It’s hard to voluntarily walk into darkness as a writer right now. But I feel exactly like you – for the reader’s sake, but also for our own sake – just in terms of choosing the world that we exist in while we’re writing. Obviously, books that are not short and fun have value. And actually for seven months I worked on another book, and looked up one day and thought this is neither short nor fun and set it aside.

I had a book come out in 2020, and I thought to myself, I want the next book I write to be short and fun. Because the world is so sharp and pointy, we need something nicer.Ĭurtis Sittenfeld: I totally agree. It really seems that people want to read about people falling in love and being good to each other. And I thought, I just want to write something lovely, where the stakes are kind of low, except on a personal level.

But when it came to starting it, I couldn’t do it, because the world after the pandemic just got worse. And one of them had become a kind of quite evil rich person. When I finished the last book I wrote, I had a big plan for a novel about a group of six characters who had been friends for 40 years. And I was thrilled at the idea of Curtis Sittenfeld writing in the romance genre. Marian Keyes: I was so excited when I heard that a new book from you was coming, because I would read anything you write. Their conversation took place over Zoom with both authors in their homes, Sittenfeld in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Keyes in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin.

Her new novel, Romantic Comedy, revolves around a TV sketch show based on the long-running US series Saturday Night Live, and dissects celebrity culture in a love story set during the pandemic, much of which takes place via email exchange. Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of seven novels, including American Wife and Rodham, reimaginings of the lives of Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. She is also the host, with Tara Flynn, of the BBC Radio 4 advice programme Now You’re Asking. Her books frequently feature characters dealing with issues such as addiction, bereavement and domestic violence.

Marian Keyes is the author of 15 best-selling novels, several of which centre on the daughters of the Walsh family the most recent is Again, Rachel.

Anna walsh marian keyes