Yomi Adegoke On Writing Timely, Thought-Provoking Fiction

I’m anxious! I’m so anxious. I think I’m quite an anxious person generally, but I thought I’d feel differently because I’ve done this before. I’ve co-written books with my best friend, but this is my first fiction, which is really different and I’m doing it on my own. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I’m really excited as well. It feels very much like the calm before a hopefully exciting and life-changing storm. I’m just waiting with bated breath.

Lockdown! I wanted to do fiction of sorts years ago, in the same way that everyone wants to be like an astronaut or a pop star when they’re a child. When I was a kid I didn’t have a PS2, so I remember our dad bought us this PC game called Storybook Weaver. It was basically like a really nerdy game where you just wrote books. Since then I hadn’t really thought about fiction writing for a really long time and then it was lockdown and everyone else was baking. I was like well, I’m a really rubbish cook, but I love to paint so I was doing self-portraits and then I just practically ran out of canvas.

Originally I had this idea to do The List as a kind of report nonfiction piece of writing at the height of Me Too. I think a few years after looking at it as a non-fiction piece of writing, I wanted to do it as a play – that was terrible haha, and then it was like, well I’ve got lockdown, I have a lot of time, I can experiment with it as fiction.

Loads! For a start, The List was originally just from Ola’s perspective, and you only saw Michael through Ola’s eyes. I found it really interesting the way women are affected by the allegations of abuse that surround a man in their life, whether that’s their dad, their brother, their partner, or their son. The way women are almost excluded from that conversation or have our preconceptions projected onto them. I noticed [during the wave of Me Too] that Scarlett Johansson had worn a Marchesa dress designed by Harvey Weinstein’s wife after the Weinstein scandal broke, and everyone was saying that supporting the wife with that gesture was a kind of implicit support of Harvey Weinstein. And I thought that was really interesting, maybe I’m being gracious, but I thought it’s more likely that his wife wasn’t aware of what he’d been doing, and Scarlett was trying to support her, but the language around it was just lambasting Scarlett Johansson because obviously supporting his wife is supporting him. It was almost biblical, like man and wife as one flesh, as though his crimes are hers. So I thought, I really want this to just be about Ola. And I wanted to look at Ola and have her perspective and question what it is like to be a woman in that position. And then as time went on I felt that something was missing. And I think that was Michael’s perspective. That was a really big change.

Honestly, I think that is the dream response. I always say I’m a habitual fence sitter. I don’t think in absolutes at all. I’m a real grey-area person. But then simultaneously, I definitely feel like even with the writing of this book, I was in real time working out I suppose what my feelings were in relation to it.

I wanted to really try to portray the widest spectrum possible of realities in a situation like this. First and foremost The List touches on cancel culture and Me Too. But it’s a book about the Internet and I think the Internet is probably one of the most powerful inventions of the 21st century. It shows us a lot about human nature. I think we are all aware of its power, and how polarising it is, and how it forces black-and-white thinking. But none of us really (myself included) take the time to kind of acknowledge where we fit within that. In the writing of [these characters] it forced me to think about myself and how complicit I am in the nature of the internet and how it removes nuance and grey areas from a conversation.

I love when I hear that!  I love when I hear journalists say, ‘oh, I’m gonna write a book’. I’m like, yes! I just love to hear it. I definitely don’t take for granted that fiction writing’s a different skill set. But that being said, I’m excited to hear about journalists writing fiction because I think you having that journalistic approach means you are used to having to show both sides of a story. You’re used to having to explore grey areas and nuance and I think when I read a lot of fiction by journalists, it does feel like it’s a bit more daring.

I actually was steadfast in the fact that I didn’t want to do fiction again. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I just had an idea and I didn’t have broad fiction aspirations generally. So I was like, I’ve got this idea, I’m confident in this idea and I’m gonna execute it. And then I did and I was like, okay, I guess that’s that. But when it came to the auction, most of the publishers were offering two-book deals and I remember I kept saying to my agent, ‘oh you know what, I don’t wanna take a two-book deal cause I don’t know if I have another idea like this’, and I don’t want to write something for the sake of it. But then there was one more equally contentious controversial idea that I did want to do an article on as well several years ago. So I thought, if I do get a two-book, I do have this other idea that I think is really kind of fertile for conversation. So I have started writing that, that’s book two. I can’t really go into too much detail about it, but I am really excited. I think it will be another conversation starter.

The List – soon to be a major TV series, is out now via 4th Estate and available to order.