Jessica Andrews

Image Credit: Seth Hamilton

After devouring Milk Teeth over a weekend, it was wonderful to meet Jessica Andrews and talk to her about her latest novel, published in July this year. Sensual and evocative, this novel navigates the relatable experience of searching for a sense of meaning and salvation while denying ourselves the peace and pleasures we yearn for. Set across England, France, and Spain, Milk Teeth is both a transporting love story and a narrative discovery of self.

I wanted to start by asking you about your thoughts on memoir and the relationship between real lived experiences and fiction. I know you have said there are elements of lived experience in both Saltwater and Milk Teeth, and I read something you said about emotional truths bringing these different elements together. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

So, my first book, Saltwater, is semi-autobiographical and I was honest about that from the beginning - I think because I felt I couldn't really talk about it in a sincere way if I was pretending it wasn’t true. When I came to write my next book, I had to think a bit more about what my project was going to be. I thought – am I going to continue to write from life? Or am I going to do something quite different?

 Ultimately, Milk Teeth does have some elements of lived experience, but it is more fictional as well. Although it feels true to me, if you sat me down and asked me, “can you verify whether this, this, or this happened?’, I wouldn't be able to. I think it comes down to the idea of emotional truth because, for me, the emotional world of a book needs to feel true and authentic to both the reader and writer. I think fictionalising events sometimes gives the author a bit more freedom to get at the truth of the emotion that you're trying to portray.

Although the two books are very different, there are some themes that crossover, and I did ask myself whether I needed to write something completely new, but then I thought a lot about visual artists, like Louise Bourgeois who returns to her childhood again and again; she makes work about the same events over and over, but each piece feels fresh and presents a different viewpoint. So, I thought that maybe you can do that with writing as well.

So, if there are certain emotional truths that run throughout the novel and then fictional worlds that are built around them, is there a conscious separation in your mind between the fictional elements and the truths?

I always start with a theme or a feeling for a book. With this book, I knew I wanted it to be about wanting – a kind of denial and desire. I knew there were some questions I was trying to tease out, so when I was writing, particularly in the past tense narrative, I was sometimes writing from memory; I thought of episodes when I felt bodily shame and then I wrote them as a fictional occurrence. I didn't always want to write the true version of something, so I would try and place those feelings into the fiction, which I guess is what all writers are doing all the time. So, I guess it is a conscious decision, but the way it evolves comes down to what feels more alive or real on the page.

Both of your novels have been described as transporting in some way, as they both involve characters travelling around different cities. You do a beautiful job of evoking the sensory aspects of the different places, and I have seen a lot of people linking the idea of literal travel with the emotional journeys of your characters. Is that something that was in the back of your mind, or is it too much of a stretch?

No, I think that's true. With both of my books, place feels integral to the characters. I wrestled with place quite a lot in this book, and I think I worried at one point that there were too many places. But the movement and rootlessness of it all, and the contrast between the different cities, felt really key to the story that I was trying to tell, and I found that I wasn't able to tell the story in the right way without them – especially the setting of Barcelona.

I was living in Barcelona for a couple of years, and although I wasn't planning to write about it necessarily, the textures and the smells and the humidity and the salt and the food were the perfect trigger for the story. Because it's partly a book about denial, I wanted it to feel very full and alive and hungry at the same time. So, Barcelona was just the right place.

Although the central relationship in Milk Teeth isn’t necessarily a negative relationship, the couple don’t seem to be able to communicate fully. As a reader, I found myself willing your character to tell her partner exactly how she feels, and when she doesn’t, it creates this sense of disconnect. I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about their failure to communicate and where you feel that comes from?

I guess so much of the book is about the protagonist and how she's desperately trying to communicate this thing about herself, but she can't find the language to, or she doesn't understand it. She’s unnamed and partly it's because of this – she wants to name what she is or what has happened to her but over and over again, but she can't quite get there. So, I guess the miscommunication between the couple reflects that. I also really wanted to write a heterosexual relationship that's not completely toxic because, you know, there's a big trend for writing about toxic relationships and sexual assault, and I think that’s really important, but I guess I felt like, where does the conversation go next? Because if we don’t have any positive representations of things like sex or relationships, then what? And so, their miscommunication felt like the most true-to-life thing to me because communication is often a significant problem in relationships because not everybody can always say what they mean. I wanted it to be positive, but I wanted it to be real.

Did you also find it frustrating? Was it in your head that readers would find that frustrating?

Yes definitely. Sometimes I would just think, ‘Oh my god, get it together woman! Say it! If you just say it, he’ll understand!’.

That makes me feel so much better because I was feeling like a bad person for finding it frustrating! So, more generally, why did you choose to focus on the relationship between wanting and denial?

My first book is about class and gender – I think this book also is, but the first one is much more about wanting to make a life that's different from the life you have been given, and the conflicts that arise when you try to make space for yourself in the world. But I felt like, with this book, I wanted to explore more of the psychological costs. Maybe once you have carved out a bit of space for yourself, can you allow yourself to have it? Because there's nothing stopping her from inhabiting the world and this relationship but, because of these intersections of class and gender and the way her desires have been policed or not permitted, she's self-policing her desires.

And the first idea I had, right at the beginning, was that I wanted to write about desire and denial because it felt like something I was trying to answer for myself in my own life, but I didn't know exactly what or why. I guess it's like you’re writing your way into that space to try and untangle it.

I’d never thought of it like that. I'm sure there are a lot of people reading your book who resonate with the idea of self-policing, but if we do seek approval to allow ourselves certain things, where do you think that comes from? Does it come from the rigid ideas about gender and class ideas that we have? And do you think that is the main constraint that makes us deny ourselves different lives?

I think it's different for different people. I think the idea of self-policing almost transcends class and gender and there are a lot of different reasons why. Someone might be from a super wealthy background, but they deny themselves things because, I don't know, they feel ashamed. I think often with the food aspect, with something like disordered eating, it is talked about in more privileged circles, and I felt like I hadn’t really read something that explores the working-class aspect of that. And why might you feel like you’re not deserving of things? Or that denying yourself things is almost a form of aspiration?

I think it is very gendered, women are much more conditioned to suppress their appetites. But I also know women who set up their lives in opposition to that, and it almost feels like they’re pushing back, asserting that they will have their pleasures.

You mentioned there are a lot of books out there that deal with female protagonists who experience a general sense of discontent and difficulty about living in this world. You’ve answered how Milk Teeth relates to this idea, but are there any other books like this that you’ve enjoyed or taken influence from? And do you agree that there are quite a lot of books about that right now?

Yes, I think there are, but I think partly it's because there are a lot more books by young women that are published who are having these kinds of conversations. I think maybe people are interested in that experience in a way that there wasn’t a lot of space for before. 

Books that I really love are The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride, which is one of my favourite books and a hue influence. I also really love Garth Greenwell and the way he writes about sex and desire and the complexity of those things. They were the kind of people I was thinking about while I was writing, and I also read a lot of poetry, so it's not always novels that are direct influences.

Okay, complete curveball – where did the title come from and what does it refer to? 

I had a different working title first which will not be named, but I did for Saltwater as well because I think the title often comes towards the end when you actually know what the book is about. And Milk Teeth came from one small reference towards the end of the book of a milk tooth, and when I was editing and reading through the book, I thought, ‘Oh my god, I think Milk Teeth is the title!’ It’s a kind of coming-of-age story, even though it's about someone coming of age later in their life, and I felt like the idea of Milk Teeth really held the theme of food and the body. It's kind of grotesque in a way, which I felt reflected the feeling of the book.

It makes me think of wanting to eat sweet food or indulge but not wanting to ruin your teeth! There's definitely a childlike quality about it. On a more general note, could you share a few authors or books that you have enjoyed recently?

I’ve got so many. I’ve been reading a poetry collection called Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz - it's really beautiful. I also read a beautiful graphic novel that recently came out called Alison by Lizzie Stewart. I'm not usually a huge reader of graphic novels and I don't know a lot about them, but it's a story about women and art making and it's really beautiful. I also really enjoyed There Are More Things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler, which came out recently.

I wondered if you could talk a bit more about Grapevine.

Grapevine is a small magazine I set up with a friend. We did MAs in creative writing together and then we graduated and felt like we had lots of friends who were making really good work and not getting published, so we just thought, why don't we just publish it ourselves? We haven't done it for a while – not since Covid actually – but we used to put on poetry nights as well and it's just a way of forging a bit of a community. Writing is lonely and it's easy to get demoralised, so we wanted to create something that we could go to and meet people that gives you a bit of a boost. I mean, my dream would be to turn it into a small feminist press, but I need some money to do that…