Sophie White: 'I don't know any other way to be'

Sophie White talks as honestly and candidly as she writes. From friendship and motherhood, to ambition and mental illness, nothing was off limits when she met Edel Coffey to talk about her new book

Author Sophie White at the River Lee Hotel, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

Sophie White bobs into the chic surroundings of The Alex Hotel in Dublin, a ray of friendly, positive energy. Her platinum-blonde hair is tinged with a creamy pink shade, and she is dressed in a rosy cardigan which she knit for herself. She is adorned with distractingly cool jewellery and tattoos (a recent one reads: ‘Take Your Meds’). It’s one of the first sunny days of the season, so she orders an iced latte.

We are meeting to discuss her fifth novel and seventh book, My Hot Friend, which deals with everything from female friendship to motherhood and mental illness. It’s a lot funnier than that list might suggest. Like Marian Keyes, White’s fiction manages to walk the line between raucous humour and the often murky and difficult terrain of Real Life.

The book tells the story of Lexi, whose podcast with her best friend is going stratospheric; Joanne, who has just had a baby; and Claire, who is being frozen out of her friend group by that ultimate modern-day betrayal — the WhatsApp side-group.

White admits the podcasting strand is a “very meta” storyline. When she is not writing novels, she hosts numerous podcasts with her friends, including the popular Mother of Pod (a motherhood podcast which has classic episode titles such as ‘Give Baldy Your Tit’) and The Creep Dive, which investigates bizarre news stories.

White’s novels often include elements of digital life like podcasting, messaging services, and social media, but it’s never contrived. “It’s just how we live now,” she points out.

White got the idea to write My Hot Friend when an article she wrote about friendship breakups got a huge response online. “The response was crazy. So many people had experienced it and really wanted to talk about it. They’d never actually felt it was recognised that friendship breakup was a real thing and could be as painful as a romantic breakup. I also wanted to write about female friendship and how our vulnerabilities around our friends don’t just go away as we get older. If anything, they intensify as your friends become more and more your support.

“I’ve had fights with friends where I have felt destabilised to my core. Like, the whole universe is off kilter until it’s resolved and I’m feverishly trying to resolve it. Whereas I’ll have a fight with [my husband] and just carry on ignoring him, then almost forget we’re in a fight. Friendship fights just freak me out so much, I’m just so terrified of losing my friends.

“I was really interested in the way we have new avenues to conduct our friendships now, like WhatsApp and stuff, because it really fosters some of those old vulnerable feelings we had in school, like, ‘Are they ignoring me? Have I said something?’ I really relate to a lot of Claire’s overthinking in the book.”

HANDS ON DECK

Another character, Joanne, is grappling with how new motherhood has changed her relationships. “I wanted to tackle that chasm that forms between you and your partner. I feel that’s quite a common experience of you never want to break up with them more than you do after the first year of having a first baby and you’ve also never needed them more in terms of just literal hands on deck.

“You’re both experiencing the same thing in wildly different ways; one person is essentially off their tits on hormones the whole time. So I wanted to look at that big disconnect that takes place.”

White is a mother to three young sons and says she also wanted to write about what happens to women’s careers when they take time out for something like motherhood. “I wanted to at least reference how women find it really hard to reconcile the ‘I don’t earn enough to justify the childcare cost here’.”

Author Sophie White at the River Lee Hotel, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

She understands the dilemma, but points out that “earning power isn’t everything”.

“If you’re allowed to continue to invest in your progress and career, [earning power] can change. The ‘working mother’ issue can lack nuance. It doesn’t seem to dig into what a woman gets out of her career beyond money.”

White was born in Dublin in 1985 and is the only child of Sunday Independent features editor, Mary O’Sullivan and the late Kevin Linehan, who was head of entertainment for RTÉ. She studied sculpture at National College of Art and Design before becoming a chef and subsequently a writer.

“Since I found out what I want to do, I’ve been ambitious,” she says. She is a prolific writer, publishing across styles and genres. Last year, for example, she published the literary horror novel Where I End with the prestigious publisher Tramp Press and a commercial fiction novel, The Snag List. She has also written non-fiction essays and a cookbook/memoir. Does she ever feel that her different books are treated differently? 

“Not by readers. Readers are so democratic now and this has really sprung up with Bookstagram. The women who run those accounts read really widely and readers meet the books on their own terms. If they’re reading a Christmas romance, they’re not judging it against Sally Rooney. Sometimes I get a bit scared of people saying I’m churning them out — that hurts my feelings — but I work full time as a writer. And some things just take the time they take.” She’s not letting it slow her down. She is currently working on a new commercial fiction novel and an idea for something in a similar vein to Where I End.

WATERSHED MOMENTS

On a recent appearance on the Tommy Tiernan Show, White spoke about her experiences with mental illness (she is bipolar) and a breakdown that came at the end of her college degree and how she was a different person as a result. Does she wonder about the person she might have been had she not had that experience?

“I think I would be a different person. I do think that everyone has those watershed moments and just maybe they’re not always as clearly delineated as mine became because I wrote about it.

“I definitely don’t think I would have become this person without it. I kind of feel like I’d be in a worse spot if it hadn’t happened because I think I probably was going down a road and it could have gotten way worse. In a way, I think I probably am an addict at my core and how might that have panned out if I hadn’t had that breakdown? That’s where I take it in my head in terms of who would I be? Often I think, well, I’d be dead.”

She is always incredibly open and honest about addiction and mental illness and I ask her why she continues to be so open about what must be difficult personal experiences.

“I don’t know any other way to be,” she laughs. “But the thing is, if you’re an addict, so much of your life is just mired in lies and deception. It’s your full-time job lying to yourself and others. I am in recovery, five years sober next week, but there’s almost an element of honesty for insurance: If I make sure that enough people know that I’m a lying addict, this will in some way insure me against relapse and protect me, and protect everyone in my life.”

My Hot Friend is out now, published by Hachette Ireland.