Fran Littlewood: "I couldn’t have written this book without exploring desire – it’s a crucial part of women’s lives at any age"

Fran Littlewood is deep into promoting her debut novel, Amazing Grace Adams, when I get time with her. She’s buzzing with excitement. Instantly, she tells me that her DJ/electronic music producer husband featured in Hot Press a number of years ago, under his Si Begg name.

“He had loads of monikers for contractual reasons, so he comes up under loads of bizarre names,” she laughs.

Having raised three daughters, the former business and finance journalist for The Times felt the time was right to pursue her dream of a Creative Writing MA at Royal Holloway, University of London.

“It’s hilarious, because any time I was writing an intro to a feature, I’d be putting in all of these beautiful adjectives. It was the only place I could have fun with it,” she grins. “Then I travelled with my husband’s work, had my kids and did a Masters. I don’t think the journey towards becoming an author is ever that quick, except maybe for Sally Rooney. I definitely put in my 10,000 hours before getting to this point.”

By Serena Bolton.

We’re glad she followed her gut. Amazing Grace Adams – a surefire literary hit – is destined to be a Hot for 2023 phenomenon, especially with the sizeable, eager market of middle-aged women yearning to read three-dimensional representations of themselves. There’s nothing Fran shies away from in the novel, whether its heart-shattering grief, gender inequalities, raising difficult teenage daughters or the connected issues of the perimenopause, desirability, body image issues and toxic online culture.

“I wanted to write a mid-life heroine, because I just felt so sick of these lazy representations of women in that space,” notes Littlewood. “It didn’t reflect who I saw around me, so I wanted to write about funny, smart, nuanced, interesting individuals with black humour, and this improbable idea of making Grace a form of action hero. I felt like it hadn’t been done before, and I knew I’d be able to mine some fun, while offsetting emotions through love, loss and motherhood.”

"INVISIBLE AND UNFUCKABLE"

As a preface to the main action, while stuck in traffic on her way to pick up the cake for her daughter’s 16th birthday party, Grace Adams snaps. She doesn’t scream or break something or cry; she simply abandons her car and walks away. From there, we learn all about Adams’ past, from the husband she still loves who is now divorcing her, through the daughter who has banned Grace from her party to the terrible incident that caused the family to implode. Ultimately, Amazing Grace Adams is a rollercoaster ride of redemption in a world that made motherhood impossible to succeed at.

“This period of women’s lives is finally starting to become part of a wider conversation,” says Fran. “Emma Thompson in Leo Grande is an incredible character of that age exploring desire, among other gendered concerns. One book I felt liberated me was Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. She’s this brilliant woman who breaks all of the social rules and it reaches great levels of absurdity.”

Catharsis is present throughout, as the intense pressure and frustrations of this life stage – of motherhood and misogyny – build to stifling levels. Grace, who experienced sexism working in the TV world at 28, feels like an utter failure as a mother, wife and woman, daily reminded about (and punished for) her beauty.

“I wanted to examine the likability of women,” considers Littlewood. “They’re held to such a high standard, much higher than men. Female protagonists, equally, are held to just as impossibly high a mark. The anger we’re seeing in women absolutely comes out of fear and loss. I was treading a more difficult line writing Grace, because reaching these standards is hugely difficult.”

 Lotte – Grace’s daughter – is a fairly anxiety-inducing character, as most 15-year-olds dealing with a separation of their parents and endless hormone spikes tend to be.

“There’s this real sense of loss for Grace, as Lotte is heading into adulthood,” says Littlewood. “There’s a grief there that really ambushed me, too. Everyone knows about the empty nest, but this real feeling of your child growing away from you is so potent when they’re 14 or 15. It’s all part of the process and it’s meant to happen, but it’s incredibly hard. Lotte is becoming estranged from Grace, who goes into her daughter’s bedroom at one point, and is looking at the objects like they’re clues about where her child went. I related to that scene.”

Grace is forced to reckon with a strange jealousy as she sees Lotte becoming ever more desired in the eyes of society, while she feels as though perimenopause has (literally) sucked her dry.

“Beauty is still the ultimate currency for women, awfully,” Fran concedes, exasperated. “I have three teenage girls and I can see them going through this, in particular with the 24-hour surveillance and onslaught of social media. The impossible standard starts at that age, but they’re all absolutely bludgeoned by this messaging. It’s ultimately the same one I had at their age. With TikTok and filters, it’s still a massive misogyny they’re exposed to.

“As Grace describes in the book, they’re often busting out in ripe flesh just as you feel dried out. You’re seeing what you feel like you’re losing when you reach perimenopause, and there’s an awful irony in that. Jane Campion quoted how you become ‘invisible and unfuckable’ after 40. There’s such an untruth in that! All teenage girls do is criticise their appearance, just like older women. The tyranny of the beauty myth is a real preoccupation of mine.”

THE SECOND ALBUM CURSE

The stigma around speaking openly about menopause and ageing in women remains severe.

“When I started writing this in May 2020 right at the beginning of the first lockdown, hardly anyone was talking about menopause,” Fran nods. “There were a few courageous people talking about it in the public eye, but it’s still a huge taboo. There’s been a big cross-parliamentary report, but whether any change will be enacted is another story.”

One way of revolutionising how mid-life female characters are penned was to make sure Grace Adams was a sexual being. Gone is the myth that women after 40 lose their libidos.

“I wanted to put more sex in! I wasn’t nervous at all,” Littlewood laughs. “It’s so important. There’s bits that veer into the absurd, but I couldn’t have written this book without exploring desire. This crisis of violence against women and girls, it all felt part and parcel in terms of delving into socio-political elements that make up the daily backdrop of women’s lives.”

Obviously others agree that Grace Adams is a powerful character, with the Mare Of Easttown producer even optioning the television rights.

“I think he saw that Kate Winslet kickass mid-life female role in Grace Adams,” says Fran. “Loads of things get optioned and don’t go ahead, but they have got a writer on board for the television adaptation. They’re working on the pilot and I think she’s working on a second episode so you never know! I’m busy writing the second book now, which is like that difficult second album. It becomes this fear or dread, but I’m still living the dream.”

For many writers, finding that coveted agent is a major obstacle to getting published, but Littlewood was in demand. The 50-year-old was signed by Janklow & Nesbit agent Hellie Ogden before Amazing Grace Adams was acquired by Michael Joseph last year, in a major pre-empt by publisher Jessica Leeke.

“At the end of the Masters course, they send agents an anthology and everyone writes around 1,000 words to contribute,” says Fran. “I was contacted as a result, and Hellie and I teamed up. She’s amazing, I feel so grateful. I finished the book that I was writing on the course maybe too quickly, and it was a nearly-but-not-quite project. I could have rewritten it, but I pitched the idea of Grace to my agent, and she knew straight away in a one-line pitch that it would be a better debut.”

We suspect they got it right. Amazing Grace Adams is set to be one of the literary hits of the year.

• Amazing Grace Adams is published on January 19 by Penguin Ireland.