Journalist-turned-author Tanya Sweeney has published her debut novel, Esther Is Now Following You, inspired by her years working across the music, film and TV industries.
A timely exploration of obsession and celebrity fandom, the novel follows Esther, who becomes convinced that Ted - an actor she locks eyes with in a London park - is meant for her. When Ted gets a new celebrity girlfriend, Esther leaves everything behind and travels to Canada to claim him, at any cost...
Tanya talks Esther Is Now Following You with Oliver Callan below.
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We asked Tanya for her choice cultural picks...
FILM
I have such a soft spot for Richard Linklater's Before trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight). The first of these, Before Sunrise, came out in 1995 when I was a teenager. Back then, getting into a 'relationship’ with someone involved dancing next to them at a nightclub, shifting until the lights went up, going back to their bedsit in Ranelagh, and then doing that about five weeks in a row until someone was brave enough to use the word ‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’. Here, the film is about two people connecting with actual conversation, valuing each other’s weird opinions, and falling in love slowly and quietly. I remember being utterly blown away by this seemingly very simple concept. And of course, as you get older you realise that so few people connect quite on the level that Jesse and Celine did.
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More recently, I adored the Taiwanese film The Left-Handed Girl by Shih-Ching Tsou. Sean Baker (Anora) was a collaborator, and his DNA is very much all over this.
MUSIC
I should have just stayed in the ‘90s. I am a complete shoegaze/dreampop nut: Slowdive, Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine. Anything woozy, blurry and cloudy, which is most unlike the rest of my personality. More recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of Tame Impala, New Dad, Just Mustard and Wolf Alice. Spotify told me that the one album I’d listened to the most last year was A Dawning, the stunning album by Ólafur Arnalds and the late Irish artist Eoin French, AKA Talos. It’s a beautiful album, but it hurts my heart to hear it and think of the loss of such a brilliant musician.
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BOOK
I adore any book that combines darkness and lightness. Give me something that is fun and zippy to read, but you come away from realising that you’ve also been handed some very challenging issues. Marian Keyes is the queen of this, and I also love Monica Heisey, Emma Jane Unsworth, Nussaibah Younis, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Dolly Alderton. Is there a literary genre that describes ‘middle-class, slightly neurotic New York Jewish family drama’? If so, that is also very much my bag. Jonathan Franzen, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Jenny Jackson. Liz Nugent and Edel Coffey are doing really exciting things with fiction, and I’ve genuinely loved their new books.
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THEATRE
I saw Rosaleen Linehan and Susan Lynch do The Beauty Queen Of Leenane in the Young Vic in London, possibly in 2010 and it was the first time I'd seen a Martin McDonagh production. Rosaleen Linehan in particular was a revelation. Every time I hear the word ‘Complan’ I think of her. The whole production was visceral and funny and wild. I also loved Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan. I saw Denise Gough perform this in the Abbey and it left me pure SHOOK.
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TV
Sorry to sound a bit basic here, but whatever Sharon Horgan is selling, I am buying on sight. I have comfort-watched Motherland and Amandaland several times – there’s something about watching these parents on the brink of a nervous breakdown that I find oddly soothing. Again, Sharon is great at offering shows that hit differently on a line-by-line level. She tackles domestic violence, addiction, crisis pregnancy, marital difficulty and actual murder in her shows, but you come away thinking, ‘God, that was actually great fun’. I love it.
GIG
The Canadian electro outfit Caribou never fails to deliver on the live front, and so it was at Vicar Street in December. They have moved off in a more clubby direction so the crowds have gotten younger (read: much chattier and more insufferable) in the 15 or so years since I first saw them. For similar reasons to this, Lou Barlow (who was in Sebadoh and Folk Implosion) at the Bello Bar last December was a lovely experience. The crowd was made up almost entirely of people of my advancing age who knew to keep their traps shut at the right time. In terms of upcoming shows, Antlers are playing Whelan’s in March, which will be absolutely gorgeous. I’m also curious about going to see The Prodigy at the 3Arena in April – I watched their Glastonbury set from the comfort of my own home last summer, and never felt FOMO quite like it.
ART
On my first date with my husband, we talked a lot about our mutual love of the British photographer Martin Parr, so he has always been ‘our’ artist. I was sad to hear of his death last year. His photos are so striking, so colourful, and I particularly loved the photos he took around Ireland between 1980 and 1982. More recently, I have fallen hard for Leah Hewson’s work. If ever I win the lottery, she would be my first big purchase.
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RADIO/PODCAST
I am a dreadful Luddite (see, I told you I should have just been left in the ‘90s), so I have yet to really get on the podcast buzz. There are so many great book podcasts out there, and I really do need to familiarise myself. In terms of radio, BBC 6 Music is often on in our kitchen, and I’m partial to some other stations: the US station NPR, and PBS and Triple R in Melbourne.
TECH
Loath as I am to say it, I still cannot get over the fact that almost every single song that was ever recorded is immediately accessible through my phone, thanks to Spotify. For a girl who had to schlep into town, go to a record shop, buy the record, bring it home and play it in my room (let’s not talk about having to carry the Discman around flat like a tray), this technological advance is little short of stunning. I just wish they’d pay their artists more than they currently do.
THE NEXT BIG THING...
She’s hardly new – her debut album was self-released in 2018 – but I see big things happening this year for Connemara musician Maria Somerville. She released her album Luster on 4AD last year, and supported My Bloody Valentine at the 3Arena in November, which has hopefully brought her to a whole new audience.
Esther Is Now Following You is published by Bantam
