A DECADES-OLD DILEMMA
Author Alexandra Potter helps shatter age barriers in bestselling novel
Confessions of a Forty-Something F##k Up Alexandra Potter Macmillan
Early last year, rumours started circulating of a book that had “the publishing world in a frenzy.” People were calling it “the Bridget Jones of the 2020s.” After the “intense bidding war” but before the book's publication, Hollywood had already come knocking, and contracts with “a major studio” are being exchanged as we speak. The name of the book? Confessions of a Forty-Something F##k Up.
“I've had that title in my head since my late 30s,” says Alexandra Potter, “when I used to moan to my friends, `Oh God, I'm going to be a 40-something f--- up.' So I really fought for it!”
The Bradford, England-born writer's 12th novel hit Canadian bookstores in the summer of 2020, when certainly, there had never been — and there still is — more of a divide between the 40-somethings locked down with their families and those who were single when COVID-19 struck and have had their romantic landscapes razed.
Last year built up an expletive-ridden level of rage in people of every generation, but the rising fury of 40-something women was being felt well before then. Felt, but rarely acknowledged or depicted either in books or on screen. Potter's heroine isn't actually a “f--- up” — it's just society that makes Nell Stevens feel like one, after the collapse of both her engagement and her business means she has to crawl back home from California to Blighty with her greying tail between her legs.
“For me, and I think so many women, there was this expectation that I would have my life sorted by the time I reached 40,” says Potter, 50. “We have to marry, have kids, get the yoga body and the great career. And my girlfriends and I really experienced that pressure through our 30s, when we were made to feel time was running out — that we weren't allowed to be a mess by the time we hit the big 40.”
Potter was still unmarried when she became “a woman of a certain age.” Which never bothered her, even if it seemed to confound others.
“I love my husband, but he didn't appear until later in my life.” The pair met in Los Angeles, where the journalist turned novelist had settled in her 30s, having spent the previous decade working for Elle, Company, Red and Australian Vogue, and now divide their time between London and L.A. And although 40 itself is OK, “because you have a big party and you don't actually feel any different,” it seems more permissible for men to age physically, while remaining in a suspended state of adolescence throughout their 30s, 40s and beyond.
Indeed, from Nick Hornby's About a Boy to the 1990s sitcom Men Behaving Badly and Showtime's Californication, we've always shown a fond indulgence for the messy, mixed-up male, which was partly why Bridget Jones's Diary was as groundbreaking as it was when Helen Fielding first turned those tables 25 years ago.
Yet only recently have a broader selection of messy, unfiltered female characters entered the zeitgeist, primarily through our TV screens, with shows like Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag proving that it is possible for a woman to own both her flaws and failures.
“But those characters are all in their 30s,” Potter points out, “and the feedback on the book is already telling us that now, women are feeling the buildup of pressure from as early as their 20s.”
Social media has only given us more #lifegoals to measure ourselves up against. “My mother insists she didn't have those same pressures. There was none of this pressure to `snap back' into shape after having a baby, for example. Now, you've got to be an earth mother but not look like an earth mother. There are so many contradictions. I don't have kids, but that pressure is awful.”
Then there's the stigma of not being a mother.
Which is why Potter was adamant her heroine should remain childless. “Just look at how we talk about Jennifer Aniston, when from the look of things she has a fantastic life. But unfortunately women are measured by that.”
Potter says she doesn't mind the constant, casual questions about motherhood, “and I realize why they come up, socially, but I know that for a lot of friends who couldn't have children those questions can be a trigger.”
Similarly, she welcomes the opening up of discussion around menopause. “It used to be a dirty word and something to fear — but mid-life now isn't what it used to be. I have a picture of my grandmother at 45 and she looks like an old lady.”
All of these pressures and stigmas — aren't many of them propagated not by men but women, though?
“Women do have a competitive streak, but I think that's in life generally, and on the contrary I have always found them to be very supportive of one another.”
Yet in the novel, Nell doesn't, at first, tell her friends about her broken engagement. Why? “The idea of failure is so strong for women in the book and in life, because we're told to be strong and in control, so when people ask us how we are, we always say we're fine.”
She cites the miscarriage scene in Fleabag as a perfect example of this. “That has happened to friends who have had one in the toilet at work, for example, and then had to rush into a meeting.” She pauses. “I think it's very difficult for us to be vulnerable, but when we allow ourselves to be, like Chrissy Teigen did with her miscarriage and then Meghan Markle with her New York Times essay, that's when we get that real connection — because we're being honest and real.”
While we wait for Confessions to hit the big screen (Potter likes the idea of Emily Blunt playing Nell), she has started work on her next novel, about “grief, loss and broken hearts, all hidden in plain sight,” which has acquired new resonance since COVID-19 devastated our lives.
But before she gets back to her daily word count, we have one last question: How important is it for our flawed and floundering heroines not to tip over into victims? “Crucial,” Potter says. “Being a victim takes the power away. And it's like the good witch says in the Wizard of Oz: `You had the power all along.'”
Menopause used to be a dirty word and something to fear — but mid-life now isn't what it used to be. I have a picture of my grandmother at 45 and she looks like an old lady. Alexandra Potter