Nicola Dinan's Debut ‘Bellies’ Picks Apart the Confusions of Being Twenty Something

The period after finishing university and becoming a real adult person seems to be growing wider and wider with each generation. It is now almost unheard of that graduates step straight into careers with any link to their studies - at least, if you were on an arts and humanities course that is. In her literary debut, author Nicola Dinan explores the liminal space between leaving education and entering the workforce.

Bellies follows two narrators over the course of their relationship, from initial meetings to final conclusions on young love. Tom is a middle class but liberal Londoner who is late to coming out as gay, while Ming is a Malaysian playwright who transitions during their relationship. With multiple veins of insight about growing up, growing together and growing apart in our twenties throughout the book, Polyester editor Gina Tonic sat down with Dinan to discuss all things second adolescence.

How are you! What’s new with you right now?

I’m on the third draft of my new novel, so I’m pretty far along with that!

And Bellies isn’t even out yet!!

I started writing full time after the book deal for Bellies came through and TV stuff as well, so it just makes sense to write and start working on something else, so that my self esteem wasn't so wound up in just one book. I like reminding myself how important it is to know that there are always more words to write. Creativity is sort of like a well, just because you've written one book, but it doesn't mean it ends there. And if things don't work out with that one book and things don't go as perfectly as you hope, there's always more you can write. 
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It's definitely one of those skills that you have to constantly practise as well. You can really easily fall out of touch of how you like to write, or like why you like to write, if you're not writing all the time. 

That's true. And also if you enjoy writing then it just makes sense to do it as much as you can. 

I read your interview with Torrey Peters for Detransition, Baby and I was proper laughing at the bit where you were saying your mate was like "I don't want cis people to read this because they'll know too much!" I was curious how that maybe could apply to Bellies. Do you think people will take different things away from it based on their gender identity? 

I think so! With Detransition, Baby, the narrative is a relatively unique situation but the emotions that the characters feel are relatively universal. With Bellies you have trans people who relate to Ming as a character via her transness, but at the same time, there is a universality to what the characters are going through. You have Tom who is going through the motions, working in a job that he finds inherently unfulfilling, and beyond that he's feeling stuck in love - not feeling satisfied by the relationship he's in, while simultaneously being completely unable to voice his needs. As well as other supporting characters dealing with thoughts on queerness, struggling with eating disorders and more.

“You become very involved in this illusion that somehow you're being an adult, but sometimes you just feel like a kid in this plastic house and you're like, "What the fuck am I doing?”

That's what I really liked about the book, that there are so many different avenues of your twenties explored. It’s almost like a second adolescence of working out where you stand in the world.

What I really tried to do with Bellies is create a cast of characters, that touch on themes beyond transness and more, essentially, as to what it means to be in your early 20s and finding your way in the world at a time where life is very confusing, and you don't have a full handle on who you are as a person despite the world expecting that you do. Regardless of the angles through which people might relate to that, Bellies is trying to touch on that core feeling of not quite knowing where you belong. 

That's what's so nice about having an ensemble cast is that you don't feel limited thematically to a particular group of people or a particular community. There's room to expand to speak to something broader. It is definitely a second adolescence. 

It’s a condition of society now in that we just grow up a bit later and in a lot of ways the ways our bodies grow outpace our minds. We look like adults but we don't necessarily feel like them. And that's an interesting analogy to transness right? In the sense that people are looking at you and seeing one thing, but your internal experience of what you are feels different. That dissonance can cause a lot of distress in people across the board. 

I feel like everyone in their early 20s expects themselves to be an adult, in so many different ways, but I’m not sure you actually count as one?

Yep - you graduate from university and you move into these houses with your friends in a city and you work your job. It's almost like you're kids with your Fisher Price playing house. You become very involved in this illusion that somehow you're being an adult, but sometimes you just feel like a kid in this plastic house and you're like, "What the fuck am I doing?" 

It's those moments where you just feel so incapable of doing the things that everyone says are supposed to be super normal for someone your age. It's destabilising, but I also think everyone should have these wobbles where they feel that way. 

What's really great in Bellies is you can tell that you're writing with an immense amount of sympathy towards everyone's point of view. 

It's only been quite recently that I've really become aware of how people rarely think they're doing something evil. I don't know if you've read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe about the Sackler family, but it just struck me, the Sacklers, who have done so much evil to the world, they've done all this horrible shit, they don't even see themselves as evil. That's a really scary thing. 

I think having that realisation over the past few years means that I do tend to write more sympathetically or rather enjoy the sense of moral complexity where people might be doing wrong, but you do kind of have a bit of sympathy for how you got there. Not saying I really have sympathy for the Sacklers but you know, it's just at the extreme end of what I'm talking about. It's nice for me to always explain both sides of the story through having two characters in the novel and having two sides of the relationship. I think that appeals to sort of this sense of judiciousness inside me where I do want to tell both sides of the story. 

In terms of writing a book that lasts with someone, when I think of the books that have lasted with me, it's the ones that have me asking questions, or questioning the ethics and morality of decisions that the characters have made. 

Words: Gina Tonic
Bellies is available to purchase from 29th June, and you can pre-order your copy here.