Brought to you by Penguin.

Hello, welcome to the Penguin podcast where we talk to writers about writing.

I'm Nihal Arthur N, and today I'm speaking to Tom

Kru, an editor at the London Review of Books, and the author of The New Life, set in an unfamiliar

Victorian England that will surprise and provoke. He's been listed by The Observer as one of the

10 best new novelists for 2023, and Douglas Stewart, author of Shuggy Bain, describes New Life as some of the 10 best new novelists for 2023, and Douglas Stewart, author of Shuggy Bain, describes

new life as some of the best writing on desire I've read. I'm delighted to have the opportunity

to talk to him today. Tom Crewe, welcome to the Penguin podcast. Thank you for having me. It's

very nice to be here. So now we have a rough time scale of how long it takes to be an overnight

success and that's 10 years. Yes, that's about it. I had the idea for the book 10 years ago

and here we are today. It's gone in a flash. Why did it gestate over a decade? Well, it's actually, it sounds more tragic than it actually was in

reality, because I had the idea 10 years ago, but I was not at the desk for 10 years. I was,

I was doing lots of other things. I had the idea, and I was still finishing my PhD, so it was

sort of just, you know, there it was on the backburner.

I started doing a bit of reading, thinking. Then I got a job and that was very consuming and

still I kept thinking, here's, you know, there's that novel. And every now and again, I would

pick up a book and think about it. I made two consecutive New Year's resolutions,

promising that this would be the year I started my novel and both

times failed. So it was the third year I thought I must do this now. So I actually started writing

the book in 2017 and had a sort of finished version to send to publishers in 2021. So it was a

four-year writing process, but a 10-year ordeal overall.

Was it because you were busy doing other things, or was there a fear about starting it?

...