Eleanor Elliott Thomas published her debut novel The Opposite of Success in 2023. We had a chat during the summer school holidays about crowbarring writing into a legal career, the Faber Academy course that helped shape this work and Thomas' expertise, fat characters who are not the sidekick, people who like their husbands in literary settings and how unsettling that can be for weird reasons, and things like gastro (me) and the excellent author Claire Christian (also me) whose books I forgot the name of in the moment (they are called It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake and West Side Honey).

Next time I'll be joined by Melanie Saward, author of Burn.