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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Chris Holmes and this is Burned by Books. Here you'll find interviews with writers you already love, like Jennifer Egan and Rebecca Mackay, mixed in with up and coming voices like Alexandra Kleeman and Roman Alam. You'll find us wherever you listen to podcasts, but check out previous episodes@burnedbybooks.com or and on Instagram and Twitter urnedbybooks. Let's start the show in Jenny Mustard's first novel to be published in the U.S. what a time to Be Alive, we're introduced to Sikkan, a Swede from a small southern town who's moved to Stockholm for university and with the very purposeful goal of remaking herself into someone self confident and quote unquote normal. Normalcy, however, is a movable and elusive standard for any young woman. And so Sikhan begins a meaningful and deeply codependent friendship with Hannah, a daughter of wealth and privilege who is already rooted in a particular social scene of young, wealthy urbanites who couldn't be more different from Sikkhan's upbringing. It is Hannah who appears to hold the keys to Sikkan's reinvention. What a Time to Be Alive is a coming of age story, but one that rejects the very form of that genre. Sikkin's first person voice speaks the world into existence by being profoundly open to what it might hold. This openness comes into friction with childhood memories of harassment and also a near neglect in her family home. In this way, Jenny Mustard asks the reader whether the vulnerability of being open to the world is possible for women who carry the barbs of abuse, whether the privilege of vulnerability is something outside of her character's grasp. Sikkin's life as a standout student of writing and literature at the university is augmented by nights of self discovery and sometimes self destruction. When Abe, a gentleman who appears to exist outside the archetypes with which Sikkin orders the world, comes into her life, she must re evaluate what it means to be self sufficient, to be the dominant creator of a new identity. Jenny Mustard writes the novel of Stockholm in English with a wisdom and stylistic assurance that puts her in the company of some of our great contemporary writers and one will find a near cinematic visualization of the world she creates for us. Jenny Mustard is a writer and content creator. Born in Sweden but living in London, Jenny and her work have featured in the observer, the Independent Vogue, Stylist, the Evening Standard and elsewhere. She she has over 600,000 followers and more than 50 million views on YouTube. Her acclaimed debut novel okay Days was published in 2023, and her novels have been translated into 10 languages. What a Time to Be Alive was recently a New York Times editor's pick. Welcome to Burned by Books. Jenny Mustry.
- [03:15]
B
Wow. Thank you so much, Chris, for that beautiful introduction and, you know, thank you for having me on. I'm such a fan of the show, so it's quite exciting for me to now be a guest myself.
- [03:24]
A
Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. Jenny, I want to start before we're properly into the book itself, with a little bit of aesthetics. I think what a Time to Be Alive has one of the best covers of the year. It might be my favorite. There's a young woman in a perfect white collared shirt, black skirt and tights, hair in a bun, reading what looks like an art book. She's sitting, legs pulled up under her, on the edge of a couch, bed, and next to her, a fire rages. What was your role, if any, in finding this cover painting, and how do you think it resonates with the novel?
- [03:59]
B
Thank you so much for saying that, Chris. I absolutely love this cover myself, I have to say, and I was actually quite involved because my publisher had a couple of different suggestions that they sent me, but I had such a strong feeling inside of what I thought that the COVID should express and how it should represent the mood of the book. And I felt like me and my publisher, maybe we were a little bit, like, not on the same page when you came to atmosphere. So I went online and I just looked for artwork, and I stumbled on this beautiful painting by Shannon Cottier, Lucy, on Instagram, actually. So I immediately sent it to my editor and said, can we please use this? It's just exactly the right vibe. And, you know, luckily for me, they went with it. So I'm very pleased. And like you say, there's the young woman who is just sitting there reading an art book where there's a raging fire going on next to her and she's ignoring it. I feel like it kind of captures the. The sense of the. Of the prose of this book where it's like, you know, I write these, like, everyday, quite small, quiet moments, but at the same time, there's often a quite extreme emotional turmoil going on.
- [05:06]
A
Yeah, I feel like it captured that so perfectly. And. And I like the way you describe it in. Because this is a. This is a novel of mostly quiet moments, but a sense of something raging in the background. Sikkan's background, but also in the background of. Of culture, both in in Sakholm, but maybe even globally and I. And that contrast is so nicely done. The artist must have been thrilled to have her work end up here.
- [05:34]
B
I hope so. I actually think that it's a portrait of her niece in this art class, so that was even more fun to have like a personal connection from the artist there as well.
- [05:44]
A
That's so nice. I'd love for you to start us off, Jenny, by reading a bit from the beginning of the novel, just to get us a feel of Sikk's voice and introduce us to some of the characters.
- [05:55]
B
Sure. This is from the second part of the first chapter. Before today I have not had much interaction with Hannah Melvey. I study software development at Stockholm University second year, and this spring we share some classes with the technological psychology students, which means Hannah. It is March and I've seen her in the lecture halls twice a week since January. She's easy to notice because of her look and her way of talking to teachers without raising her hand. She doesn't sit next to the same people every class, but neither do I. You become who you socialize with, so I am careful when choosing company. I have been in Stockholm for a year and a half and I've still not made a close friend. I get general invitations from my classmates to things like the pub, and I sometimes go to panel discussions where I see people from class, but I have yet to make one on one plans with someone. It always happens that something simple like the pub becomes an insurmountable effort. By the time I have to leave my room in the student corridor, I often cancel and stay inside and watch Buffy Series five and feel disappointed. Socializing is an activity that drains me both before and after the event. Before is a struggle to leave home, with all the nightmare scenarios of things going terribly playing inside my head. Returning home after I feel bulldozed, skin tense from aggressive smiling. The morning after I get the hangover, an anxiety so acute as to be life changing, methodically going over the evenings, word for word dialogue, the faults I find in my behavior. I will convince myself to be apocalyptic, ruining any chance of me ever being liked or beautiful. Accepting a social invitation will invariably lead to this chain of mental acrobatics. So although I know humans need company, it is much easier to simply stay home. I have met people at Unusitiate who behave like the person I want to become, kind, smart, with easy manners and nice taste in clothes, but so far I have been too timid to ask anyone out. Going home with Hannah, though, it's not Choosing company carefully. It's the opposite. She's the antithesis to the person I want to become. She seems kind and smart, yes, but has neither easy manners nor nice taste in clothes. Once I met her on my way out to the library, a large building with exposed brick walls where every whisper becomes a hush mingling with other hums and murmurs. I had borrowed a book on software and societal advancement because I sometimes lose study motivation when code doesn't connect to off screen human evolution. Hannah stopped me in the doorway by the electronic gates, detecting book thefts. What did you pull? She asked. She scratched her hair with rasping nails. Pull. Did you borrow a book? Oh yes, I did. One book I didn't want to show her because it was not part of the syllabus and also maybe it was weird. My elbow pressed the tote bag shut. Are you not gonna tell me which one? She laughed a little, as if this amused or confused her. I picked up the book to show her because now I had no choice. Yes, that one is quite good. It has these nice, tangible examples. And then she said, I think you'll like it. What surprised me was not Hannah having read it, because actually she seemed like a person who would. What surprised me was her view of me as someone who would also read this book and enjoy it. I knew it was not allowed to ask what had given her this impression, so I put the book in my tote and went home and started reading it immediately, as if for clues. I've seen her now and then at school things, or in some beer cafe or by the ground floor kiosk of our department building. One time she bought a huge green apple and bit into it right there in front of everyone. A violent bite with all the T's, and seeing this made my saliva glands stung from the imagined acidity. But mostly she buys a Kaffir and cinnamon bun combo for 25 kroner to bring to modern Klaus. She doesn't unroll the cinnamon bun from the outside in like you're supposed to. Instead, she bites straight in as if impatient for the gooey core.
- [09:40]
A
Thank you so much. That's lovely to hear you read that. And I think that that moment with the cinnamon bun is actually quite important for understanding Hannah and also understanding Sikkin's attraction to her. This idea that she does not feel that she needs to hold herself back from from the world and that there are things of. Of pleasure and delight and experience that she can simply just bite into. Can you talk a little bit about how that is appealing to Sikkn? And, and also kind of dangerous as well.
- [10:15]
B
Yes. So second, she's been bullied her whole life. She's been ostracized by her peers throughout her bullies when she grew up in a Swedish small town in the southern of Sweden. So when she moves to Stockholm, she's quite adamant to start fresh and to, you know, be this well adjusted and well liked person, to not be weird. So she's quite obsessed with correctness, the correct way of doing things, the correct way to speak and dress and how to signal sanity, basically to not be picked out as one of the abnormal ones. And then she meets Hannah, who is, you know, at least on, on the surface, she's really quite open with how little she cares about what people think about her. I think she does care more than she lets on. But the way that she communicates with Stickan, she, she shows that she's, you know, she's quite free, like freed from society's sort of, you know, this is the way society looks at women especially and how females should be. So I think Sigan is definitely attracted to Hannah for this reason, almost, you know, without understanding why, because she thinks that she should be drawn to these more, you know, popular, well adjusted people. But I think, you know, seeing someone like Hannah being so free, it's almost like catnip to she, she becomes so curious to how a person can kind of, you know, dislocate herself from this whole apparatus of, you know, popularity and fitting in.
- [11:48]
A
That's. I love the description of catnip because that certainly she does sort of like follow it almost like a drug. It's intoxicating for her. This is so much a Stockholm novel. Ostromam Sordumum Skansen Gamlistan. You give us a ground level view of a city that doesn't necessarily have a pronounced literary tradition in novels written in English. I'm sure you were imagining both a Swedish and Anglo American audience for this novel. But how did you balance familiarity with the city with introducing readers to one of the great northern European cities?
- [12:25]
B
That's such an interesting question. Because, you know, up until this point when you asked me this, I haven't actually pictured Swedish people reading this book. Oh really?
- [12:33]
A
That's so fascinating. Tell me why.
- [12:36]
B
Well, you know, for, for one, I don't have a Swedish publisher, so. Oh my goodness, if a Swedish person would want to read it, they would read it in English, which I guess would be a kind of strange experience for a Swede because obviously there's so much, you know, familiar in this book, but also I am writing it from the perspective of someone who's emigrated, like an immigrant. I always feel that, you know, to, you know, I, I know this is different for every author, but for me, I find it easier and more enticing to write about things once I have a distance from it, if it's a geography or time or something else. Like, I think for me, it wasn't until I left Sweden and had been out of Sweden for a while that I truly felt like I could understand and correctly sort of describe Swedishness. Because when, you know, I still live in Sweden. Yeah, I think it's because, you know, when you, when you still live in the, in the country you were born, it's hard to tell what, what is like your country's eccentricities and what is just like universal human behavior.
- [13:39]
A
Oh, that's, that is wonderful. And I, you know, the Swedes are missing out. I hope that we find that you quickly have a Swedish publisher soon. But it's, you know, I want to come back and I'll, I'll put, come back around to the idea of, of writing this in English, but I wanted to talk just a second about, you know, some of the things that make this such a lively novel are the traditions of Stockholm and Sweden more generally that you sort of punctuate Hannah and, and Sikkin's life with. So there's St. Lucia Day. There's the, the tradition of students at the university screaming at certain hours to relieve stress. There are all these rites and rituals that especially carry a Swede through the long winter into spring and summer. And I wonder what was. Now that you say that you, you know, we're seeing it with a, a distance and with a clarity. Was it delightful to return to those Swedish ways of marking the year and, and why did you want them in the novel?
- [14:42]
B
Yes, it was a, it was truly a delight. It made me very nostalgic for Sweden writing this. I always knew I wanted this to be my Sweden novel, my Stockholm novel. I wanted the, you know, I wanted Stockholm to be not just a backdrop, but, you know, something that you can almost like, see and touch and smell in this book. And, you know, I also use some Swedish words that are untranslated, for example, and I remember showing a few early chapters to my agent, and he said, more Sweden, more Stockholm. Like he, it felt like it was a strength of the novel, so I just went for it. I, I, I dug out as much Swedishness as I could, which for me is nostalgia. But I think for, for readers from Other countries, it will be almost exotic.
- [15:28]
A
And you, you just mentioned like leaving things untranslated. It made me think of, I don't know if you're familiar with this famous quote by Salman Rushdie. He said, there's no English, there are only Englishes. And that English takes on the character of the specific places in which it's spoken. And, and obviously in, in Sweden there are a lot of second language speakers of, of English. And so you don't tamp down the Swedishness of English in, in this novel. And Sikk, you know, for example, goes to universite and, and the coffee is cafe. So talk a little bit about the, the Swedishness of, of English in this case.
- [16:10]
B
Well, first of all, I love that quote. I hadn't heard it before, but I so agree with it. And I think that is one of the freedoms in writing in your second language that you are sort of. I feel often that I stand outside of grammar, that I can get away with things that maybe a native English speaker or writer can't because I'm not expected to be perfect in English. Also because English is, you know, the, I guess, one universal language, I feel that there is no, like, there's no one people who hasn't taken ownership of English, that we're all allowed to use English the way we want to and to kind of mutate it into, to fitting different, you know, subcultures or geographies. So that's a, that's a joy for me when it comes to writing in English. And I think I use it a lot in this book just to be able to. To give it. To give my English sort of Swedish flair, you know. When I was working on this book with my editor, she would sometimes highlight passages or sentences and say, is this the Swedishism or is this just incorrect? And I will be like, no, no, please.
- [17:16]
A
Oh, I love that. I mean, I think you're proving Salman Rushdie to be right. And that's, I think for me as a reader of world literature and English, that's the, that's one of the great pleasures is to encounter what I think of as my own language at a. At a distance. And I loved it here. This is a novel of, of friendship and very much a story of complicated female friendship that borders on, if not flows into codependency. Hannah, Sikkim's friend and then roommate, is both her confidant and her critic. She's a defender and perhaps an almost lover. And Sikkan relies on this friendship to create that sense of normalcy for herself in Stockholm. But it becomes a kind of albatross at times. The novel has always been about female friendship from its very, very earliest beginnings. But I wonder what aspects of friendship were important to you in this story and novel.
- [18:16]
B
That's really beautifully put, Chris. Thank you. And you know, like, as I mentioned, Sigan has been like ostracized and quite a, like a chronic loner her whole life, both in school but also at home because her parents are quite, I mean they are really reserved but also like emotionally very unavailable to seek on. So, and she's an only child. So before she comes to Stockholm, she's never really experienced any true intimacy or felt unconditional love in any way. So I, I found it quite intriguing to have a person who has not experienced intimacy or had any real practice in close relationships. But then as an adult, she's 21 at the start of the novel, she gets to experience, you know, for the first time having sex for the first time, you know, having a romantic relationship, having a close friend. And I found it interesting to, to see what that looks like for a person who has, you know, have had almost zero practice and who has the like emotional intelligence of someone much younger, even though she has a, another type of intelligence, like a.
- [19:19]
A
More.
- [19:19]
B
She's, she's school smart. Right. So I think what I really wanted this book to do is give Sikhan that experience of true intimacy and unconditional love. And it didn't really matter that much to me what type of relationship that was. It could been romantic relationship or a, you know, family type of relationship. But I ended on it being friendship in the end because I feel like young female friendship is so, so like rife with ambiguity and you know, it's so intense and it's like it's just fertile ground for a lot of drama. Yeah, I felt like it was, it's almost like the most difficult type of relationship to navigate if you don't, you haven't had any practice. So I thought why not just throw Sikhan into the deep end.
- [20:04]
A
We heard you. Nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won. But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the hot honey snack wrap. Now you've really won. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can. Yeah, and I, I, I hadn't put it precisely in those terms in my mind that she's just, she doesn't have practice. And so this is all first time things. Like there's the very interesting, you know, early moments where before she's met Hannah where she's kind of like testing out, sleeping with men that she can pick up at night at bars, and she doesn't have any practice in it. But then she realizes quickly she has sort of this extraordinary power that comes with some fear, but that, you know, seemingly no one will say no to her. And she has bad experiences, but she also has good experiences. And it's this interesting way of practicing.
- [20:58]
B
Yeah, I think Sikan, more than anything, she's a. She's a student at heart. Like, she will attack almost any situation like a student would. And she does the same with, you know, losing her virginity. She, she, like you say, she picks up men in bars and practices having sex before she tries to have sex with someone that she actually cares about. And also I think that, you know, if we stay at, like, her sexual encounters, I wanted to write a book about, you know, a woman having a lot of sex and a lot of good sex and not being punished for it. I mean, she does have some, some quite awful, you know, sexual experiences as well in this book. But mostly she has, like, really good sex and she allows to be a sexual being. And I think that was very important to me to show that, like, even though she is like an eccentric, quite awkward person, she has this drive and urge to. To express herself, even if she can't always do it verbally, to do it, like through having sex or through her clothes or through, you know, just her interest in, in books and films. So I wanted it to be a, like, it's a sad book, but I also wanted it to be a lot of joy. And I think a lot of the. In this book is actually quite joyful. Yeah.
- [22:13]
A
And it's a, It's a reclaiming that I think women often feel they are denied. And it's, you know, Sikkan has this foundational experience of being essentially sexually harassed, if not abused by young boys in the small city of her childhood. And, and she says it at one moment that she, amongst all the women on the Internet as well, has. Have failed to have an antenna to predict when men will be cruel or violent. And so to also give her the opportunity to have joy and ease and acceptance of, of pleasure is. Is something kind of radical. And I wonder if you'd discuss the, you know, what might be some dissonance between her early sense of disgust in her own body and self and then how that plays out as, you know, an attempt to have a kind of freedom of pleasure later.
- [23:07]
B
Effy, that's very interesting. I haven't thought about it that way. But, yeah, obviously her first time, she's very nervous and she has sex with a stranger that she meets in a hotel, but that turns out to be a good experience for her. So she has this. I think she. She gets. I'm not sure if this expression works in English, but she gets, like, air under her wings from that.
- [23:31]
A
Okay, nice. Yeah.
- [23:33]
B
So the, you know, the. The. The coming exposure she has to sex is, like, almost built on top of this first pleasurable encounter. So it could have gone the other way around, but luckily her first experience was. That was a joyful one. So I think she just rides on that wave.
- [23:53]
A
Okay. Yeah. I want to talk about the style for a second in what a Time to Be Alive. Some of your blurbs and reviews have referenced similarities to Rachel Cusk, but I found a lot of Sally Rooney to be present here. And the way that you harness minimalistic description to create a cinematic sense of a scene that a lot of times feels like magic to me from the outside. Because it's hard to, like, put a finger on a moment or a description in which you say, this brought an image into my head. But I wonder how you would describe the style of your writing and who your influences are when you think about your craft.
- [24:33]
B
Wow. I take the Sally Rooney comparison as the hugest compliment. Thank you for that. And I can see where you're coming from in the sense that, like you say, I do descriptions quite sparingly. I feel that when it comes to descriptions, I don't really want there to be description for the sake of description. I always want it to be filtered through the narrator so that the description both describes the setting, but also says something about the emotional mood of the character. Perhaps that's why sometimes I can feel like a single sentence is enough to set the mood or the atmosphere of the scene. When it comes to influences, I read a lot of Japanese fiction.
- [25:16]
A
Oh, fascinating. Who do you. Who do you like?
- [25:19]
B
My. Probably my absolute favorite is Banana Yoshimoto.
- [25:24]
A
Yeah, I actually. So I was a Japanese major in college and I translated some of her early stories as part of my thesis project. So I love her very much.
- [25:36]
B
Oh, I'm so glad that I mentioned her now then. Yeah, I think she. She does. She does that thing that I'm always aiming to do. And like you mentioned as well, you know, like, creating very thick atmosphere with very few words. And like you say, it's like you can't even put your finger on exactly which word or phrase that does it. It's more like her. I feel like her Prose is just suffused with atmosphere. So she. She's a big influence.
- [26:01]
A
To me, that's a. That's a great way to describe her. And I see now the. The way in which there's her influence and. And a dial view. And she's certainly interested in. In women trying to kind of create themselves to find something like an. A normalcy in. In a world that seems to want to prevent that. So there's a lot of interesting webs that I think you've drawn between Banana and yourself. So Siken begins a relationship with Abe, a Spanish Swede, in a moment of mere violence, with a terrible man at a party. Their relationship grows beautifully in many ways, but Abby's own struggles with violence begin to mirror the kind of early trauma that Sikkin carries with her. You give. You've given us a love story where much of the story is conjured by one person in the couple, only to find they may have misjudged their inter intimate partner's relationship to them. How did the first person voice allow you to create this inequity? And what does it say about how we approach rogue relationships both in fiction and in the real world?
- [27:14]
B
Well, you know, we talk about unreliable narrators often, but I feel like, is there such a thing as a reliable narrator?
- [27:22]
A
I say this to my students all the time. I say every time you speak, you are unreliable because you're. You're running it through your own perception. So I'm glad you feel the same.
- [27:33]
B
Yeah, I exactly feel that way. I feel like we can't trust our own memories. Everything is filtered through our own worldview. So it makes it. If, you know, creating this relationship where initially the. There is probably like an equal amount of interest from both parties, but then, you know, as the relationship progresses, Abe realizes that maybe he's not ready for the type of relationship that Sig and wants to have. And it takes her a while to realize this. I think it takes him a while to realize it as well. But her, she. She is so, you know, she's so in love and she's so hoping and willing that this will work out in the end and that the two of them will continue on together, that she. She will find signs of a happy ending rather than maybe realizing the reality. And, you know, this is why I love writing in first person, is because you can create so much ambiguity from the narrator that translates as ambiguity to the reader as well. It keeps everyone on their toes, I guess. So I think the. That kind of almost claustrophobic closeness to a Narrator you get in first person. The immediacy of that is just unparalleled when it comes to creating interesting relationships or like the discussion that narrators have about their own relationships.
- [28:59]
A
That's really nicely said. Class is profoundly important to Sikk's understanding and experience of the world, especially as she enters Hannah's cosmopolitan social life, where cost of living and partying goes largely unnoticed. Meanwhile, Sikkin must constantly hustle to support this new lifestyle, which will eventually involve living in Hannah's apartment in a very upscale neighborhood in Stockholm. It. There are two interesting things going on here for me as a particular kind of reader, an American reader. And the one is that Sikkin's parents essentially choose a kind of social class by not having a certain kind of ambition in their careers. So you make it clear that they could have perhaps sought more permanent professorships, but end up in these sort of research jobs where they don't make a lot of money and, and kind of contain themselves within a certain social class. But then I also think many American readers misunderstand how class works in a socialist democracy like Sweden. So can you talk about those two peculiarities of class in the novel?
- [30:13]
B
Yes, definitely. It's very, It's. It's fascinating to me to write about the class system in Sweden because, you know, the differences between the different causes are very small. So, you know, you have a working class that makes more or less the same amount of money as the middle class. You have a very small uppercase that makes a bit more. But it's not like it is here in London where the, you know, the differences of, of lifestyle between the causes is huge.
- [30:41]
A
So nearly as big as our catastrophe here.
- [30:45]
B
I mean, it's. I don't want to, I don't want to sound anti American, but the caste system is, has gone a bit rogue over there, hasn't it?
- [30:53]
A
Yeah, no, you're not anti American. You're just truthful. It's, it's. Yeah, it's an abomination, let's say very scary.
- [31:01]
B
So that's one of the reasons my Sikh's parents, who are both of them extremely. They're extremely intrigued by their own research subjects and they really just want to be left alone to tell, you know, the. The mother is a physicist and the father is a biologist and they just want to do their, their research projects and they don't really care about money because in Sweden, even if you don't have a lot of money and even if you financially belong, belong to the working class or the one of the underclasses. It still means that you will have a nice life, you know, free healthcare, free university, free childcare. So it's. You don't really need to make money. You can, you can choose to not make a lot of money and still live stream safely. As for Sigan, she resents this with her parents because she thinks that one of the reasons that she has been bullied is because she, you know, can't afford new clothes and sort of her, her way of being signals poverty, even though she's technically not poor because she is safe. Which is, I think it's a fascinating thing to, to discuss in this book because it means that your social clause isn't strictly financial. It's more about where you fit into the social hierarchy.
- [32:18]
A
And she about cultural capital more than capital capital.
- [32:22]
B
I would say so in Sweden. Yes. I think it's changing a bit. Like we've had more right wing governments lately and I think the divide has been growing since I lived in Sweden. But when I grew up in Sweden, you couldn't really tell who belonged to which class except for maybe a slight difference in, you know, how you pronounce certain type of words or what type of music you're into. So, yeah, I wanted to explore that. Like, what does it mean to have a class system that's only really a social thing more than anything else?
- [32:53]
A
Well, that's, I mean, on. You both make me deeply, deeply jealous of a world in which those class divisions are less apparent, but also sad that that may be slipping away from Sweden. But I think you do such a nice job balancing and handling those kind of small differences of cultural capital when you're talking about entering Hannah's life and, and wanting to have connections to those things that carry a different kind of. Of value. I didn't know this about you until I had already read and loved the novel. But you have this massive audience for your social media videos, which are about feminism and fashion and culture broadly. And so I thought it was perhaps very notable then that Sikkan largely avoids the online world. She even chastises herself for longing for a text notification on her phone. And I wonder what made you want to make Sikkan's world really kind of avoid and in some ways be fearful of that online existence.
- [33:56]
B
It felt realistic to me that someone who has been quite harshly bullied her whole childhood would be deeply skeptical of, you know, inviting social medias into her home. I think that it's. She's also such a sensitive soul. Like, she's extremely sensitive and just like Reading about news or being involved in political discussions, almost everything will rattle her and make her sort of almost lose hope in humanity. So she is, she's like, I think, rightly fearful of her phone. And I think that it's important to her to, to learn as an adult to stay away from too much noise. But also, I wanted this book to feel a bit timeless. I didn't want to mention rent apps or make it too contemporary because I feel like for me, you know, I haven't lived in Stockholm for such a long time that I wanted it to be, you know, this book could be set in, in 2010 or, you know, in, in 2030. It doesn't really matter.
- [35:04]
A
That's so interesting. Yeah, I, I, I found that to be true. Reading it, I was sometimes questioning myself whether we were exactly contemporary to our moment or perhaps a time a little bit earlier. Before I let you go, Jenny, I would love to know a little bit about what you've been reading and loving recently.
- [35:22]
B
I have been reading. I have two recommendations for you, Chris. I'm pretty sure you have at least heard of, if not read, things in nature, Merry Grow by Yiyun Li.
- [35:31]
A
Oh, yes. Yeah, it's on my, it's on my TBR pile. Tell me why you love it.
- [35:37]
B
Well, I have to warn you though that it's, it's a very difficult read. It's not something you should read when you're having a tough day. It's a, it's a memoir. Yiyun Lee writes about the suicide of her two sons who committed suicide, I think with seven years apart. And basically it's just like the most exquisite meditation on grief. I have not read anything like this ever. I feel like just writing this is such an extreme act of generosity to like it is to the world because, you know, all of us will go through grief and we will, you know, have, we will lose close ones in one way or another. And I think this book will be a really good company to you whenever you go through something dark like that. And also it's like what I appreciate about it. It's not there to comfort you, doesn't comfort at all. It's more just, just keep your company and, and you know, say that this is, this is what we go through and this is what it looks like and it's abysmal, it's, it's black, it's dark and you, it changes you as a person. I can't even tell you how many times I teared up reading this. Like, I usually never cry, but I, I, you know, even afterwards when I put it down, I had a drink with my partner. It was like a Saturday evening. And I just started telling him about this book. And even he started crying just from listening to me.
- [36:56]
A
Just, wow. Oh, my goodness.
- [36:58]
B
Yeah. So I, I, I don't recommend, I.
- [37:00]
A
Don'T, I'm not going to read this in the winter. I think I have to wait. Wait for the spring.
- [37:04]
B
Well, I think actually maybe winter is better because you're, you're already a little bit, you know, blue. Maybe, maybe a good summer day with this one. No, but, but, you know, it's, it's, I think it's an essential read. It's something that everyone should have read. It's, it's so beautiful. I'm, I'm awestruck by it.
- [37:23]
A
So that's my, and I, then I will read it for sure.
- [37:26]
B
You definitely should. Yes. My second recommendation is a bit lighter, thank goodness. Yes. I just sold my third novel to Maisie Cochrane at Tin House in the U.S. congratulations.
- [37:39]
A
Tin House is a wonderful, wonderful press.
- [37:43]
B
Yes, I, I absolutely love them. So I feel very lucky. And Macy sent me a package of a bunch of books that she has published. And in that, in that pile was two books from Joy Williams.
- [37:56]
A
I, I love Joy Williams.
- [37:58]
B
She, I mean, I had actually never read her before, which is shameful. But I read, I've read her slim book called 99 Stories of God.
- [38:07]
A
Oh, I don't, I don't know this one.
- [38:09]
B
Okay. So it's, it's basically just like the title says. It's 99 short little stories about God or religion in different ways. It's almost like flash fiction, Just one page per story, more or less. And it's so strange and so wonderful and so energetic. But I even more want to recommend one of Joe Williams's short stories that I recently read in, in the Paris Review. It's called after the Haiku Period. And it is, you know, one of the most like, singular and, and wonderful and electric short stories I've ever read. It's so fun, so dark and, and just like she, she and I. What I appreciate about Jo Williams is that she, she's a vegan, just like I am. And she often talks about animal rights in her, in her stories. So I've never come across that before from a writer. So I really appreciate her in a nuanced and complex way, discussing the relationship that humans have to other animals.
- [39:12]
A
Well, that sounds amazing. I'll link to both the, of those things, including to the Paris Review story, which I'm going to run out and read later today because it just sounds amazing, but I. I really can't recommend enough to my listeners. What a Time to Be Alive by Jenny Mustard. It will feel similarly electric and new and you will be so glad to be in the voice of Sikkin as she goes on her journey of self discovery. And it was a real joy to get to talk to you about it. Jenny.
- [39:43]
B
Thank you so much Chris for this wonderful conversation. And also thank you for doing this podcast and for keeping me company many an afternoon at the gym.
- [39:51]
A
Oh my goodness, that's so nice. Thank. Thank you Jenny and I hope we'll have a chance to talk again soon.
- [39:57]
B
Me too. Thank you, Chris.
- [40:03]
A
Well, that's all from me for now. My thanks to the brilliant Jenny Mustard for coming on to talk about her latest novel, what a Time to Be Alive. You can find links to purchase what a Time to Be Alive and all of Jenny's recommended books at the website Burned by books Dot com. There you'll find all of our previous episodes, links to buy a podcast T shirt and ways to get in contact. As you listen, take a moment to rate the show on itunes, Spotify, and now YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts. Until next time, this has been burned by books. Sam.