially. All of that is in place.

She's not an isolated person. But I think she's a person of an age where after you've retired, perhaps you feel a bit invisible, perhaps you feel a bit purposeless. And I wanted to write about that feeling, if you like. And so her family have to notice that, you know. And part of the book is about saying, "Look, guys, notice what other people are going through. Let's connect a bit more. We're a family. Let's connect in and make sure that she knows that she is needed in this family."

And there, there is a little symbolic part of the book as well where I have Etta see a white crow in her garden. And somewhere along the line, I can't even remember where I've heard this, but apparently there's a theory that it only takes one white crow to disprove the theory that all crows are black.”

Tim then asked how much that character is about her and about her personal experiences:

“Yes, absolutely. I mean I am the child of suicide myself. My dad so sadly took his life when I was 19. And, I suppose I've been through all those stages of grief that you go through. Some of them are very fast, you know, the fury and the anger and the unforgiveness, and all of that happens very quickly.

And then over a long life, I have come to understand all kinds of things about my dad and his depression. My dad is very different to the Etta character in this book because my dad lived with those black dogs that are depression. And you've got to remember, when that happens to somebody, especially back then, you know, when there wasn't the kind of talking medicine, which is, would've helped my dad, so much, I'm absolutely sure of that.

But there was shame and awful kind of taboo, feelings around all this stuff. So I think for someone like my dad, this was just absolutely dreadful, and he must have been in seven kinds of hell to make this decision. So I think because I've been through all this kind of stages of grief about that situation, I think that gives me a little bit of permission to write about somebody considering this.”

Tim followed up by asking what Dawn hopes the reader will take away from this:

“Yeah, definitely optimism. And I will feel like I've succeeded with this book if I've written something life-affirming.

_"I hope that the reader at the end of it, certainly the characters at the end of it, have all changed a little bit. Yeah, they have changed their mindset a little bit. And then they might be a little bit kinder. So that's what I would hope.”_

Tim finally asked Dawn to pick her favourite piece of classical music and tell us why she chose it:

“That is so hard, isn't it? One piece. Yes. But I've chosen this because a million years ago, I was part of an opera, a Donizetti opera called La fille du régiment, and I played the speaking part.

And I was a bit surprised they didn't ask me to sing, actually. It could be to do with the fact that I can't sing. But anyway, I was in this opera, and our soprano was Juan Diego Florez. And so I started to listen to other music that he has done, and his version of Una furtiva lagrima, which is a Donizetti piece, is so beautiful, and I play it on repeat.”

If you want to listen back to Tim's full interview with Dawn French, click here to see all of Tim's past shows.