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Jem Calder: The Novel as a Gift

Character Study

Jem Calder: The Novel as a Gift

August 4, 202645:40
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Novelist Jem Calder joins Freya to talk about I Want You to Be Happy , his debut novel about two people trying to fall in love while everything around them is engineered to distract them. Jem’s writing career started with Sally Rooney emailing him about the first story he’d ever finished and now his debut is on the tote bag of every literary it girl this summer. He tells Freya why he’d rather write a novel than a memoir (he’s a self-described cagey person who doesn’t like giving too much of…