The Art of Not Falling Apart

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If you’re 50 and feeling a failure, you must read The Art of Not Falling Apart Liz Jones, Mail on Sunday MARK: And also, there are some wonderful moments of joy and celebration in the book. And in fact, one of my favorite passages is kind of a hymn to crisps and fizzy wine. For Christina Patterson, it was her job as a journalist that kept her going through the ups and downs of life. And then she lost that, too. Dreaming of revenge and irritated by self-help books, she decided to do the kind of interviews she had never done before. The resulting conversations are surprising, touching and often funny. MARK: Well, having read the book, I can absolutely confirm that it’s a really extraordinary read. But it’s not just harrowing, I do want to say that. There’s an incredible depth of compassion, I think, in your writing and also a lot of the stories that you draw out of people and that you relate from yourself, a lot of the core is people helping each other and being there for each other.

CHRISTINA: So the columns I wrote about that and that program. And also, I made a little film for the one show the day the Francis Report came out, a five-minute film about the state of contemporary nursing, which produced a very powerful response. And then, out of that, I did this investigation that resulted in over six days in The Independent, every day for six days. And that had an absolutely extraordinary response and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, which is the main political journalism prize in the country. CHRISTINA: Well, it was great, obviously! It was very, very stressful. I would be trying to keep up with the news pretty much all the time. I would go to bed thinking about the news, thinking about the midnight news, having watched News Night, I’d spend hours a day reading the papers. As I say, on the column days, I would wake up in a bit of a cold sweat. So it was very stressful. And you don’t always have particularly interesting things to say about something that’s popped up that morning and that is not a nice feeling. And you do know that whatever you write is going to have your name and a photo of you next to it. Now, I won't lie: I bought Christina's book mostly because I liked the cover. I'm a graphic designer. A good cover and a rating above 3 on Goodreads is often all that's required to draw me in. This is a joyful book. Despite the sorrows, there is a determined joy to this tale, a pattern of finding the good despite the bad, of turning to face the sun so the shadows fall behind. It's a wonderful, heart-wrenching, compelling read." Dr Kathryn Mannix, author of With the End in MindAnd write 1,200 words about it. You can structure that in any way you like. You could go up to 1,210 words, you could go down to 1,190 words, but no you can’t go over or above that, because that’s what you have to do as a journalist. You have to be very, very precise. And from that subject, you should construct something that you think will be interesting for somebody else to read, that might make them smile or might make them moved or might make them think. I bought the Art of Not Falling Apart thinking it would be one of those typical self-help books that give you lots of advice on breathing techniques, the art of keeping a clean fat and how you can't succeed without failure. I'm very thankful that it wasn't. MARK: And so, storytelling and particularly, embedding stories inside stories inside stories is quite… if you notice, a lot of film and TV and quite often children’s TV uses the technique. So it takes you very deep in the world and worlds of the book. All families have stories of mental health struggles but Christina and her family have had more than their fair share… There is a lot of death and suffering in this book yet precisely because Christina is so candid and compassionate there is hope within it too. I am sure this will be a welcome addition to the books helping to break down stigma and taboo about mental illness." Alastair Campbell, author of Living Better In this inspirational book, she reflects on the lessons she has learned since being made redundant, and highlights ways to deal with personal challenges. This is not a typical ‘how to’ guide that promises all the answers, though readers may find some, but they may also simply enjoy it as a witty memoir.’ Ella Walker, The Herald

Not the type of book I would normally read, and a story I couldn’t relate or identify to, because there was no story. A very personal, warm memoir filled with vignettes of other's lives too, this book is startling in its sustained ability to make my eyes moist, without noticing, or always knowing why exactly. I loved it. I cried for the awful trials people face, and I cried for how they faced them, I cried when they somehow managed, and cried when they couldn't. I cried when others stepped in to help lift the burden, I cried at the good times that come through, too. Let's get my disclaimer out of the way, as cliche as it is, this is not the type of book that I normally read. I'm not sure what that says about me though because this book had, hands down, the best imagery and detail I've experienced in a book. Seriously, this book would be an amazing read for anyone aspiring to be an author....unless of course you're of the "less is more" school of thought, then you just better move on! And I was thinking, ‘Why do I think I like writing when this is so unbelievably unpleasant?’ But I think that’s the deal. It’s the kind of weird, complicated, love/hate relationship, where you love having written and there are points in the writing where you love it, but there are points where you absolutely hate it. And you need to hate it to get into the point where you have what Mikhail, Mishkin… I can never pronounce his name! Mihaly, Mihaly, I think his name is, something like that. He talks about…

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MARK: Right. Well, that sounds like the perfect time for us to segue into the Creative Challenge with the joys and struggles. So Christina, this is the point in the interview where I ask my guest to set the listener a challenge that’s related to the themes that we’ve just been talking about and something that they can either do, or at least get started within seven days of listening to the interview. The Art of Not Falling Apart shames the sleek, smug lessons of the Lean In brigade by celebrating... the varied circumstances, uncertain fortunes and individual abilities that shape human effort.’ Times Literary Supplement These days Christina writes for The Sunday Times and The Guardian, and is a regular commentator on radio and TV news programmes, including the Sky News Press Preview. When my brother died, very suddenly, I had to clear out his house. I had to sift through box after box of letters, papers, photos and belongings, not just of Tom’s, but of our parents and our older sister, Caroline.

Thank you for sharing your story and your friend's stories and for giving them a voice on how they managed to get through all the crap life decided to threw at them. The book covers themes which are quite relatable to a number of people I'd imagine - mainly failure and also stress (which seems especially prevalent in the journalism industry), plus more generally mental health and talk of how women who are childless are regarded in society, to name but a few. In that sense, it had a feel to me of being a book of its time.

MARK: So I think there’s maybe a bit of a lesson here, isn’t there? When you looked at the great and the so-called good of literature, you put them, like I guess many of us do when we’re young, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, they’re like colossi, bestriding the globe. CHRISTINA: Well, as a journalist and writer, it’s going to have to be a journalistic or at least writing challenge. And I am going to ask you to take one issue that interests you at the moment… it could be in the news, it could be in your life, it could be absolutely anything. In my case, for example, if I were told to do this, I would probably – if I were being really honest – have to write about property porn, because that’s my current obsession, even though I know it sounds like a very banal subject. So if I were doing it, that’s what I would choose. But it could be anything that’s taking up a lot of your headspace or just that’s interesting you. MARK: That’s a beautiful example. I saw that show and one of the images that really stayed with me was a photo of him, an old man in a wheelchair, with scissors and colored paper. And it looked just like my kids, who must have been about three or four. This is an unusual book, in its form and content – part memoir, part collection of interviews and part reflection on how to survive the worst that life can throw at human beings – including illness, injury, redundancy, divorce and bereavement. I love that phrase of yours, ‘deceptive simplicity.’ You could apply that to Larkin’s poetry, certainly.

I think the book in a way, it’s a central message of the book, actually. I do think that the most important thing is your character, the most important thing is your heart and the most important thing is how you behave to other people. And then, that’s how I was brought up and I still absolutely believe that. She went on to write a regular column at The Independent for many years, about politics, society, culture, books, travel and the arts. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the prestigious Orwell Prize for her campaign to raise standards in nursing, which she pursued in her column, on radio and television.Written with savage honesty about grief and sibling rivalry, this book slices deeply. A memoir about family loyalty and gut-wrenching goodbyes but it serves too as a wise guide from someone who has endured more than her share of life's slings and arrows, and has still come out swinging" ― Laura Pullman, Sunday Times A bracing, heart-lifting read. Patterson is a superb writer - part of the redemptive message of this memoir is that beautiful prose can make almost anything bearable. Outside the Sky is Blue is a lesson in generosity, in accommodation, but most of all it's a lesson in resilience" ― Alex Preston, The Observer When I was a child, I thought it was easy. You fell in love, got married in a lovely dress, and then you had children CHRISTINA: Hard work, Mark! It was very, very hard work. I started off at The Independent as Deputy Literary Editor. And I had, in fact, been running an organization called The Poetry Society, which I loved. It was a dream job. And I was the boss, what’s not to like? And I had lovely colleagues and I organized things like poetry-reading routes, where we’d sit around drinking margaritas and reading poetry. And it was fabulous, it really was a dream job. So it took me a long time – about 18 months – before I really allowed myself to sit down and think about how I was going to actually structure this book and put it together. And there was a lot to’ing and fro’ing with my agent before we got to the point where he thought the proposal was ready to send out. And I didn’t get an instant offer. I’m very happy with how things ended up. I love my publisher, I love my editor, and the publication’s gone pretty well. But I would say it all took much, much longer than I thought it would.