With Rachel Cusk's new book on the end of her marriage causing controversy, writers Tim Lott and Christa D'Souza discuss what drives their impulse to confess, and the responsibilities that come with it
Rachel Cusk's new book Aftermath, about the end of her marriage, has ignited controversy, just as A Life's Work, her previous book about becoming a mother did. Writer Tim Lott, whose books include The Scent of Dried Roses, a family memoir, and journalist Christa D'Souza, who has written about numerous personal subjects including her body and illness, discuss with Emine Saner what drives the confessional impulse. And what their responsibilities are.
Tim Lott: If writers are going to write about their personal lives, they have two conflicting responsibilities. They have to be scrupulously honest, but they do have to protect the parties involved. That is a delicate area when you are writing about your children, or partner or ex-partner. Don't you feel the most important thing is finding a balance between those two priorities?
Christa D'Souza: I do. The truth is paramount and I can be most truthful about myself. I care less about my partner because he's inured to it. He knows I write about myself. My kids I worry about more, with parents of other kids reading it and making snide comments.
TL: Everybody gets it wrong from time to time. I sometimes feel my impulse to reveal has been more harmful than it should have been, but it's what you do as a writer. When I started writing this sort of stuff, once you wrote it, it was kind of lost. Now it's there on the internet and my kids can dredge up a piece I wrote 15 years ago. It's inhibitory because you know that your kid is five now, but when they're 17 they can Google my article and read it. Are there things you wish you hadn't written?
CD: I think so, but – I hope I'm not kidding myself – I think every time I [write about myself] I'm providing a service. I'm providing a service to myself obviously, because it's therapeutic. Most people are supposed to write it down and then crumple it into a ball and throw it away; we don't, it just happens that it's printed. I write about others, but it's more tangential, it's all in relation to me.
TL: If you write about your breast cancer, it's out there for your children to read.
CD: They actually found out about that on the internet. We minimised it to "it's just like a horrible verruca-type thing but it's fine", but they read the story. It wasn't great. And yet I remember very soon after I was diagnosed knowing there was absolutely no way I wasn't going to write about this. It's what I do.
TL: I don't find it therapeutic. I wrote a piece about the murder of my agent, Rod Hall. I was grief-stricken, then I wrote about it in Granta, and people were upset with what I'd written. I had spent so long trying to get it right, but I got some very angry reactions from his friends.
CD: You also wrote about your depression and your mother's suicide, and you didn't feel some kind of catharsis?
TL: I don't know. I still suffer depression so it didn't "cure" it. What you write is a snapshot of what sense you're making of the world at a particular time; it's not "I wrote a book about my mother's suicide and therefore I've put that away".
CD: I think it's helpful for other people who may be going through whatever it is – breast cancer, surgery, depression. It's so wonderful reading other people's stories. Some people want to share every aspect of their lives. Sometimes when I read other people's tweets, that's the same thing isn't it?
TL: I find that the most insulting thing you can say to me [laughs]. I spend months, possibly years, trying to get a sentence right, and you're comparing that with tweeting. Many people are grateful to read a memoir, but there can be a cost. You can hurt people by being honest. For my new book, I took a road trip across America with my brother and I was digging away at him, relentless about trying to get a rise out of him. How much of that was my neuroses, and how much my wish to produce something interesting for the book, I don't know. When I read it back, I thought: "You're such a little prick." I was enormously relieved when I decided to make it a fiction book because it gets you off the hook. Although Hanif Kureishi wrote Intimacy, which was clearly about him and his wife, and he was hauled over the coals. What I hate in any confessional writing is spite and cruelty. I see it in people talking about their marriage breakups. I wrote about mine and how I felt when it was going on, but that's not quite the same as using it to settle scores.
CD: I don't think Rachel Cusk's book is particularly confessional. But what is interesting is the vitriol of the response. I'm sure she's terribly nice in real life, but she has the ability to irritate by her writing. But you think: "Well you don't have to read it." A lot of people relate to it, both positively and negatively.
ES: How do you feel when people react negatively to your pieces?
CD: Of course I mind, I want everyone to love me but it's not going to stop me doing it. I do believe I provide a service.
ES: Is there a difference in the response to male and female writers? Women seem to get criticised far more harshly.
TL: Julie [Myerson] wrote about her son, which is a different area altogether. Liz Jones [the Mail on Sunday columnist who wrote about her disintegrating marriage and is often attacked online and in print] writes very cruel stuff in my view. Then there is The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – there are beautiful pieces of confessional writing by women who don't get attacked. I don't think there is a gender issue in that sense. Hanif [Kureishi] got it. I've never seen such a vitriolic response to a book. I got slaughtered by the Guardian when I wrote about my divorce.
CD: Motherhood is seen as sacred ground. I remember how much flak Helen Kirwan-Taylor got for admitting to being bored by her kids [in a piece for the Daily Mail in 2006]. The affront of it! But thing is, they can be quite boring.
TL: You have to try to get approval from the people you're writing about. It's wrong to stomp on people because you have the power to do it. I've got it wrong before. It's hard when you have put yourself out there, and you've possibly risked things with friends or relationship. I've suffered a lot of unhappiness as a result of the stuff I've written, but I go on writing it because that's what I do, and I'm proud of it as pieces of writing, but it can be a high stakes game.
Under the Same Stars by Tim Lott is published on 29 March by Simon & Schuster, price £16.99. To order a copy for £13.59 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.