Am I Normal Yet?

by Holly Bourne

  When I knew I wanted to write a trilogy about a feminism grassroots group, I pondered for ages about what they’d call themselves. That’s when I remembered my own Spinster Club, and dug out all my old stuff. I wish my sixteen-year-old self could’ve known that her singleton Valentine’s Day would inspire a trilogy of books I’d have published over a decade later.

  Even now, just meeting up with my female friends and having a chat is where so much of my love of feminism comes from. Just a cup of tea, some cheesy snacks, and a natter about HOW FREAKING WEIRD it is to be a girl in a patriarchal world. It doesn’t have to be serious, either. I literally cried laughing recently, having an argument about whether it’s “unfeminist” to be scared of pooing at your boyfriend’s house.

  What’s your go-to cheesy snack?

  Nachos. Life’s just better with nachos.

  What research did you do for the book?

  A lot. I spent a lot of time grilling Cognitive Behaviour Therapists and psychotherapists, and young people with OCD, to make being in Evie’s head as real as I could. I felt a huge pressure to represent OCD accurately and sensitively. This is incredibly difficult as OCD manifests itself in so many unique ways – I’d never be able to cover everyone’s “version”. But, when Evie came alive in my head, the key thing was how annoyed she was that she had the “clichéd” version of OCD and I had to pay homage to that.

  Did writing the book change your own ideas about feminism and mental health?

  My ideas about feminism and mental health continue to change and grow as I learn more. And that’s what needs to be embraced more. Enlightenment is a journey – we can’t expect to know it all and get it all right the moment we decide to fight for something we believe in. We shouldn’t yell at people for “getting it wrong” if they’re at a different stage in their learning. We shouldn’t be yelling at anyone identifying as a feminist, period! When feminists start in-squabbling, I’m always reminded of that scene in The Hunger Games when Finnick yells to Katniss about remembering who the real enemy is. I’ve grown so much as a feminist in the process of writing these books, and I really hope my readers will see my own learning and development as they make their way through the trilogy.

  Did you have a “film that got you into films”?

  I am a huge film geek. And, like Evie, I have a top five list honed to perfection:

  1) The Usual Suspects

  2) American Beauty

  3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

  4) The Matrix

  5) Thelma and Louise

  Are there any specific books that inspired you to write this book?

  The Georgia Nicolson books will always be a huge inspiration to me – and they’ll always make me want to write books about hilarious girls having hysterical friendships.

  Another book that influenced this is an odd one – The Beach by Alex Garland. I loved how the reader goes mad with him, as he goes mad in the book… I really wanted to capture that too. I want my readers to feel disjointed and uneasy and attacked and fragmented as they read Am I Normal Yet? to get a sense of what it’s like when your brain is like that all the time.

  Can you give us a hint of what’s next for the Spinster Club?

  The Spinster Club is GOING INTERNATIONAL. In the next book, Amber is going to have All The Things happen to her at an American summer camp. Plus, there are NICE BOYS in the next book. As I’m aware of all the über-douche male characters in Am I Normal Yet?

  And Lottie is going to take on the ENTIRE PATRIARCHY in book three. I’m so excited I can hardly type.

  Are there any messages in particular you would like readers to take away with them?

  That’s not up for me to decide – it’s up to you guys.

  …but if any of you do read this, and do decide to set up your own Spinster Club – please let me know. Because it would make my day/week/life!

  Find out more about Holly:

  @holly_bourneYA

  www.facebook.com/Holly.BourneYA

  www.hollybourne.co.uk

  Want to read more about Am I Normal Yet?, OCD, feminism, bad boyfriends and the importance of cheesy snacks?

  Join us online at: www.hollybourne.co.uk

  #100DaysofNormal

  #AmINormalYet

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  Acknowledgements

  I would firstly like to thank Andy*, for sleeping with someone else on my very first date. And then blaming it on having nymphomania. Us writers need emotionally-scarring things like that to happen to us at sixteen – thanks for obliging. I couldn’t have made it up.

  I’d also like to thank the original spinsters – Rachel and Emily – for Valentine’s Day 2003. Who would’ve thought our singleton sleepover would become a trilogy of books? Thank you for always being hilarious and mad. I still treasure my Spinster Club membership card.

  Finding Evie took me to A Very Dark Place, and I want to express my enormous gratitude for everyone around me who yanked me back into the light. Mum, Dad – I owe you everything. Thanks for teaching me to question everything, and how to be strong. Thank you to my beautiful sisters, Eryn and Willow. Ruth, thanks for taking my late-night phonecalls. Owen, you were incredible and I am so grateful. And thank you to my girly gang, Amy, Katie, Lisa – for keeping me upbeat with crisps, dips and poo stories. I couldn’t have got through it without you. Particularly the poo stories.

  This book wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my always-incredible publisher Usborne. A HUGE thank you for being the sort of publisher that lets me write a trilogy about feminism. Cheers to my incredible editors, Rebecca, Sarah, Becky and Anne. And my amazing marketing ninjas, Amy, Anna and Hannah. And thank you to everyone at Usborne who helped with this book who I don’t get to see. I love you ALL. As always, thank you to my agent, Maddy, for being excited by this and giving me the courage to see it through.

  I’ve met some incredible people in the UKYA community, and I am so grateful you all exist. Particularly kudos to CJ, Lexi and Carina – for being my go-to authorly types whenever I have a writer wobble. You are the greatest. But thanks to ALL the brilliant authors, bloggers, booksellers, readers and librarians I’ve met along the way who champion my books and champion UKYA. You are all the awesome. Thanks to Harriet Hapgood, for letting me shamelessly steal our Twitter jokes about black velveted tampons for part of this book.

  And finally, I just want to say thank you to anyone reading this who considers themselves a feminist. THANK YOU. Fighting for equality is not always fun, it’s never easy. But it’s the right thing to do. And, as a woman, I am so grateful to anyone who dedicates any time whatsoever to fighting for gender equality.

  Now, let’s go kick some patriarchal ass.

  *Yep, didn’t even change your name. SORRY (not sorry).

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  by Holly Bourne

  chapter one

  Bree supposed it was quite an achievement really – to be a failed novelist aged only seventeen.

  Most people her age didn’t have a clue what they wanted to do with their lives yet. Let alone know, work really hard for it and then fail miserably. She was miles ahead in the life-ultimately-sucks realization that takes most people their twenties and thirties to figure out.

  But Bree wasn’t most people. Well, she didn’t think so anyway.

  She looked at the rejection letter in her hand, hoping, somehow, if she stared at it hard enough her longing would melt the ink on the page into a “yes”.

  Dear Bree

  Thank you for your submission. We regret to tell you that your novel isn’t something we think we can take forward BLAH BLAH BLAH.

  Generic response. They hadn’t even bothered personali
zing it. That’s how much of a failure she was.

  Four years ago, when Bree decided to become a novelist, she’d done what she’d always done – obsessively planned, researched and plotted a no-fail manifesto. She’d read everything she could about writing, including a book by Stephen King, aka GOD. He’d apparently been rejected LOADS – so much that he hammered a nail into the wall above his desk to spike all the “no” letters on. Delighted at the self-deprecation of it all, Bree also hammered a massive nail into the perfect plastering of her bedroom wall. And, month by month, year by year, the nail got clogged up with her own swell of rejection letters.

  Ha ha, just like Stephen King, she’d thought, spiking the first “no” letter and flipping it the middle finger.

  Then more came, and more.

  “I can’t wait to talk about this emotional part of my journey when I’m being interviewed by the Guardian about my number one bestseller,” she’d told the clogged nail as she impaled another rejection letter. Yes, she’d got to the point of talking aloud to it. Like it was a person.

  Now that Guardian interview seemed as likely as J K Rowling asking Bree to be her best forever friend. Her first novel had been rejected by every agent and publisher in the UK.

  Then her second.

  What the hell was she going to do now?

  “Bree?” Her mother called up the stairs. “You’re going to be late for school.”

  She stubbed the new letter onto the nail, pushing hard to make room for it.

  “It’s alright. I’m almost ready,” she called back.

  “Well I can’t give you a lift. I’ve got Bikram yoga this morning with the girls.”

  She always did. Bree thought how ironic the usage of the word “girls” was to describe her mum and her mates.

  In a rush now, she rummaged in her drawer and pulled out a pair of pink and black striped tights. She pulled them on quickly, wincing as the fabric brushed against last night’s fresh cuts on her thighs. It was the first time Bree had done it for a while. She would pay the price in pain whenever she sat down or stood up for the next two days.

  Her phone went. It was a text from Holdo. No doubt double-checking they were still walking in together despite the fact they did so every day.

  Sure enough:

  Good morning, Bree. Shall we meet at our regular corner at the usual time? Please let me know. From, Holdo.

  Holdo didn’t “do” text-speak – considered it an aberration of the English language. He wrote everything out in full, with proper punctuation marks. Once, he’d forgotten to use a comma and Bree was subjected to a mammoth apology.

  She fired back a response.

  Sure. C U there.

  She deliberately used the “C” and “U” to piss him off. She wasn’t sure why. Bree put on her school blazer and was about to run out of her bedroom door when last night’s list caught her eye.

  She’d forgotten about it – it lay abandoned on the carpet. She made so many lists, it was hard to remember them all. She’d written this one on an adrenalin comedown. That familiar sensation of calm had reminded her that things weren’t that bad and so the list was meant to jog her memory for next time – hoping it may prevent a next time.

  Reasons why I shouldn’t be so bloody miserable all the time

  I live in a massive house, the kind that makes strangers jealous

  I suppose, in their own sort of way, both of my parents love me

  I could be pretty if I wanted…

  I’m much smarter than most people

  I know what I want to do with my life

  I have Holdo

  That was it. She’d wanted to list ten – because it just feels nicer, doesn’t it? But she couldn’t think of any more reasons. This, Bree supposed, could be the start of a whole other list.

  Reasons to be bloody miserable all the time

  My life is so crap that I can’t even think of ten stupid things that give me reason NOT to be miserable

  But she didn’t have time for that list. Not now. She was late.

  Bree ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. She ignored the bowl of muesli, fresh fruit and organic yogurt her mum had left her and took a Pop-Tart out of the cupboard instead. Strawberry. Just what she felt like. She shoved it into her mouth and held it there as she packed her school bag. Then she set the alarm and half-jogged out of the house.

  As she waited for the security gate to open, she thought a bit more about her list. How stupid she could be sometimes – thinking her life wasn’t that miserable. Yes, she could list six reasons why things weren’t that bad. But those were just starting points for further elaboration. Elaboration that would ultimately collapse each point.

  Take number one, for example.

  I live in a massive house, the kind that makes strangers jealous

  That, on the surface, was true as true could be. Her house was gigantic. And on a private road as well. Ashdown Drive was the sort of road poorer people deliberately detoured through so they could stare at the houses. Hers was one of the most impressive. It had a security gate with intercom to get through to the sweeping circular driveway. They didn’t have a garden as such – “grounds” was a more appropriate word. It took about five minutes to walk past the property. The outstretched dark-green-light-green-dark-green-light-green stripes of lawn were hidden by carefully manicured privacy hedges. It was the sort of house that everyone peers at, trying to get a glimpse of the lucky ones who live there, and thinks: Wow. Those people must have the most perfectly wonderful lives. I bet they don’t know what a problem looks like. If I lived there, everything would be okay. All the time.

  The truth though? Bree hated the house. Nobody tells you that large houses have this horrible habit of making you feel utterly alone. Constantly. She could scream and nobody would hear her. She knew this, she’d tried once. (On a particularly low day.) And the only response had been her own yells echoing endlessly, bouncing around the marble entrance hall.

  The security gate felt like a prison gate. She often wondered what it would be like not to be so rich and figured it would be a lot more fun.

  “Shut up, Bree,” she told herself.

  The gate closed behind her and she walked to meet Holdo. It was October and it was cold. She wished she’d doubled up on the bright tights today. Her mum always despaired of Bree’s fashion choices, which led her onto point two…

  I suppose, in their own sort of way, both of my parents love me

  It depends how you view love, doesn’t it? Bree had never wanted for anything. Did that mean she was loved? Her dad worked his arse off pretty much 24/7 so she could live in the aforementioned large prison house. He left home before she woke every morning, even Saturdays, and wasn’t usually back until after midnight. She wasn’t exactly sure what he did. In return, her dad barely knew how old she was. The extent of their communication went as follows:

  Dad: (In rare moment they bump into each other on the stairs) You behaving yourself in school?

  Bree: Yes.

  Dad: Good.

  Or, there was that time on Christmas day…

  Dad: (Carving the turkey) Do you want leg or breast?

  Bree: I’m a vegetarian, remember?

  Dad: Don’t be so ridiculous. (Carves off a bit of leg and dumps it on her plate)

  Then there was Mum. At least she was around – in physical manifestation anyway. Her mum was a full-time yummy mummy. That’s what she liked to call herself. In Bree’s unhumble opinion, the word “yummy” shouldn’t be associated with anyone over the age of forty.

  Her mum spent her time doing a variety of increasingly oddly-named exercise classes, getting facials, fillers and Botox done on her regular day trips to Harley Street, and reading about celebrities in garish magazines she left all over the house. She communicated her love to Bree with a constant stream of gift-wrapped packages left on Bree’s bed. Tiffany necklaces, Hollister jumpers – once Mum even got her some lingerie. Lucky, huh? But to Bree it was as welcome as a cat pro
udly leaving a beheaded mouse oozing blood on your doorstep. She knew people wouldn’t understand. Who wouldn’t want a mother who loaded you with gifts? Especially top-notch ones most girls her age could only fantasize about. But Bree didn’t want necklaces, overpriced knitwear or fancy knickers. She wanted a mother who helped her with her coursework. Someone who made her a cup of tea after school and asked her about what she’d learned, rather than grilling her about whether she’d made any new friends. All the time. Like being popular was the most important thing ever.

  All she got was:

  “Why aren’t you wearing that jumper I got you?”

  Or:

  “Is Holdo coming round again? Don’t you have any girlfriends?”

  Or:

  “You’re so pretty. Why don’t you just DO something with yourself? You’re putting yourself to waste.”

  Which led Bree onto…

  I could be pretty if I wanted

  She could. Now. But she didn’t want to be. She’d tried to be pretty once before, on her first day at secondary school, in some deluded burst of naivety that it might change things. Still blubbery with puppy fat, she’d hoicked her skirt up, carefully painted darker stripes through her hair with a home-colouring kit, smothered her face with blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick and shoved two socks down her bra. The result was the worst first day of secondary school the world had ever known. Jassmine Dallington and her cronies had positively dribbled with delight when they saw her, spluttering on their laughter and rushing to lob new and nastier names at her.

  She’d been so stupid to try. And now, puppy fat gone and her face fully grown into, she wouldn’t bother trying again.

  What pretty person achieved anything of merit anyway? Who cares what a writer looks like as long as their words are beautiful?

  So, much to her mother’s despair, Bree made herself as unattractive as possible.

  If you control what they laugh at, invite them to dine out on you…well, then, Bree found they usually stop laughing.