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| Courtesy of Rebecca Wait |
Rebecca Wait studied English at Oxford University and spent more than a decade teaching English in London secondary schools while writing novels. She has also taught creative writing courses for adults. She now lives in Buckinghamshire and writes full time. Visit Rebecca at her website.
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Alice and Hanna haven’t spoken in years—but where better to reconnect with an estranged sister than at a funeral?
Years earlier, their mother Celia and aunt Katy had their own tempestuous relationship. Katy was pretty and easy to love; Celia was unassuming and “unprepossessing,” according to their mother. But in her teens, Katy began to change, in bits, then bounds— until finally, her doctors arrived at a diagnosis that then took all the family’s energy, though they refused to admit it. Celia was on her own, developing hang-ups that come from a family suffering in silence.
When Celia has her own children—twins Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, and their eternally disapproving brother Michael—her parenting is, predictably, unconventional. Alice and Hanna seem caught in the unforgiving hands of fate, doomed to repeat the cycle of Celia and Katy as Hanna spins out of control upon entering university.
At the wryly beating heart of I’m Sorry You Feel That Way are sisters, grappling with how family dynamics curdle or calcify over time. Bookended by funerals, where the foibles of human nature and the humor found at the nexus of denial and despair are inevitably on display, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way is a whipsmart addition to a growing body of work by a gifted stylist. (Courtesy of Amazon.)
"It's a tender tribute to anyone who's ever felt not quite at home—even or especially at home."
- Ariel Courage, author of Bad Nature
"A brutally funny and whip-smart novel about dysfunctional families, with some of the best fictional sibling relationships I've ever read."
- Hannah Beckerman, author of The Forgetting
What is a favorite compliment you received on your writing?
I’m not very receptive to compliments; they just slide off me. How joyless of me. Though the opposite is true as well, and I don’t get derailed by criticism, so I suppose it works out even. I do remember someone once told me my prose is very ‘clean’ and I appreciated that, though admittedly it makes my prose sound like a wellness regime. I try to be precise in writing what I mean, without too many flourishes.
I’m not very receptive to compliments; they just slide off me. How joyless of me. Though the opposite is true as well, and I don’t get derailed by criticism, so I suppose it works out even. I do remember someone once told me my prose is very ‘clean’ and I appreciated that, though admittedly it makes my prose sound like a wellness regime. I try to be precise in writing what I mean, without too many flourishes.
What were the biggest rewards and challenges with writing I'm Sorry You Feel That Way?
The whole experience was quite messy. I was teaching high school English in London while working on the book, which is fun but exhausting, and I was pregnant and always tired. Then Covid hit, so I was teaching my students over Zoom, and we were all going slightly insane. Weirdly, the more stressed I felt, the more jokes seemed to creep into the book. I hadn’t set out to write a comedy, but I think I ended up writing to cheer myself up. Then I did the edits on pretty much zero sleep, with a newborn baby strapped to my chest, so that was a wild ride too, and god knows what bizarre changes I made to the manuscript. That whole period's a bit of a blur.
The whole experience was quite messy. I was teaching high school English in London while working on the book, which is fun but exhausting, and I was pregnant and always tired. Then Covid hit, so I was teaching my students over Zoom, and we were all going slightly insane. Weirdly, the more stressed I felt, the more jokes seemed to creep into the book. I hadn’t set out to write a comedy, but I think I ended up writing to cheer myself up. Then I did the edits on pretty much zero sleep, with a newborn baby strapped to my chest, so that was a wild ride too, and god knows what bizarre changes I made to the manuscript. That whole period's a bit of a blur.
If I'm Sorry were made into a movie, who would you cast in the leading roles?
I’d want Florence Pugh to play Hanna – she’d capture her steeliness and humour perfectly – and for Alice, Saoirse Ronan. You know, if either of them happened to be free.
I’d want Florence Pugh to play Hanna – she’d capture her steeliness and humour perfectly – and for Alice, Saoirse Ronan. You know, if either of them happened to be free.
Which book made you fall in love with reading?
Hard to trace it back to the very first time, though the Narnia books stand out in my memory. As an adult, if I need to fall back in love with reading, I return to some Jane Austen – Persuasion is my favourite – or, in another mood, I re-read Melissa Bank’s brilliant and underrated The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing.
What is your favorite thing about autumn?
Rain! I live just outside of London and we get a lot of rain. I love it. Sunshine is wasted on me.
What was the last thing that made you laugh?
My five-year-old daughter, last night, was crying with laughter at an objectively very unfunny joke, and seeing her in that state made me laugh a lot too. She’s got this lovely, helpless, gurgling laugh.
Hard to trace it back to the very first time, though the Narnia books stand out in my memory. As an adult, if I need to fall back in love with reading, I return to some Jane Austen – Persuasion is my favourite – or, in another mood, I re-read Melissa Bank’s brilliant and underrated The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing.
What is your favorite thing about autumn?
Rain! I live just outside of London and we get a lot of rain. I love it. Sunshine is wasted on me.
What was the last thing that made you laugh?
My five-year-old daughter, last night, was crying with laughter at an objectively very unfunny joke, and seeing her in that state made me laugh a lot too. She’s got this lovely, helpless, gurgling laugh.
Thanks to Rebecca for chatting with us and to Harper Perennial for sharing her book with our readers.
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