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Don't You Want Me?

» India Knight

Penguin
Paperback : 02 May 2002

Synopsis

Sex. There's a lot of it about. And Stella is definitely not getting her fair share.

She's got a few handicaps: she's the wrong side of thirty, she's a single mum (to the adorable Honey), and her French hot-bloodedness is liable to turn grown men pale. Mind you, the men she meets are either perma-tanned, tight-trousered smoothies with strangely white teeth or - easy, tiger - balding, poorly socialized podgers. One lot have black satin sheets; the other lot have, well, wives. What's a girl to do?

Dividing her time between London's most PC playgroup (most popular children's names: Ichabod and Perdita) and lessons on the art of pulling from housemate Frank, Stella is seriously starting to wonder if she'll ever have sex again.

Reviews

Customer Review: 24 July 2008

Reviewer: Kim

'This book is sooo funny. I love the way Stella describes the men she meets, the women in the playgroup, and of course, the lovely Frank. The story is just awesome. This will cheer any single late thirties women up ;)'

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Critic Review:

'Brilliantly funny and knowing ... Clara Hutt could eat Bridget Jones for breakfast'
Evening Standard

'A sharp, witty novel ... groundbreaking in current women's fiction'
Marie Claire

Interview

India Knight’s debut, My Life on a Plate, was received with huge critical acclaim. Now, get ready for Don't You Want Me?, one of the funniest novels you'll read all year.

We talked to India about sex, marriage, and being 'grown up'. Here's what she had to say ...

Your first novel, My Life on a Plate, was a huge success. Can you tell us what Don’t You Want Me? is about?

It’s about sex really, and particularly sex after marriage, whether it’s possible to ever have a sexual relationship again when you’re the wrong side of thirty-five, quite fussy and have a child. The answer being probably not unless you’re willing to make enormous compromises.

Was it difficult to move on to writing your second novel?

No, it was very easy because I, like the majority of women, think about sex, shoes and babies quite a lot of the time and that’s what certainly a big part of the novel is about, so no not really, it’s just all running round in my head.

In a way, this novel is about growing up. At what point do you think we become ‘grown-ups’, if ever?

I don’t think we ever do really become grown-ups. There’s been a lot in the press recently about ‘kidults’; adults who are sort of muddling through but are never properly grown up in the way that one conceives of our parents as being grown up. I remember my mother seeming grown up to me when she was about thirty, and I don’t feel grown up, I don’t think any of my friends are grown up. It’s as if we’re on stilts wearing borrowed adult clothing going through the motions, but really we just want to go and hang upside down on a bar and show our knickers.

Why is being single an 'unnatural state'? Both of your novels focus on this ...

I don’t think being single is an unnatural state, that’s the thing. I think everybody’s obsessed with the unnaturalness of the single state and actually, I think being single is completely reasonable. There is so much pressure now on women from the age of about twelve onwards, via media in general, and particularly magazines, to conform and enter a nuclear relationship and raise children and have a boyfriend, a husband, a partner. Actually I think that’s quite a crock. I think if you have maternal feelings and want to have children fine, if you fancy having a big wedding dress fine, but I don’t think it is an unnatural state. I think what both the books do in their different ways is try and show that being neatly married and living in your little suburban house is not necessarily a valid solution.

Sex and the (newly) single thirtysomething. Tell us more ...

Well, I think people should be less fussy about sex. The thing about sex is that as long as you don’t have particularly high standards, it’s not really very difficult to find. I wrote an article once for Nova magazine about how it was really easy to get a boyfriend; you just have to go and stand in the street and one would come along. He might be a rubbish boyfriend, he might be really ugly, he might be thick, he might be bad in bed or he might be none of the above. The thing is, we expect so much that we’re not prepared to sort of experiment and poke around, as it were, and have a look and see what’s available. We want everybody to be six foot two, earning a fortune, extraordinarily handsome, and fabulously intelligent, and then we moan because the streets of London aren’t littered with such men. I think we just need to really reconsider and perhaps be able to disassociate sex from a marriage that’s going to last thirty years.

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