Things we say: author Mo Fanning on the writing of his grown-up romantic comedy about love, Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine.
Nobody asking how you are expects you to say anything other than ‘fine’ or some variation on that specific theme. ‘Fine’ is our universal safe word. An indication the subject isn’t up for discussion.
When AI eventually comes up with a way to reverse-engineer everything I’ve ever said and done in my life, I expect to be presented with one of those word-cloud diagrams. Fine will sit plumb in the middle, loud and proud, surrounded by a hundred other words that mean much the same.
Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine
It’s why I wrote my latest book. Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine. Lisa Doyle is me. Sort of. Give or take the killer heels and blunt bob. Neither of which I can pull off. And believe me, I’ve tried.
She’s thirty-something, single, and most of the way down a bottle of supermarket red when she tells the world via Instagram that she’s engaged. To a man called Brian. Even though no man under sixty is called Brian – apart from her boss. But he’s married. To a woman who gives Lisa the sort of look usually reserved for finding something sticky on the sole of your very best shoes. By morning, Lisa’s lie has legs. And within the week, a guest list and there’s talk of a Selfridges Bridal registry. But owning up feels worse than the slow-motion horror of keeping it going.
Keeping Up Appearances
In essence, it’s a book about keeping up appearances. About being the someone at the bar who’s just been let go, buying a round they can’t afford. Or the new parent who hasn’t slept, insisting their baby is a full-on angel. Or me, when I find my way through six ‘press one’ option menus and speak to an actual human being at my GP practice. The voice inside my head wants to make a fuss. But I don’t… because what good would it do? If asked, we’d all claim to be absolutely fine.
Lisa Doyle was the subject of my debut novel (The Armchair Bride) more than twenty years ago. That book did well for itself. And then life got in the way and I didn’t write another word for many dark years. After a near brush with death and working out that me and drink were not meant to be close acquaintances, the stories started over. And now, a few years into what has felt like a second go at being a writer, I’ve returned to Lisa. I’m a different man and Lisa lives a different life.
Loneliness as a Subject
Going back to a book you wrote in your late thirties is a strange how-do-you-do. A lot of what I wrote first time out, made me wince. The central premise still held, more or less, but the woman at the centre felt like a text sent from the boot of a getaway vehicle. The younger me had written her loneliness as the kind of problem that the right man would just turn up and solve. This time I let it be the actual subject. The man’s still in there. He’s just no longer the point.
Because here’s what the older me understands that the younger one didn’t: nobody invents a fiancé for a laugh. They do it because admitting the truth, out loud to a world full of people with their own problems, that you’re lonely and frightened and sick of being the one nobody thinks to worry about, feels unsurvivable.
That’s the trouble with ‘fine’. Said once, it’s nothing. A reflex. Said every day for years, calcifying into something you can’t shift. You lose the way back to the truth, even with the people who’d catch you if you tumbled. Lisa’s lie spirals because the tiny honest answer was never really on offer. Nobody left room for ‘actually, no, I’m anything but fine’… so she filled the gap with a man and a thrift shop engagement ring.
The part closest to my own heart isn’t the romance. It’s the friendship. Lisa and Helen have known each other since they were eleven, when they were cast as two trees in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and bonded over standing very still while the other kids got to speak actual lines. Years later, when the lie finally comes apart, Helen’s first reaction isn’t ‘how could you?’ It’s ‘why didn’t you think you could tell me?’ I’ve sat through that conversation. Most people have, on one side of it or the other.
Happy Ever After? Or For Now?
I don’t think the book fixes anyone. I’m one of those annoying writers who refuses to tie everything up in a big neat bow. I know the rom-com rules. Happy Ever After or Happy For Now. I’m very much a believer in the latter.
Lisa doesn’t come out the far end mended. She gets found out – which is worse, but which is also the only thing that does her an ounce of good. There’s a battered blue armchair in it that belonged to her dead father, and an incident involving a Henry Hoover and a homemade love bite that I’m not going to explain here. Let’s just say, my mother’s concealer didn’t fix anything.
I called it Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine, with the ‘absolutely’ doing the heavy lifting, because nobody who is genuinely fine ever feels the need to say so with that much conviction. If you’ve ever told someone you were grand when you’re nothing of the sort, you’ll recognise Lisa. You might even be her. I was, for a good while. Then a couple of editors with red pens, and a husband who notices things, talked me out of it.
(c) Mo Fanning
Mo will be on a panel at Nottingham’s Queer the Shelves on 27 June, and taking part in the Hertford Literary Festival on 3 July.
About Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine:
Lisa Doyle is fine. Absolutely fine.
At least, that’s the story she’s been telling herself.
Her best friend is getting married. Everyone around her seems to have a partner, a plan, and a life that makes sense. Lisa, meanwhile, has four glasses of wine in her, a talent for making bad situations worse, and a growing sense of being left behind.
So she does what any sensible woman in a crisis would do. She announces that she’s engaged.
There is only one problem.
Brian does not exist.
Now Lisa needs a fiancé before the wedding, her actor flatmate is far too willing to get involved, and the real Brian, who is very much married and very much her boss, is starting to look at her in ways that suggest this lie may have got seriously out of hand.
Warm, witty, and painfully recognisable, Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine is a grown-up romantic comedy about love, pressure, friendship, and the exhausting performance of holding everything together when you’re quietly falling apart.
Perfect for readers of Mhairi McFarlane, Beth O’Leary, and Marian Keyes.
Order your copy of Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine online here.
And read more Meet the Author articles on Writing.ie here.
