It’s The Shift podcast Tuesday!
If you sometimes worry you’ve left it too late to follow your heart, today’s guest should give you hope. At 40, Jane Campbell got a divorce and took herself off to university where she trained as a group analyst. 40 years later, at the age of 80, she had her first short story was published, after she sent Cat Brushing to the London Review of Books on a whim. As a rule they don’t publish fiction, but less than three weeks later, they did just that.
Cat Brushing became the title of her debut short story collection - a short, sharp collection about the inner life of older women that I’ve read over and over again. The New York Times compared her to Edna O’brien and Muriel Spark. No biggie.
Now Jane’s written a novel, Interpretations of Love which is, ultimately, about the things left unsaid and their lifelong implications.
From her home in Oxfordshire, Jane told me why it’s so important to her to put the loves, lusts and losses of old women centre stage. We also discussed the impact of being a war baby and growing up with the belief that men were surplus to requirements, finding herself, a new life and a job she loved at 40 – and doing it all over again at 80. Plus the lure of the solitary life and how she learnt to stop asking permission in midlife, and has never looked back.
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Jane Campbell on reinventing herself at 40 - and again at 80