Get Booked – Jane Hennigan, Moths 240423

Hello, I'm Hazel and this is Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Supporting women's and men's emotional wellbeing. I hope you're all well and ready to get booked. Today on the show, we are going to be discussing the book Moths by Jane Hennigan. You can find out more about Jane at janehennigan.com. Moths is told through a then and now lens from the perspective of our main character Mary, who is in her young married life and in her 70s respectively. She lives in a world where the men have been locked away for everyone's safety, or killed as they were infected with a killer toxic thread from moths. These dystopian novels are getting increasingly scarier due to how pandemic research is going. They're not completely unconceivable anymore. We've seen the effects of COVID-19, and The Last of Us is based on factual evidence of a disaster that could actually happen. So I'm super excited to chat to Jane on today's show. Get Booked, it's all about opening discussions and offering support by the incredible writing community out there. Come and join us, get involved. And if you want to catch up on previous shows, you can at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked and on our SoundCloud. If you're looking for a little bit of inspiration as to what you should read next, please do pop on to my book review blog at hazelbutterfield.com. There are lashings of different books on there to whet your appetite. Next week on Get Booked, we're going to be talking to Senta Rich about her book Hotel 21. That has actually been optioned by MGM as a TV series in a major deal, no less. Senta Rich began her career as an advertising copywriter. During this time, she also wrote radio plays and articles for magazines. As soon as she could, she left advertising and moved into the world of film and TV. She currently writes for TV shows in Ireland and the UK, including drama and animation. Her work has featured on RTE, BBC, CBeebies, Amazon Prime, and other international and European networks. She also has a feature film in development and Hotel 21 is her first novel. Senta has a BA Hons in Philosophy from Liverpool University. She has a strong background and interest in psychology, with particular emphasis on Jungian psychology. She's originally from London but now lives in Dublin with her husband and son. Now, Hotel 21. Noel is a model employee, or she'd have you think. The trouble is, is that she can't help taking a little souvenir as she cleans the hotels where she works. Nothing of value, just tokens of happy normal lives: a lipstick, a hair clip, some tweezers. And by the time the guests have noticed, she's gone. As she starts on her 21st hotel, she's determined to beat her record of 1 month in a 5-star hotel before suspicion falls on her. But when she meets her new colleagues, her plans are complicated. These women aren't just hands pushing carts down lonely hotel corridors. They are women with lives full of happiness and worry and pain and joy. The kind of lives Noël has never known how to live. They make her wonder what it might be like to have real friends, people to stick around for. Will the women at Hotel 21 give her the courage to claim the life she deserves? I'm so looking forward to chatting to Santa Rich next week about Hotel 21. Make sure you put it in the diary. Get Booked is played out every day of the week at 5 PM at women's radio station and every Tuesday at 4 PM at men's radio station. Right now, time on Get Booked to discuss moths with today's author, Jane Hennigan. And I really don't know where to start with this one. It's such a clever and introspective fictional look at a world in which men had to be contained and sedated for their own safety, leaving women in charge, following on from a plague of moths carrying an infection that attacks the male central nervous system, rendering them a blue, where they die pretty quickly, or affecting their whole psyche, that turns them into prolifically violent and murderous manics. However, we still need to procreate to keep humanity alive. The men need to be cared for, both those infected and those from being infected. 40 years on and the world is evolving. Anyone younger than 40 has no real understanding of how it was before. It is inconceivable that these terrified men protected in confinement with limited knowledge and uses they could ever rule the world. Could a potential vaccine be the answer? Decisions need to be made about what is best for everyone's futures. Those originally infected are dying off. The only men left are those born since the pandemic that no longer have inherent ideas of superiority or expectation. Quite importantly, so many complex ideas, opinions, and basic human rights issues to be addressed. And quite frankly, this book is brilliantly written. Jane, thank you for joining us on Get Booked to discuss Moths. I can't wait to get started. Well, thank you very much for having me. Yes, that's a pretty comprehensive, um, description you've just done there. Thank you. Yeah, I was so absorbed in the book, and as I said a little bit off air, I kind of spent a couple of weeks just getting really angry with men, uh, which it's not the aim, but it's just that whole We get angry when we've got complex feelings about, well, anything and everything. Um, the book is fantastic. Why don't you kick off by telling us a little bit about yourself? Oh, okay. Uh, so I am— so I've been writing probably about 10 to 15 years. Yeah. Um, before that I was in marketing, and then I went from marketing— I worked in marketing for about 15 years, and then I was a teacher for 6 years, an English teacher for 6 years. And, and then I went and did a master's in creative writing at University of Surrey. And then kind of the pandemic hit, and I was, I was toying with the idea of giving up teaching at that point anyway. And I had, during my master's, started to write a number of novels. I had written a couple of novels before that as well. And, and I writing Moths during the pandemic, although I had started writing Moths before the pandemic hit. And yeah, I decided to give it a go. I decided to stop teaching. There were other things happening in my life at the time as well. There were sort of relatives that needed looking after and such like, which didn't work with kind of with being a teacher. Life gets in the way. Exactly. And it kind of gave me the confidence actually to come out of teaching and to start writing in earnest. And yeah, then, yeah, so that's basically where I got to. And then I started writing Moths as part of my master's MA in creative writing, and it went down well. It went down really well at the kind in the workshops. I got a lot of encouragement. I met some fantastic writing friends whilst I was on the Masters as well, and they were a huge encouragement to me, and we would swap work quite often, and it just kept the focus on writing. And yeah, so I ended up writing Moths. I can imagine if you started before COVID-19 and then continued afterwards, I guess that changed your tack a little bit because you actually had real-time knowledge of how certain pandemics affect how we live. I mean, these dystopian novels, they're getting increasingly scarier due to how pandemic research is going. They're not completely inconceivable. We've seen the effects of COVID-19, and The Last of Us on Sky Atlantic or Sky something or other is based on factual evidence of a disaster that could actually happen. So these novels, we kind of, as I said before when I was getting a little bit kind of stressed but so engrossed when I was reading it because it just stirs so much inside of you. You really kind of get into the psyche and you cover so many different viewpoints. So well. I mean, the hugest congratulations on writing the book. And I know you released it— was it last year? And then it's got picked up again, and you've been, you've been taken on by an agent, and it's getting re-released with slight changes, and I've just been released. Am I correct? Yes. So, um, well, your first point, uh, when I— so writing a pandemic before a pandemic and writing a pandemic during a pandemic are very, very different things. And I actually had to take 6 months away from writing it in the actual pandemic, because there's something ghoulish about writing a pandemic when you're surrounded by the effects of, you know, of that, of a disease that is, you know, that is making people ill and killing people. So I could— so for a long time, I just couldn't. I mean, I imagine it's the same for a lot of people in the pandemic as well. For a long time, I couldn't really concentrate on very much except just getting through the next day and not thinking too deeply about anything. And I definitely wasn't going to think too deeply about a story I was writing about a pandemic. So, actually, as it happened, I'd written most of the story by the time the pandemic hit. Later on in the pandemic, when it— weird to say— it kind of normalized a bit, then I went back to editing and changing some of the parts of the novel in line with what I now know— knew how the government might react, how other countries might react, what what the fear was like. There is a lot of fear in the book, and that fear comes from the actual fear that I was feeling during the pandemic. So yeah, there is a big difference between the fantasy of a pandemic and the reality of a pandemic. One you can write excitedly into the, you know, and just carry on with it. The other one you think very carefully about the reality of it. So yeah, it did change the novel. And yeah, well, I think also moths, it is not like COVID-19. We will look back on COVID-19 in 40 years and it's, you know, it's a bit like SARS. We get over it. We'll probably slightly change the way we do things, but we're not locking up people and changing the whole way that life is kind of run. It is very different to COVID-19, but it still is kind of helping us understand, you know, what could happen with these slightly more dangerous pandemics. I mean, have you watched The Last of Us? I guess that's something that's— I absolutely loved The Last of Us. I consumed every episode. It is the exact sort of thing I love. So yeah, I thought it was brilliant. I loved it. I mean, obviously terrifying, um, But yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed, and I will watch any, I will watch any disaster movie. I will watch any pandemic kind of TV series. I was a big fan of The Walking Dead, right up, you know, I stuck with it right up to the end. I, yeah, so I guess also the book is a kind of reaction to many of the kind of dystopian stories and apocalyptic stories that I've read, you know, throughout my life. So if I was going to write a story, it was, you know, it was probably going to be in that area, right? Yeah, no, fair enough. And of course, you've got the two timelines as well. So the second timeline was quite easy to write, um, in the pandemic because it, as you say, it's not a reaction, it's not a reflection of reality. It's a very different world. I wrote about a very different world. Um, but the first timeline, i.e., the past when the pandemic actually hits, um, then that story was very difficult to write. The— what really got to me is if it was the other way round and if it affected the women's central nervous system and how the men would react. And that sent me off spiraling in so many different ways because of how the men had to be contained. If women were contained in the same way, I think that puts a lot of fear into everybody. I think you wrote it quite sympathetically with a lot of thought taken and put into how they were treated and how the system, the new system, had to be managed. Obviously, obviously there's lots of controversial issues with 40 years on, and especially as all the old manics are kind of dying out and you're, you're protecting all the the new men from even contracting the disease or the virus. Um, but obviously the, the concept of a vaccine, which can throw so many issues as to what can be controlled— the only reason that people are walking around safe is because it was highly controlled, and if you no longer have that control, chaos can ensue. Yeah, I think the story is riddled with tough and controversial viewpoints. Do you have a favorite? So, um, so this idea that, um, what will happen when this vaccine— you know, if this vaccine— when this vaccine— spoiler alert, there's a vaccine— uh, when this vaccine comes out, whether women will want men back into— well, whether women will want men to come back into society. What will happen then? Will the, will the, um, will the kind of, uh, the gender power dynamics revert to what they were, or will they continue as they are? So these are, you know, questions that I absolutely love to think about. What, what does gender mean when there is, you know, when men are locked away and there is in the society, in society there is just the one gender to, uh, to kind of, uh, on display, as it were. Um, so these are, these are questions that I, I really enjoyed, uh, looking at in the book. I also had a bit of fun with the idea of just flipping the, the script a little and, you know, having men treated basically like 1950s housewives. They were, they were— that is kind of the, the vibe I was getting. They, they are patronized and they are, um, seen as weaker and just not seen as, as intelligent as the women. Well, if you're constantly told that you're not as intelligent and you are the weaker sex, eventually you're going to believe it if you've never known any different, right? Absolutely, yeah. And if you have no, um, examples of strong, uh, male, uh, figureheads or leaders, uh, then of course they're not going to be able to assimilate any kind of a positive male role model. So they would feel like that at that point. Yeah, so that was me kind of, you know, playing with the— with notions, with current notions of gender as well. Well, the female powers that be 40 years on, they've got a lot of tough decisions to make, but human rights are human rights no matter what. But these men that have been contained for their own safety, they have been medically subdued as well to keep— for their own safety, to make sure that they don't kind of lose it and want to break free, because if they do break free, they will contract the virus and that is the end. But if they're given the virus, given the vaccine, then that would stop and they'd experience a whole different type of man in their lives that they've never actually— the majority of people have never come across. Even, you know, anyone 40, 45 and below have never experienced that. I just think the concept just sent me off in such overwhelm. I mean, every now and again, you know, there'd just be, there'd be something that would happen and, and either, even if it's just the male kids in my family or, or, you know, my partner and I just suddenly be like, mm-hmm, just imagine, oh look, there's a moth flying around and it does kind of I did get a little bit evil. It did, it just invoked a lot in me, and I think that's the power of a fantastic book. I mean, the response must be similar to mine, I guess. Yeah, I mean, the response is mixed. Some people are horrified. I've been accused of not being a feminist because some of the female characters in my book are evil. So, I— but in general, it has been a hugely positive reaction to the book. So, as you say, the— I self-published the book. So, in 2021, I self-published the book. I tried to get representation. To be fair, I went to some websites and they said, "Absolutely no pandemic stories," like literally written on their website. I was like, "Oh no." Oh no. Of course, this is during, uh, COVID, and, um, so I, I was like, I'm not going to get much joy. So I did send it off to a few agents, but I didn't get a lot of, a lot of joy. So I, I self-published it. I found a few Facebook groups and websites online, and I learned about self-publishing and, uh, the things you can do and things not to do. I went and got a cover off of, um, a kind of website for, I think, $90. I think I got the COVID for, and I kind of just popped it up on Amazon. So I could show my friends and I went, there it is. And then it kind of took off. It went really well. We put a kind of moderate marketing campaign behind it. I said I was in marketing before. Part of the marketing I was in was in online marketing, so I had a little bit of experience about how to kind of do an Amazon, a small Amazon campaign. And yeah, it grew from there and it got, and it ended up, I think there was sort of well over 10,000 sales in the end. And then I had a, I had a little bit of interest from a TV production company who emailed me. And so I then, on the back of that, that didn't end up coming to anything, but on the back of that, I went and, and went to a couple more agents who'd been recommended to me by a friend. And one of those agents, Liza, uh, Dubloc at Mouchins said, yeah, I think this is a great book and I think we can do something with this. And, uh, by that time I had the sequel, uh, on pre-order as well. So the sequel was getting quite a lot of pre-orders. You talk about what it, what it would be like if men, um, came out into the world and how would they be treated. Now the sequel is literally that entire story. No way! I can't wait. How men come into the world. These men, wide-eyed, innocent, have been brought up in these facilities. They then get they again come out into the world in small, small groups initially, and how they are treated, um, out in the, out in the real world. And obviously they come up against a lot of misandry, a lot of bias, a lot of people don't want them around. Uh, so again, playing with the, with the kind of gender norms there. But yeah, I find it interesting that you said that some of the reviews, people were kind of accusing you of not being a feminist. But let's be honest, this book isn't just— it's not male bashing. It's about society. And, you know, there are some fantastic women out there. There's some horrific women out there, in the same way that there's some fantastic men out there and there's some horrific men out there. And some people just sit in between, jumping over, you know, as to who they want to be. And I think it would be completely inaccurate if you'd just written all the female characters like they were absolute saviors with only the best interests of everybody else at heart. Yeah, I know. And, and I, I have, uh, you know, I have sons, I have a husband. Uh, I'm not, I'm not interested in, um, in, in just saying men are bad and leaving the conversation at that. I wanted to look at toxic masculinity. The second book, Toxic, looks at, uh, you know, this idea of toxic masculinity. It takes it out of my— it takes out of the male hands. I was interested in doing a book where, like, Nearly all of the characters, in fact, all of the characters who move the plot along were women, especially an older woman. So, you know, I wanted— I didn't want to write like a Jack Reacher kind of like apocalypse action movie type thing. I wanted it to be more subtle than that. But I do think that it needs to be more subtle than either women are the ones that are locked up and tortured, which often happens in dystopias, or that, you know, men are just, evil and bad. And of course, the first timeline, men, men do turn into crazed killers. I was writing this during the MeToo movement. I was writing this during the Harvey Weinstein when that was coming to light. And also, you know, Trump was saying some weird stuff. And, um, I was, I was enraged. I was utterly, utterly enraged at all of the things that was happening. And that rage went into those kind of first, that first timeline of that novel. Do you know what? It's, it's quite interesting because I read another dystopian novel. I can't remember the name of the book. It was a couple of years ago and it's something like— the website's something like Eat Biscuits. It's about this bloke who's 600 pounds, is ridiculously overweight, uh, everyone gets infected with this virus and they all turn into what is similar to a manic, but it can happen to men and women. And they just came out with this vitriolic horrific nonsense similar to what happened to the Mannix. And I turned around to the author and I said, you know, where did you get your inspiration from for such horrific narrative when they turn? He goes, the Daily Mail comments, it's easy. Wow, okay. Oh, that is a fantastic idea of an army of zombies, you know, vicious zombies made up from the Daily Mail comments. Genius. You know what, I think, I think the author was Andrew Shanahan. I think I've come across him on Goodreads. Yes, and I think he— I— his novels, one's a, one's a, um, one's a bourbon and one's— yeah, that's it. Yeah, and the other one is, um, oh, it's a custard cream. And they're both, you know, they're both on my to-be-read, uh, pile, definitely. Well, the first one, that is the one, and he said, yeah, all the narrative was from the Daily Mail. No, he's brilliant. He's got such a dry sense of humor, which I completely love with this as well. And it's quite a different concept as to who the hero ends up being in the story. And, you know, what is our perception of a hero anyway? And I find it interesting what you said about self-publishing, because it's a lot quicker to self-publish, and it might be a bit more work, but you receive the majority of the benefits. But then you've got all these publishers and agents sitting there going, I was quite interested in that, but let's see how she goes when she self-publishes, and then we'll swoop in and take the glory. So is this a new, you know, is this a new model of publishing possibly, that people, instead of like taking a debut author and not knowing what's going to happen, they say, you know, off you go, you see how you go, and then we'll pick it up if it does well? There is a possibility, I guess, although, you I think there's probably a risk there to publishers. If people really enjoy self-publishing, then of course they may not come back to the publisher and say, you know, I'm ready to come with you now, now I've done very well. I know there are a lot of people self-publishing who are earning large, large amounts of money from self-publishing, and it was, you know, it was I, it was a consideration when I was, um, when I was looking, when my agent was looking for a deal, whether that, whether it would be, you know, a good idea for me to, to do it. And, um, yeah, I mean, I, I went into, I, I looked at the situation very carefully and, um, you know, had some, some quite interesting conversations with Angry Robot. And, uh, in the end it turned out that it, it was in my best interest to traditionally publish at that time. But there's a lot of people that don't do that. I think the thing is, if you have success with a novel, they've kind of got you over a barrel because with success comes the popularity, and then you need to make sure that legally you've got everything covered when you're published, making sure that you're not crossing over into anything where you could possibly get sued or something can come up and you could end up, you know, any money that you do manage to make, somebody tries to take it away from you. There is that legal security of having a publisher and then being in charge of what is actually released into the world. Absolutely. And self-publishing is a huge amount of work. It's huge. You do everything from, from marketing to, uh, to, you know, writing to covers to proofing to everything you have to do yourself. You are on your own. It's very lonely, um, whereas when you have a team, then that process is a lot more enjoyable, I found. But as you say, you know, you, you have, you have control, and things happen a lot quicker when you're, when you're self-publishing. Yeah, I, I think it's great that there's these options out there now as well, because no matter how good your book is, people just aren't taking risks. If you wrote a terrible book but you were vaguely famous because you did a stint on Love Island, I'm sure you'd find a publisher very quickly. Yeah, I'm sure you would. Yeah, nothing other authors look at people who are famous who've published books and just go, "Oh, it's fine, there's enough for everyone, it's okay." I love about my job here at GetBooked because I predominantly I interview emerging authors or self-published authors who, you know, they've got fantastic books, but, you know, they need to find more creative ways to get their story out there. And I think I'm so lucky. There's some brilliant books out there as well that are in the mainstream, but I love coming across books like yours. And I mean, obviously you've, you've been taken on by a publisher as well now, and I'm and you've sold thousands. But I love the idea of trying to help people appreciate just how many fantastic debut authors are out there. And even when they've released a really good book, the second and third, either because they just want to keep on publishing books or because they can't find a publisher, or they just find it easier to stay self-published. You know, the control is completely with you, as is the profit. Yeah, it's true. That's a tough one. Now, I gather you've done a little bit of a reading of the book. Can you tell us a little bit about the reading that you've done? What part of the book is it? Well, very unoriginally, I chose the beginning. Brilliant. So the beginning sets up the whole story. So there's a prologue at the beginning, and that's where you are kind of introduced to your narrator, Mary. Who, as I mentioned, is an older protagonist. She's in her early 70s for most of the book. There are flashbacks where she goes back to her early 30s. And yeah, so you're introduced to her and her kind of voice. So she's quite introspective, she's quite thoughtful, she's got quite— she's quite dry, she's got quite a dry sense of humour. She doesn't kind of She's accepted her kind of place in the world at that point. It's not the world that she grew up in. It's not really a world she understands very well, but she's kind of accepted it as the status quo, and that's the kind of part you get. And then kind of the inciting incident, I guess, is that she meets a woman of a similar age, a little bit younger than her, and and they kind of, they bond by talking about what it was like firstly before the infestation and then during the infestation. And they have this kind of bonding session. So, that's what the first part of the book is. And then that leads into kind of flashbacks as to what it was like. And of course, from the reader's point of view, they will recognize the flashbacks as, you know, kind of what it's like now, really. I wrote it in the present, as it were, and then everything, everything goes horribly wrong with the infestation of the moths. It does. And actually, right at the beginning of the book, which basically tells you the kind of ride you're going to be going on, is when Mary, as a teacher, one of her friends is transgender. Hmm. And that whole concept just really got me in the gut. I was like, there's this woman who's— I, well, she's identified as a woman for so many years, but all of a sudden she realizes that biologically she's not. And so she is going to be affected in the same way as any other man. And I just thought of all the work and how she sees herself. That, that really struck me. Yeah, yeah. So Claire, Claire is a heartbreaking character. Um, I obviously, if I'm doing a book that involves discussions on gender, then I can't just stick to, you know, kind of a, a, a kind of homonormative, uh, general definitions of gender. So yeah, Claire's journey through that book is problematic. All, all gender plagues are problematic from that perspective because it does at some point in the narrative boil human beings down to biology. And of course, from a social point of view, from a gender point of view, that is not how, that is not how trans people view themselves, and it's not how many people, myself included, view trans people. So yeah, it was a difficult choice. It was a difficult character to write. There was the kind of possibility to look at ideas of, oh, well, maybe if she's taking hormones, maybe that protects her in some way. But then I was thinking, well, that doesn't protect trans women who are not taking hormones, who have not transitioned. It doesn't protect— it doesn't protect trans women who are in environments where it would be unsafe, countries where it'd be unsafe for them to transition. So what am I saying there, that only, only trans women who are transitioning are, you know, can be grouped like this. So in the end, I went with the biology, and it was a difficult choice. It was a difficult choice on that part, and I reflect that in her, in what happens to Claire. I think you just put a concept across. I think it was done very well in a very unjudgmental way. I think it just showed the difficulties of, well, a pandemic. We don't get to choose who it affects and how it affects us. But yeah, it's— you hit the ground running and you kept running at 120 miles all the way through. I tried. Please tell me Mary's in Toxic. Oh no, not the face. Please tell me she's not, is she? You're not allowed to say. Well, I, I know it'd be disingenuous for me to say yes, she— so yes, she is into Toxic, she is. But, um, yeah, perhaps not for as long as you might think. I mean, she was in her 70s anyway, and she'd led quite a hard life, at least for the last 40 Yeah, and she's just gone through fairly, a fairly physically rigorous kind of thing when the, when she went out in the eclipse. That, that affects, um, that affects women as well. So, uh, yeah, um, wow. Yeah, briefly. Well, um, I'm a little bit nervous about these mental well-being tips. I always ask for 3 top tips on, uh, from, from all of my guests on Get Booked. Um, yeah, what would be your 3 top tips? Oh, I was thinking about this. Um, I mean, I, I, um, just as, as, as most people have, I've had periods of, of, uh, poor mental health. Um, and I've had periods where that mental health is better. Um, I am, I, I'm currently feeling like in, in a place where, where things are, are pretty much okay, you know, they're, they're running along, uh, nicely. But that's not to say that, uh, you know, it can't go off the rails. I would say my first My first tip is I practice just being nice to myself in my internal voice. So as if I'm like a— I talk to myself sometimes as if I'm like a 5-year-old. And you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't shout at a 5-year-old. You wouldn't tell them that they're stupid. You wouldn't say, oh, what are you doing that for? Oh, I hate you. Or, you know, it's kind of that negative self-talk that can sometimes go there. I'm just very careful that if any of that negative self-talk comes along, or if I make a mistake, then I'm just— my internal voice is is quite nice to me and says, don't worry, I'll be okay. So that's, yeah, that's my first, that's, I would guess, and I've been doing that, you know, for a while. And so that I kind of, I'm used to that. The second tip, not everyone can do this, but recently about a year ago, I moved to the seaside and the, the just water and the sea and the ocean is just the best thing in the world for my own mental health. And most days I go for a walk along the beach and there's just something about that. And it, I have a walk and it's about a mile up and a mile back. And even when it's raining, and I put my music on really hard, really loudly, and that will generally, um, yeah, that would just generally sort me out. Nature's fantastic. I think that is— there's a lot to be said for people who live in Ireland and England where the weather can really just keep you inside a bit more— yeah, it's safe to do so. Yeah, no, definitely. I will. I've got a good coat and I will get it on and I will, uh, well, obviously I've got a little dog as well, so he needs to, he needs to go out. But, um, yeah, I will get myself out, um, whenever I can. And, um, yeah, thirdly, just, you know, friends and family. I rely on my friends and family, my friends and family rely on me. I'm very careful to make sure those relationships are okay. I kind of check that they're okay, um, regularly and Um, yeah, that's like, I guess that's my 3. Connection's so important, and even if for some reason you don't connect with your family well, find someone who you do connect with, even if it's, you know, your, your favorite newsagent down the road, or there's a particular club that you can join. Connecting and feeling like you belong somewhere is, is worth so much. And relationships take work, you know, whether it's with your family, whether it's with your friends, you know, I kind of, I'm aware that it takes some work. Work. Not a huge amount— if it's taking huge amounts of work, there's something wrong. But, you know, it takes, it takes some, some work just to make sure that, that's, that, that those relationships are all right, that they've, that there's nothing there that, that you need to be worried about. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. I love those. I think they're fantastic. Thank you so much, Jane, for joining us and Get Booked. And I cannot wait for Toxic. Yeah, March 24th. Yeah, March 24th, I think that comes out. So, uh, yeah, well, I'm very happy to beta test it for you. Okay, gotcha. Thank you so much for joining us on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. You're welcome. Thank you, thank you for having me. You are more than welcome. Jane Hennigan, Moths. Prologue. Where were you when it started? The question women of a certain age ask each other on long evenings when the younger women are not around to roll their eyes and look away. Or perhaps, 'Where were you when it ended?' depending on your point of view. And the other question that might follow, the one whispered, heads close together in that soft echo chamber of friendship: 'What do you miss?' But there are far fewer women of that age left now. Where were you when the stories started coming out of Venezuela and then Mexico? When did you first hear the news reports outlining pockets of ice unexplained deaths, violent attacks, and confused stories of mass psychosis. The moths, so the story goes, came from deep within the Amazon, silent, undisturbed, contained for millennia. Whether it was a warmer global climate or whether they were driven out by loggers or forest fires isn't clear. Whatever happened, out they came, away from natural predators Caterpillars nesting in damp corners and in the tops of trees, crossbreeding with common cousins and laying thousands upon thousands of eggs. Then 43 years ago, as any schoolgirl can tell you, the eggs hatched and an army of hungry caterpillars spread their tiny toxic threads on every breath of wind. This was the waking of the new world. Where were you, they ask, those who are left, at the death, the birth, the beginning, the end? Mary. Tuesdays and Thursdays, if I'm on duty, I oversee the residents as they wash their own bedding along with their daywear. Their attire is a plain grey ankle-length shift and canvas sandals. Decades ago, There were complaints that the shift was too much like a dress, that it made the men seem effeminate, but trousers have too many seams and creases in which a tiny poisoned thread could hide, so it was decided that a shift would have to do. Everyone got used to it after a while. The men said that they enjoyed the freedom a skirt provided. Now few men alive I might remember a word like effeminate, or a word like freedom for that matter. At my age I don't have to work nights. In fact, if I'd wanted to, I could have retired years ago, gone to live in one of the villages beyond the facility. My young colleagues, all in their 20s and 30s, would prefer it if I did, if I just scuttled off. It would save them the effort of deferring to me, then rolling their eyes when I I left the room. But I like the rhythm here. I like the men, especially the new arrivals. They make me think of my son. What would I do if I retired anyway? Grow vegetables, help out in the schools. I've been to the schools as a special visitor. I stared down at the girls, all of them cross-legged on the floor, a garden of bobbing little faces staring up at me. Those are the times when I felt really out of place. I couldn't even answer their questions about the time before. They lacked words like cinema, takeaway, or boyfriend. I don't have to do the night watch, but last week I did it anyway, just to prove to myself that I still could. Also, I knew there was a transfer on the rota, Olivia. She was not as old as me, but old enough, I thought, when I caught a glimpse of her at breakfast. It's long, the night shift, 9 hours, and with the men sleeping there's little to occupy your time. Olivia and I sat in the dimly lit carer's station just outside the dormitories and talked about Coventry, her old facility, the food, the men, and how the filtration system had failed infecting 3 of the dorms. She was a sturdy woman, not fat except exactly, but heavy, curvy as it used to be known. Her hair was brown and cropped and she moved slowly, pausing before she spoke. As we talked, she had a habit of nodding just slightly along with my words. It was like a tacit agreement, softly nudging along the conversation. She talked of her wife Lucy and of their two daughters, both grown, one working in agriculture and the other in marine conservation. I didn't ask about sons, of course. It would have been inappropriate. She asked me about myself. Safe questions. Curious rather than probing. Did I commute from one of the villages? Had I villis— visited the shrine at Waterloo? Was I married? All of which I answered in the negative and followed up with a polite question of my own. But I was listening for something. In particular for for a signal, an offering that might lead to a more interesting conversation. It came late in the shift, past midnight. I'd nearly given up waiting, and when it arrived, it was a peach. We'd been talking about the dogs in the local woodlands, whether the animals still had a sense of their domestic origins or whether they were fully wild now. Not an incendiary topic, 'But at least we graduated from pleasantries.' She paused, this time for a beat longer, then said quietly, 'In Coventry there was a ward sister who was keeping a man in her apartment.' I stared at her for a moment, confused, trying to work out what she meant. 'Like a servant?' I asked finally. She shook her head slowly and her eyes slid to mine. Mine. Like a husband. I couldn't help myself, my mouth hung open. Hearing the words spoken aloud felt odd, like an attack of déjà vu. Husband. Her voice had quietly lingered on the S, a conspiratorial and deliberate inflection. How did you— did you see him? I thought that she wasn't going to answer that she was going to change the subject. I half wanted her to, but she carried on. She kept it a secret, but I delivered food to her living quarters. She always asked for a large serving and kept the door to her suite half closed when I arrived. But one time I looked through the door jamb. He was just sitting at the table, just sitting there holding a drink. He was dressed Dressed in clothes from before. Her breath came quickly and her eyes shone in the low light of the carer's station. I felt a fierce sense of outrage towards this unknown ward sister. How dare she be so irresponsible? After all the suffering, the sacrifices, what gave her the right to endanger herself and him? What if he'd become infected? The filtration systems are weaker in the staff quarters. Surfaces less often scrubbed. I felt something bitter beneath my anger, fanning it. A man sitting at a table nursing a glass of wine or whiskey, beer perhaps, stretching his long legs, music playing in the background or the sound of the TV, the smell of cooked chicken. Just a man relaxing, glad to be home after a long day. Husband. Suddenly I was aware of Olivia watching me. She'd stopped nodding and was sitting completely still. She was weighing up my reaction. I chose my words carefully. 'But she must have known how dangerous that is.' No reply. She wanted more from me. She'd opened the door, but I had to walk through. I leaned in closer. 'What happened when the filtration failed? Was he infected?' 'Olivia shifted her heavy frame towards me and her voice was barely above a whisper. "I don't know, but the next time I went there after it was repaired, she was the only one in the room." A man's living, a man living in a sister's quarters. This sort of thing hadn't happened for decades. There was a time just after everything changed when we thought it would go back back to the way it was. We believed that we just had to wait it out and we could carry on, drag everything we knew with us. But then more waves of moths came, more heartbreak, more violence. Eventually we had to come to terms with what we had and what we would never have again. And now this. Were there secret affairs happening everywhere, or had this been a one run off. What could they even find to talk about together? It's not like before. They don't go out to work or read books, and there's no TV, no internet. The men just pass their time doing chores and crafts or gossiping in the rec room. Every now and then there's a campaign to improve the men's education— laminated reading materials, more advanced teaching for those who show aptitude— but the MWA comes back with the same documents again and again. Lack of resources. Higher priorities. Olivia leaned back, her round cheeks flushed. It was on the tip of my tongue. Did you report her? But of course she hadn't. This was her offering. The trust she sought to barter. I nodded and offered a tentative smile. She smiled back. After that, those quiet hours wrapped up together. We were protected, complicit. Our soft voices spread out into the night. 'Where were you when it started?' she asked. 'Tell me everything.' That was a reading of today's book, Moths, by the author Jane Hennigan. Thank you so much for listening to today's Get Booked. I've had so much fun chatting to Jane about her dystopian thriller that really does send you on an incredible journey and really get you thinking about some tough topics while entertaining you at the same time. Quick reminder that next week we're going to be discussing Hotel 21 with the author Senta Rich. It was published on the 27th of April by Bloomsbury Publishing and has already been optioned by MGM as a TV series in a major deal. Hotel 21 this one is about Noelle, who is a model employee, or so she would have you think. The trouble is that she just can't help taking a little souvenir as she cleans the hotels where she works. Nothing of value, just tokens of happy, normal lives. A lipstick, a hair clip, some tweezers, and by the time the guest has noticed, she's long gone. As she starts at her 21st hotel, she's determined to beat her record of 1 month in a 5-star hotel before suspicion falls on her. But when she meets her new colleagues, her plans are complicated. These women aren't just hands pushing carts down lonely hotel corridors. They are women with lives full of happiness and worry and pain and joy, the kind of lives Noelle has never known how to live. They make her wonder what it might be like to have real friends, people to stick around for. Will the women at Hotel 21 give her the courage to claim the life she deserves? A sharp, warm-hearted tale for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. So if that's your bag, make sure that you tune in next week to get booked with me, Hazel Butterfield, for women's and men's radio station. Enjoy the rest of your day!