my interview with the brilliant, hilarious British debut novelist Sheena Patel

I'm A Fan is out in Canada this week!

"It was very important to me to have a narrator who wasn't a victim. Every monstrous thing that is done to her she does to someone else."

Debut novelist Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan is a pithy, messy, irresistible back-alley-hate-fuck of a book. (Obviously I loved it.) I’m reposting our interview here FOR FREE because it’s out today in Canada. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Over 210 pages, I’m a Fan tells the story of an unnamed young London woman who becomes romantically obsessed with a feckless, married YBA-styled London art star. Dude’s famous but the nature of his remunerative creative output is never disclosed because it’s irrelevant.

The chaotic, hilarious, unsatisfying relationship that transpires works as a contemporary British parody of the European art cinema cliche of the grand affair. Rather than offering us sweeping erotic contortions and bitter-sweet partings, Patel presses our noses deep into the seedy, stinking underbelly of what most illicit affairs are for lover if not the object of love: relentless emotional turmoil served up with generous helping of willing self-debasement. Like so many women, our protagonist allows herself to be tortured in ways that are both predictable and perverse. She desires and is thwarted, suffers and passes on her suffering to those who don’t deserve it. She is a willing participant in her own humiliation and what’s more, she enjoys it — and we get off on it too.

The novel was nominated for Eh Veh Reathing (the Woman’s Prize and a bunch of other stuff — so many prizes, when I ask Sheena to list them off in the interview she admitted to not having heard of one, a big one as it turned out, until after finding out she’d been nominated). This state of affairs will undoubtedly make some people grouchy — literary upstarts never fail to piss people off, especially in London, where general pissiness and pornographic envy and is cultural art form. In a way it seems fitting though, since craven art scene envy is a big part of what the book’s about. But I’m a Fan’s success is ironic, but it’s also well deserved.

Sheena herself, as you’ll see, is a crackling delight. Acerbic, candid, funny and at times, a bit sharp. At one point toward the middle of the interview she comes glancingly close to implying my gobby ten-year-old son might be just a teeny-tiny bit correct in calling me a “Karen.” (I refute this by the way, even if I did, admittedly, grow up in a small town where there were three Karens in every class.)

I could go on, but I’ll let Sheena speak for herself. If you enjoy the interview please do let me know. I’m new to all this audio-video stuff (apologies for the bad framing on my camera and the glare of the ring light on my reading glasses which I rather idiotically forgot to remove).