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I feel like this book is aimed at a very particular person - in theory, I was in a similar position to Orla around the same time, having moved away from home for the first time in 2001. There's where the similarities ended - all the characters seemed to do was take drugs while living in squalor. Their flat sounded disgusting, and they were all struggling to make ends meet yet were out every night getting absolutely mangled. They just all really irritated me (except maybe Neema, who was the only one taking anything seriously) - Orla was in no position to judge her mother or sister for drinking when she was off her head daily. Ditto her father's relationship - she was horrible to his new partner and came off like a bratty teenager instead of a supposed independent woman trying to have a career in music. When everyone’s gone from the pub, Pat lets her tiredness take her over, her mouth sagging downwards into an upside down U. My children really see themselves as English. And sometimes things happen that really hammer that home, like the Euros and, you know, they’ve got their English flags, and, as an Irish person, you are recoiling
The author really captures the energy of ‘finding yourself’ as a young person in your twenties. The fun & possibilities. The chance for reinvention and taking chances. The euphoric heights and soul crushing lows - and Orla certainly experiences all of this. The dialogue in this feels so real, witty and funny that it feels like you’re reading a script from a BAFTA winning telly show. Christiana's levels of diplomacy, resilience and determination are extraordinary, and thats’ what I wanted to explore here, both the macro issues with climate change (what will the world look like in 2050 if we do and don’t cut our carbon emissions? ) and the micro, how to even begin trying to make change that is so vast, so seemingly insurmountable? How to convince the world to change how they live, work, travel, ….and most importantly, what can WE do to make a difference?
Neema is a lot more streetwise than Orla. When Orla becomes obsessed with a guy called Moses who is moving from Cheltenham (where Orla lived for a while studying music technology) to London, she has a fling with him. Unable to read the signs that he’s just not that into her, Orla chases him. At one point, she calls him six times but he never answers. I loved that Macmanus chose the early noughties to set the novel in; an era in which the smartphone had yet to get going and the internet is not yet the force that dominates our lives now. It means that people must still put in the legwork and talk face-to-face. The dialogue (signified with dashes, as Roddy Doyle does – is this an Irish thing?) is snappy and conversational, real. She writes in the first person present tense with Orla as our narrator as we stumble through her life with her, hoping she’ll find balance and a break. The claustrophobia and grittiness of the shared house dynamics is very well done too, contrasting with the generally calm atmosphere at the pub. Macmanus handles all her characters deftly with grit and pathos. While Orla’s own dreams seem to be going nowhere, Shiva are on the brink of something big. But as the hype around the band intensifies, so does the hedonism, and relationships in the house are growing strained. However, The Mess We’re In is a book with a main character that you get entirely frustrated with, her decision making is just so off and you cannot fathom why she would do what she does. But that is one of the best parts in my opinion! ¡I just love a flawed main character!!!!
Loved the characters in the pub she works at too. I can definitely chime with those older Irish men full of yearning and Guinness - I have plenty in my own family The much-anticipated second novel from author Annie Macmanus, The Mess We’re In is a vibrant, unforgettable tale of a chaotic young woman finding her feet and her sound at such a memorable point in London’s cultural and musical history.
Not the kind of book, then, that a casual observer would expect from a DJ best known for banging out hedonistic dance music. But those who listened closely will know that during her 17 years at Radio 1, Macmanus always sought out the human detail in electronic pulses – “organic beats that can breathe, stretch, prowl … pounce”. You’re right. I think we’re now living in an age where a lot of people and organisations in different sectors feel like they have to constantly put out content day after day. In my humble opinion, I think it’s so easy to forget that it’s more important to have a work ethos of quality over quantity. Whatever you do in life, you only ever want to put out your best work and sometimes that means not churning out endless content if it’s impacting your work or the end result.
She depicts this beautifully in the novel, with Irish barfly characters contributing some of the book’s most affecting moments. “We don’t all get the luxury of belonging where we’re born,” one of them says. As she spoke to regulars in these north London Irish bars, such as The Coopers Arms in Kilburn, the pub scenes in the book “grew and grew. And I realised that this book is really about being Irish in England. And exploring who the f**k am I? How Irish am I? What does it mean to me to be Irish? Where do I belong? All of that stuff which is so prevalent for anyone who doesn’t live in Ireland any more. The kind of neither-here-nor-thereness of it all.” I can’t see the river from here, but I love looking at it on the map, with its Looney Tunes curves, as if a child has scribbled it into existence. Now hugely decorated, she is the co-founder of an organisation called Global Optimism, co-host of the podcast “Outrage & Optimism” and the co-author of the recently published book, “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis”.
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It was such a slow build but it is a build and I can feel it growing and it feels so good now to be going out and doing my DJ gigs and people saying to me ‘I love Changes!’ It’s such a buzz, you know. On a personal level, the podcast has just been amazing for me because since I’ve been doing it, I’ve gone through these huge changes in my life where I’ve left the job and kind of changed my career. I’ve done a big pivot and it just really opens up your perspective on the world and helps you learn so much about how life works and about humanity and about how we deal with trauma or strife and just helps you learn how to live better and also how to have empathy. It just shows you how to see so much more than just what’s in your head. It helps you to jump into other people’s heads I suppose and gives you amazing access to different experiences. MacManus is famous, but not a celebrity. She has spent two decades promoting other people’s art, much more than her own. She is an expert interviewer, pulling stories from people about their lives, inspirations and creative processes, but is known for having such threadbare recollections about her own life that she previously based a podcast series on the holes in her memory. She’s Irish, but a Londoner. She’s big on social media, but not an influencer. Over the course of 17 years, her personality became intimately familiar to her millions of radio listeners on the BBC, but rarely, if ever, does she foreground her personal life.
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