Maggie O'Farrell

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the writer Maggie O'Farrell. She's the author of eight best-selling novels and her latest, Hamlet, won the Women's Prize for Fiction last year. Hamlet tells the story of William Shakespeare's lost son, who died when he was just eleven. It's the story of a life told through a death, and it's not her first. Maggie's hit memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am, relayed 17 of her own brushes with mortality, including her experience of a childhood illness so severe she was not expected to survive. It was this episode and the protracted period of convalescence that followed it that made her a voracious reader. Even as an adult with books of her own to write, she can still get through four novels a week. Her career as an author grew out of this love of reading and a desire to subvert the standard advice, write what you know. She says, you have to write to satisfy some urge in you, to answer some question about something that you don't comprehend. I find I have to write in an unconscious vacuum where I pretend it's just for me.

Presenter1:44

Maggie O'Farrell, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much, Lauren. Now presumably, novelists are usually or even if it's subconsciously sort of collecting and percolating ideas that might eventually turn into a book. How does that process work for you? When do you know that your next book is starting to take shape?

Maggie O'Farrell2:02

Well I think all books creep up on you actually and I think you don't necessarily choose the books. I think the books choose you. I think the best book you can possibly write is the one you can't not write. It's the one that's demanding your attention. It's tugging your sleeve. It's hanging onto your coat. It's the voice that you cannot silence and you just you can't avoid it. You just have to go with it.

Presenter2:23

Working from home is the norm for you, but it must have been a big change working from home under lockdown with all the kids at home as well. How has lockdown affected your working life this past year or so?

Maggie O'Farrell2:34

It has been a challenge. I think not only finding the sort of mental space to write, but actually the physical space to write, has been tricky. You know, there were times, particularly over the summer, where, you know, it was my husband's turn to be

Maggie O'Farrell2:46

on the home schooling thing and I was trying to write and you know at every ten minutes somebody would come in, they'd need a jam jar, they'd need a pen, they'd lost their pencil case and actually I was so desperate at that point that I thought, Okay, I have to find somewhere'cause I need to concentrate on what I'm doing and I

Maggie O'Farrell2:58

ended up hiding inside my youngest daughter's Wendy house, which is tiny. I couldn't even stand up, but I I crouched in there with my laptop on my knee and it was fantastic. Nobody found me for about two hours, apart from the cat, and he did not disturb me.

Presenter3:12

Of course, you're going to share your discs with us today, and we're about to hear your first. Do you listen to music while you're writing at all?

Presenter3:19

Yeah.

Maggie O'Farrell3:19

I have to write in absolute total silence. I find any kind of tiny noise, even if it's the fridge making a slightly annoying hum, really intrusive. But actually, what I do is I use music as a sort of means to get me to the place of writing, so to allow my real everyday life to recede. So I use music as a bridge, in a sense, between my Coitidian world and my creative world. What I will do is play a certain track over and over again, maybe for 15 minutes or even half an hour or so, while I'm getting ready to write.

Presenter3:50

Well, with that in mind, I think we'd better hear your first disc to day. What

Maggie O'Farrell3:53

Have you chosen?

Maggie O'Farrell3:55

This is Elephant Gun by Beirut, and this is one of my favourite tracks of all time. I absolutely love it. And Beirut is one of those.

Maggie O'Farrell4:02

bands that I use again and again when I'm getting ready to write.

Maggie O'Farrell4:07

He has this achingly pure voice and these fascinating counterpoint melodies and the way it bills and the melody passes from one instrument to another. I absolutely love this track.

Speaker 44:18

If I was young, I'd flee this town I buried my dreams underground, as did I. We drink to die, we drink tonight Far from home, and nothing comes as taken down one by one, we'll lay it down. It's not been found, it's not around.

Presenter4:50

Beirut and Elephant Gun. Maggie O'Farrell Hamlet is your most recent novel, and as I said, it won the Women's Prize for Fiction. It was also Waterstone's Book of the Year. But I know that your interest in Shakespeare's son first spoke when you were a teenager. What happened?

Maggie O'Farrell5:04

So I was studying Hamlet at school for my higher English and I was lucky enough to have an absolutely brilliant teacher at school.

Maggie O'Farrell5:14

Called Mr. Henderson. He's one of those teachers that completely changes the way you see the world and you see literature and what it can and can't do.

Maggie O'Farrell5:21

And he just mentioned in passing one day that Shakespeare had had a son called Hamlet, who had died four or five years before Shakespeare wrote the play Hamlet.

Maggie O'Farrell5:31

The idea of this lost son just really got under my skin, and I have a really clear memory of sitting in my

Maggie O'Farrell5:37

Very cold classroom in Scotland and looking down at the cover of the you know school issue play and putting my finger over the L.

Maggie O'Farrell5:46

And thinking, well, it's the same name, and what does that mean? You know, I think Shakespeare is he's such a mysterious figure to all of us, despite all the amount of work we have of him. But in that brief moment of him

Maggie O'Farrell5:57

Calling a play after his dead son, he becomes briefly visible as a human being.

Presenter6:03

And the names were used interchangeably at the time, is that right?

Maggie O'Farrell6:06

Yeah, so they are completely interchangeable and they used for each other in all the Paris records of the time. So it is the same name because obviously spelling in Elizabethans' times was a lot less stable than it is now. It's time for your next disc today, Maggie. What are we going to hear? This is Sit Down by the Fire by the Pogues. And I knew I had to have some Irish music in my mix. When my parents, when we were growing up, they had an awful lot of traditional Irish folk music in the house. We had a lot of the Dubliners and the Chieftains and the Clancy brothers. I remember my dad taking us to see the Chieftains a couple of times. This track obviously is from my youth. This is from when I was a teenager. I have a strange memory of.

Speaker 16:14

Was it

Maggie O'Farrell6:42

Being in Donegao being driven down a very vitiginous cliff road by my grandfather.

Maggie O'Farrell6:48

And my cousin and I were standing on the back of the driver's seat with our heads out of the panel in the roof. And for some reason, in my head, the chorus of this song is playing on my grandfather's tape machine that he had on the passenger seat, which cannot be true because I was probably five or six at the time, and this wasn't recorded as I've seen it. So it just goes to show the fallacy of memory. But I think, obviously, something with this rhythm and this beat, I've always loved the way Mayhem is counterbalanced with this finely calibrated emotions in Irish music, the way the two can coexist in one song or in one chorus. So, yeah, so I would love this on my desert island.

Speaker 17:06

This is gonna be a good one.

Speaker 47:26

Sit down by the fire and tell you a story, it's telling you a way to play And I'm thinking I creep you everyone's sleep and you wish you had it instead There isn't the most in the world, it isn't the wind in the world Every night they put Janet all in the world, done the way out of hell Don't see you asleep when you wake up steering The cold is a funny attempt of a ring They live in a snoring and treason I heard a laugh and a tapping of free

Speaker 47:47

A destiny, a destiny wind, the top of the window in my window, sitting in a furious sin

Presenter7:52

The Pogues and sit down by the fire. So Maggie O'Farrell, you were born in Northern Ireland, but I know that you left there when you were two. You lived in South Wales before moving to Scotland as a teenager. Where I wonder do you consider home?

Maggie O'Farrell8:06

Well, it's funny. I I'm not really sure would be the answer. I I consider myself to be a hyphenated person, so I have dual nationality, so I'm both Irish and British. I feel at home in both, but also neither at the same time. So I think that's a very common feeling for anyone who has lived between different countries.

Presenter8:25

In your memoir, I Am, I am, I am, you write powerfully about the time that you contracted viral encephalitis as a young child. It was devastating, struck out of the blue and you missed a year of school and spent a very long time after that convalescing. When you look back to that time, what do you remember most?

Maggie O'Farrell8:45

Uh

Presenter8:45

Yeah.

Maggie O'Farrell8:46

Anyone who's been through a severe illness will know that you are in a sense one person before it and you come out the other side as somebody else. You are reconfigured. It's a bit like passing through a fire.

Maggie O'Farrell8:58

You're essentially the same person, but you've been taken apart and put back together again. And so you will feel completely different.

Maggie O'Farrell9:04

I I don't really have much of a sense of the child I was before actually because I I was just eight when I became ill.

Maggie O'Farrell9:12

And when I emerged from it really, you know, when I was properly able-bodied again, I was probably ten.

Presenter9:18

You describe in in your memoir overhearing a nurse outside the door saying that you were going to die. Were you old enough to reflect on that and process that at the time?

Maggie O'Farrell9:28

Yeah.

Maggie O'Farrell9:29

My first thought was that she was meaning somebody else and I remember thinking, oh that poor little girl that's dying, how awful.

Maggie O'Farrell9:36

And then of course when the nurse who's in the room with me looked at me and I saw the look on her face, I realized that it meant me. And I think my first thought was I felt a bit stupid because I thought, well, of course it's me. What else does all this mean? What else does this room in isolation mean? I've got all this equipment around me. Of course it's me. Of course I'm dying. I think any kind of

Maggie O'Farrell9:58

Brush with mortality does change you. I think you come back from the brink a different person every single time, whether it's a major event like my encephalitis or whether it's a minor event, you know, just perhaps almost stepping off a curb at the wrong moment.

Maggie O'Farrell10:12

You are always going to be.

Maggie O'Farrell10:15

A wiser and sadder person when you come back from that brink because you have stared into the abyss and you can't ever forget that. You might pretend you've forgotten it, or you might say, shake out of here and think I'm fine, I'm carrying on, but it's still there, it's still lodged inside you. I've always felt that my life was a kind of bonus, that I was partly living on borrowed time, or that I was sort of slightly cheated the universe in a way, so and I was going to.

Speaker 110:30

That f

Maggie O'Farrell10:37

Live the biggest and the best life I possibly could, within whatever limitations I've been given.

Presenter10:42

Well, on that note, Mike O'Farrell, I think we'd better hear your next

Maggie O'Farrell10:44

What's it gonna be? This is Love Song by The Cure. I was really fortunate in that I came of age at a time when there was a huge explosion of the indie music scene. This is the sort of late eighties and early nineties.

Maggie O'Farrell10:58

So I used to listen to the John Peel sessions and I saw lots of bands live.

Maggie O'Farrell11:03

And the naughtiest thing I ever did, I think, when I was a teenager was that I told my parents that I was spending the night at a friend's house. But actually I got the train to Manchester and I went

Maggie O'Farrell11:14

I could not go, I couldn't bear the fact that this was all happening in this one nightclub and that I hadn't been, so I did go to the Hacienda. Oh god, it was fantastic, it was absolutely worth it. My parents still do not know that I went to the Hacienda, and in fact, if they are listening, which they probably will at some point, this will be the point at which they find out, unfortunately.

Speaker 411:36

Never I'll be alone with you

Speaker 411:42

You make me feel like I am home again.

Speaker 411:49

Never are alone with you.

Speaker 411:56

You make me feel like I am holding

Presenter12:03

The Cure and Love Song. So Maggie O'Farrell, I know that your perception of the world around you and your movement through it is still affected by the childhood illness that you went through. What did that mean for you during your teenage years?

Maggie O'Farrell12:17

I have a slightly inhibited proprioception, which means I have very little sense of where my body is in space, where my limbs are. So, for example, sitting here, I wouldn't be able to pick up my water bottle without looking at it. I have to really look and concentrate and connect my hand. It was funny because I moved from Wales to Scotland when I was 14, and I suddenly realized when I did that that I could be somebody else. People at my new school in a new country didn't need to know that I had been the girl.

Maggie O'Farrell12:47

who had been in a wheelchair and in hospital and very severely ill.

Speaker 112:49

Sorry, Sunday

Maggie O'Farrell12:51

and I could reinvent myself as just somebody who was just very clumsy, who was really bad at sport and often knocked things off a desk or had really messy handwriting. I thought I can leave the whole let behind me and I can be somebody new.

Maggie O'Farrell13:03

And I think as a teenager I I really believe that. But of course you can't, can you? Because it's not something you can leave behind, but it's it's part of you. I have stamina issues, you know, my muscular system is not very strong and I have sort of musculoskeletal problems, but it's all such small fry, isn't it, really, when you consider what I avoided. So I

Maggie O'Farrell13:21

I absolutely have a very, very strong sense, and always have had, of being incredibly lucky. I feel as though I have.

Maggie O'Farrell13:28

I've won a thousand lotteries because I can walk around and I can pick up a pen and I can write and I can live an independent life because it was not always a given for me.

Presenter13:37

Your experience also left you with a stammer. Now many stammerers describe that the fact that it leaves them with an excellent vocabulary, facility with words, because they're trying to avoid the sounds that trip them up. Was that the case for you? Absolutely.

Maggie O'Farrell13:49

Yeah, I think in some ways

Presenter13:51

Yeah.

Maggie O'Farrell13:51

Being a stammerer has been one of the most formative things, I think, in my life. It's really hard to

Maggie O'Farrell13:59

scratch in how

Maggie O'Farrell14:01

Horrible it is not to be able to speak

Maggie O'Farrell14:04

In so many ways, you know, socially it's awful, it's terrible at school. Even now, you know, I've had speech therapy as an adult because doing things that I'm doing right now it alters every single option in life, you know, with your friendships and with your academic work, with the job that you end up doing.

Maggie O'Farrell14:23

You know, I remember being really shocked when I had written my first novel and it never occurred to me that r writing a novel would involve, you know, g uh public speaking. But I remember them saying, Okay, and now you're going to do a public reading and I thought

Maggie O'Farrell14:35

Do that? What are you talking about? You know, I'm supposed to be sitting in my in my room in my pajamas talking to my talking to my imaginary friends. What are you talking about? It's the most agonizing thing. What it does give you is

Speaker 114:40

My pajamas.

Presenter14:41

Yeah. Talking to my mad talk to my mad

Maggie O'Farrell14:48

A very, very finely tuned hypersensitivity to words and also to grammar.

Maggie O'Farrell14:54

You know, even as a really young child, a stammerer will be able to think of five different ways to say the same thing so that you can avoid your potential mind-fill letters or sounds or words. As a young child, you learn to become your own editor and you're doing it on the spot in your head all the time. It's time for your next piece of music. What are we going to hear? Disc number four.

Maggie O'Farrell15:16

So this is the schizzo number two in B flat minor by Chopin.

Maggie O'Farrell15:20

And I used to play this on the piano. I played the piano when I was a teenager.

Maggie O'Farrell15:26

And this was the piece I always wanted to play, and I would do it a sort of a bar at a time, because it is hard, it's a hard piece to do, until I could play it. I remember really loving the labour of it.

Maggie O'Farrell15:39

And when I think back now, it's actually similar. The labour of learning something like this piece is similar to writing a novel. It's just step by step, note by note, and it's a very long road. And I think to get to the end of the road, you have to be a bit of an obsessive and you have to be a bit of a perfectionist. So I think in a sense, the skills that I learnt from playing a piano and working on pieces like this stood me in good stead for being a novelist.

Presenter17:06

Chopin's skirto number two in B flat minor, performed by Marta Argeridge. So Maggie O'Farrell, you studied English at at Cambridge. Was being a writer already your ambition when you applied?

Maggie O'Farrell17:19

It's funny, I don't think I have ever articulated to myself or anyone actually that I wanted to be a writer. I think that they're two separate things. I wanted to write, definitely, and I knew that. But the idea of being a writer

Maggie O'Farrell17:32

is something different. I can't remember a time when I didn't have the urge to put something down on paper, to transpose experience or ideas or imagination into text on a page. That has always fascinated me.

Maggie O'Farrell17:43

Even as a young child, you know, I have notebooks from when I was five or six and it was clear that I wanted to write to write stories and write things down. So what were your plans after leaving university then? My plan A was to be become a journalist.

Maggie O'Farrell17:58

But actually when I graduated I didn't know what I was doing. I was 21 and I had an English degree and it was the middle of a recession.

Maggie O'Farrell18:06

And let's just say they weren't you know, employers weren't exactly queuing up to read my C V. So I went out to Hong Kong'cause that seemed like a good option and I taught English there and did various things. I was a waitress and and then I ended up working on Inc.

Maggie O'Farrell18:19

scene. And I should say that I mean, this is terrible, I did actually like my interview, I said, yeah, I know all about computers. In fact, I had never actually touched one until I got to the office on the first day when I'd been given the job and then I thought I sat down, I thought,

Maggie O'Farrell18:33

Didn't know how. So who helped you that day? I don't know. I asked one of my colleagues. I said, I I've never used this model. Can you show me how to turn it on? So it was a bit of a steep learning curve. So that was my vague plan. I thought I need to find a job that

Speaker 118:35

Yeah, who

Maggie O'Farrell18:48

is as close to writing as I possibly can find and then I would my plan was to write in the evening.

Speaker 118:50

And then

Maggie O'Farrell18:53

I landed on the weekends, which is what I did.

Maggie O'Farrell18:56

I think of my twenties as this period of qui quite a lot of chaos and it was certainly very erratic. You know, I remember moving from one ding dingy room in a flat to another.

Maggie O'Farrell19:05

And just, you know, trying to persuade adults that you could do something and could they please pay you for it. You know, it's hard. Let's see your next disc, Maggie O'Farrell. Disc number five, if you would. So this is The Bends by Radiohead. And this, I'm a huge Radiohead fan, I always have been. And eventually, I clawed my way into a job on the Independent on Sunday. And I was the editorial assistant on the arts and books desk, which meant I got loads of free books. And I also was able to get tickets to lots of gigs. So I did go to quite a lot of Radiohead's early gigs and a lot of other people, which was fantastic.

Maggie O'Farrell19:42

The whole album really reminds me of travelling on the tube to work when I was in my twenties and I would listen to this on my Sony Walkman and it just brings back that time to me of what it felt like and it was incredibly exciting because at last I had a job that

Maggie O'Farrell19:57

Felt as though it was going somewhere. I was very, very low down the food chain, but I was still working.

Maggie O'Farrell20:01

On a newspaper that came out and occasionally I would have a tiny, tiny byline with just my initials after an album review or something and that was that was very thrilling when you're 24.

Speaker 420:11

Where do we go from here? The words are coming out of it, where are you now?

Speaker 420:21

When I need you Alone on an airplane Fall asleep against the window pane

Speaker 420:31

My blood of sickness

Presenter20:44

Radiohead and the Bens. Maggie O'Farrell, you've written that all fiction is a bit of a palimpsest of things that you make up or things you borrow, things that you observe in other people, and things actually that have happened to you. I wonder whether friends and family are often looking for or finding themselves in your in your work, and if they do, do they tend to get it right?

Maggie O'Farrell21:04

Well, I don't I don't really think of myself as an autobiographical writer. Obviously my memoir is autobiographical, I should say. But in terms of fiction I like to think of fiction as an alternative world, really, not the one my sort of writing world is it is an alternative, it's a sort of escape.

Maggie O'Farrell21:18

In a sense, it's a parallel world.

Speaker 121:18

Bump

Maggie O'Farrell21:21

But I think, you know, inevitably, and I think that there are things that will filter in from your real life. So I don't want to be that kind of...

Maggie O'Farrell21:28

Carnivorous writer who's a cannibalizing writer who's eating other people's lives and putting them out on the page.

Maggie O'Farrell21:36

Um but I think it is I think it is odd for people who know you well to read your novels, because in a sense they can spot the joins.

Maggie O'Farrell21:46

They can see I know my

Maggie O'Farrell21:48

Uh, my husband has read books of mine and he says he'll be

Maggie O'Farrell21:51

He'll be sort of floating along quite gayly thinking this is a novel and then suddenly he'll turn a page and he'll find himself in a scene or in a house or in a moment that he remembers from his own life. So I think it is, it's inevitable. And I think any writer

Presenter22:00

So I think

Maggie O'Farrell22:05

who says they never ever use anything from their own life is probably lying.

Presenter22:09

You're married to a writer, William Sutcliffe. You met at university and I know that you were just friends for a long time. You keep a cast of Williams' teeth in your office.

Presenter22:19

Just sort of

Maggie O'Farrell22:19

Pick up on that? I do, yes. I don't really have many talismanic objects in my office, but I do have a cast of my husband's teeth. Why the teeth? Well, he had made one of those, what do you call them, gum shields for sport. He's quite sporty, unlike me, also. And he had this order to have it made. He had these sort of dental plastic casts of his teeth made.

Speaker 122:35

On the right mid

Maggie O'Farrell22:41

And he was about to throw it away and I said, Can I have it? And so I have it next to my desk because he is my first reader. He always is the first person who reads anything I write and vice versa. But having it there reminds me of his he can be quite harsh critic and it's good because it's what I need. And so there have been times when he has read the first draft of one of my novels and he's said, well

Maggie O'Farrell23:03

It's not bad, but you've got to rewrite half of it.

Maggie O'Farrell23:05

And often one of the things he has said to me is tends to kind of edit out anything that he thinks is too supernatural.

Maggie O'Farrell23:11

When I'm about to write something and I think, oh, that sounds good, that sounds good. And then sometimes I glance over at the teeth and I think, actually, you know what? I think I need to cut that.

Presenter23:18

Not going to get past those nashes. It's not going to get those teeth again. I'd want to edit that out. It's time for your next disc, Maggie. What's number six and why have you chosen it today?

Maggie O'Farrell23:27

So the next one is Little Star by Stina Nordenstam and this song it really reminds me actually of a particular flat that I lived in when I was about 25 or 26. It was a very small flat in a kind of in a block and I shared it was one version flat that I shared with another girl so I slept in the living room, she slept in the bedroom but it was a great flat and I loved it and somehow it reminds me of life becoming a little bit settled after a very unsettled sort of mid-20s time and it was around the time I got together with Will so it reminds me of what it was like to fall in love with someone with a close friend, someone you know you already know really well.

Speaker 424:05

They lose the fire at the wee hell.

Speaker 424:11

They're always sweet and fair a thing like this.

Speaker 424:18

Came driving from all over town

Speaker 424:23

Feel

Speaker 424:25

Little stars

Presenter24:35

Stina Nordenstam and Little Star. So Maggie, tell me a little bit more about you. You described that idea of life coming together after quite a chaotic period. How did all the dust start to settle and things begin to cohere?

Maggie O'Farrell24:49

So I started working at the Independent on Sunday when I was about 24 and

Maggie O'Farrell24:54

While I was doing this, I was writing poetry, actually. I wanted to be a poet.

Maggie O'Farrell24:59

So I was going to evening classes given by the Irish American poet Michael Donochief.

Maggie O'Farrell25:03

who was an absolutely brilliant teacher. So I was writing a lot of poetry and then what happened was I went to stay with a friend of mine and his mother was throwing out one of those really big sort of brick-like Apple Macs, the really original ones. And it was just sitting by the front door and I'd walked past it several times and eventually I said to her, can I borrow it? And she said, sure, you can borrow it, you know, for as long as you like. So I took it back to my flat and I just started writing a novel.

Maggie O'Farrell25:31

As soon as I had a keyboard and a computer, I don't know what it was, there was something about the rhythm of it that just unleashed this sort of long form prose instead of poetry. And actually I never wrote poetry again. And I started writing what became my first book. So I was writing that

Speaker 125:41

A nice

Maggie O'Farrell25:47

It instantly felt

Presenter25:48

Yeah.

Maggie O'Farrell25:48

Uh

Presenter25:49

Uh

Maggie O'Farrell25:49

Like what I really wanted to do.

Presenter25:50

What was the process of actually getting your work out there and sharing it with people and, you know, taking their feedback like?

Maggie O'Farrell25:56

Well I'd had a few poems published and I was writing a little bit for the newspaper so there were some things out there. But actually I the thing that really changed for me actually was I went on a course on the Arvon Foundation.

Maggie O'Farrell26:12

And I was probably about 25 at this point and I had written about 20,000 words of what I at the time thought was my first draft. I actually realised it was a total dog's dinner now.

Maggie O'Farrell26:23

I look back at what it was. So I went on a writing course about novel writing and I handed in this twenty thousand words of what I considered was not bad prose. And the two tutors I was taught by Elspeth Barker and Barbara Trapedo.

Maggie O'Farrell26:35

They said to me, We'd like to talk to you. And I instantly thought, oh god, they think whatever I've written is so bad, they're going to ask me to leave. So I went into the library of this, the Arvon Foundation Centre in Yorkshire, where the course was, and they said to me, We think you need to carry on, we need to finish it, and when you finish it, we'll show it to our agent. What are we going to hear next, maybe? So this is a song I have played throughout my life, but particularly I associate it with being a new mother. I used to put this on in the early morning when you have those very, very brutally early starts when you've got a very tiny baby. And so this is Feeling Good by Nina Simone. And I used to find that Nina

Maggie O'Farrell27:15

And her voice used to turn those awful mornings around for me. So instead of feeling completely koshed by very little sleep and a dawn awakening, you have this song which is just about the keen joy of existence and a celebration of being alive against all odds and of new starts. So it always makes me happy and it takes me back to that

Maggie O'Farrell27:38

Very raw and beautiful exhaustion of having a tiny baby.

Speaker 427:43

Fish and you see, you know how I feel.

Speaker 427:49

River running tree, you know how I feel.

Speaker 427:55

Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel.

Speaker 428:01

New dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life.

Speaker 428:06

For me and I'm feeling good.

Presenter28:13

Nina Simone and feeling good. So Maggie O'Farrell, it's almost time to cast you away to your desert island. I wonder whether there are any aspects of being marooned that you might be looking forward to.

Maggie O'Farrell28:26

Certainly, I've been creating a bit of solitude lately. A bit of alone time wouldn't be amiss. I think what I would find hard, I will miss out on.

Maggie O'Farrell28:34

The chat. I'll miss on other people actually. I love chatting. I love chatting to my friends and I love overhearing chat.

Maggie O'Farrell28:39

The kind of things you overhear on a bus or in a cafe, the things that people say to each other. But I think I'll love the silence and the solitude for a bit and then I will start to miss the chat.

Presenter28:49

What about your survival skills? Talk me through them. You've obviously got a lot of resilience on on the practical side.

Maggie O'Farrell28:54

Practical, I'm really unpractical. You know, I have two left hands, really. If that, I think building a shelter, I'll be absolutely useless. Right. I do, I'm a bit of a pyromaniac. I love lighting fire, so I will definitely be up for that. I love swimming as well, so hopefully, it's a warm desert island so I can do some swimming. Okay, so as long as you

Presenter29:11

You can swim and then there's a fire to keep you warm afterwards. I'll be sorted. You'll just have to endure the rain. All right. Well, almost time to send you there. But before we do, one more disc, if you would, Maggie, what have you chosen for your final selection today?

Maggie O'Farrell29:23

Well this is a selection for my children. So my son, who's 17, is a big rap fan and I don't love all of it, but I do love this one. I really love that moment when your child's passions and curiosities will start to rub off on you. This is one of his rap things that it is possible for him to listen to while his younger sisters are around. His sisters are quite a bit younger than him so there's quite a bit of his rap playlist that is not allowed to be played in front of his sisters. And this reminds me actually most of all of being in the car with all three of my children. So last summer when lockdown was ending we had a tradition of when homeschooling was over for the day we would drive to the beach, me and the three kids.

Maggie O'Farrell30:01

And his sisters and I would always ask him to put this on, and it's profit by the Rizzle Kicks. And when I hear this, and I know when I'm on my desert island, I'm going to miss my children.

Maggie O'Farrell30:11

In an absolutely visceral, painful way, this'll remind me of being in the car with all three of my children singing along to the Rizzle kicks. And I just know when it happens that I have this very strong sense that I am living in a state of grace.

Speaker 430:23

I'm lurking in your pocket.

Speaker 430:25

Better watch it, what's up kicks? Ha! What? I'm lost on the heaven list, cause I couldn't even rash what angelic is Even my laughter is venomous, venouses, naughty but

Speaker 430:46

Into various situations Your best mates going downstairs while you're stuck there With a sister waiting out chillin' in the state Slipping in a race, sitting in a cave

Presenter30:56

Rizzle kicks and profit. So, Maggie O'Farrell, it's time to send you away to the island. I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you. You can also choose one other book to accompany you. What will that be?

Presenter31:11

Yeah.

Maggie O'Farrell31:11

I have been agonising over this question, Lauren, and making long lists of all my favourite novels, but actually what I have decided on is Alice Munro's Selected Stories. She has an absolutely extraordinary skill sentence by sentence.

Maggie O'Farrell31:26

And I think what I love most of all is the generosity she shows towards her readers, and she gives in forty pages what novelists would spread out over four hundred. So I think this collection would sustain me on an island because it gives me such a multitude of voices and lines.

Presenter31:45

Sheer density. Again, I get it. Okay. You can also have a luxury item to make life more bearable. What would you choose? Could I please have

Maggie O'Farrell31:46

Yeah now

Presenter31:54

The night

Maggie O'Farrell31:54

Astom

Presenter31:55

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Maggie O'Farrell31:55

Yeah.

Maggie O'Farrell31:57

I don't want to be greedy, so can I just have the Archaeology Department on Kildare Street, please?

Presenter32:01

This is a a very handsome building. I happen to have seen it.

Maggie O'Farrell32:04

Amazing building, yeah Palladian building with the zodiac in the forecourt with the lots of different marble columns. It is absolute and I love museums and whenever I am traveling, when I used to travel, I always make sure I go to the museum and wherever I am, whether it's a small town or whether it's a big city. And this one is my favourite museum anywhere in the world. What I love about it most of all probably is the fact that a lot of the artefacts and the treasures are found not by archaeologists but by farmers who have been digging on their land.

Maggie O'Farrell32:34

And it gives me an enormous sense of

Maggie O'Farrell32:37

The overlapping stories of history and the long span of human narratives. There are the Iron Age bog bodies here, which are the tribal sacrifices usually of chieftains or kings because of bad harvests.

Maggie O'Farrell32:50

There's a lot of prehistoric Irish gold, there's Viking artefacts, and there's the Lurgan Canoe, which is this enormous Bronze Age longboat which I have a really strong memory of seeing as a child and desperately wanting to touch.

Maggie O'Farrell33:03

I think I

Maggie O'Farrell33:05

I find it very important when I'm on my desert island to think about how long humans have been alive and also how important it is that we do all we can to ensure that we continue.

Presenter33:16

Well, you'll be pleased to hear that. There is substantial precedent for giving away the V and A in the past. We've done a couple of times. So this particular wing of that museum can be yours. Thank you so much. That's going to help enormously. And finally, which one track would you save from the waves if you had to?

Maggie O'Farrell33:34

That's so hard, but I think it would have to be Elephant Gun by Beirut.

Maggie O'Farrell33:39

Why?

Maggie O'Farrell33:40

Because that's the one I love the most and that's the one that would help me the most I think if I'm feeling lonely or if I'm feeling uninspired because I'm going to need to write. I get things to write on don't I?

Maggie O'Farrell33:50

And I think the Beirut will help me.

Maggie O'Farrell33:53

exit my desert island if I need to mentally and and take me to another place.

Presenter33:57

You have to find things to write on, but as you're not building a shelter, you'll have plenty of time to. I'll write in the sand.

Maggie O'Farrell34:01

Goodbye.

Presenter34:03

Maggie O'Farrell, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. That's my

Maggie O'Farrell34:07

Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Presenter34:21

Hi, I really hope you enjoyed that interview with the writer Maggie O'Farrell and I hope she's happy on the island pottering about in her museum. We've cast many writers away to the Desert Island. They include Edna O'Brien, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Marion Keyes and Martina Cole and you can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. Next time my guest will be the psychiatrist Professor Sir Simon Wesley. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 134:58

Hi, Russell Kane here. I just want to tell you about Evil Genius. It's the show where we take legends and icons from history. Everyone from Henry VIII to Gandhi, Richard Pryor, Mary Stopes, Dr. Seuss. And I have a panel of funny people who are gathered around my desk and are subjected to horrific fact bombs which reveal things about their heroes they don't want to hear. At the end of the lively mind tennis, they must vote Evil or Genius. Cancel Mother Teresa or keep her. By the way, listen to that episode. She was absolutely vile. Subscribe to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.