Messages from the grave

'Your Friend and Mine' and other things you should devour

Dearest Readers,

I originally wrote this post to celebrate the release of my friends’ new book. And while the title of this Substack is Messages From The Grave, today I won’t be writing about my beloved grandmother, who passed away last weekend.

When the time is right, I’ll share something more about my extraordinary Mama - her story deserves to be told in full.

For now, I hope you enjoy this week’s recommendations.

With love,
Jessie

x

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Last year, I was invited to the Berry Writers Festival by Jessica Dettmann, an author I’d met only briefly at my bookshop in Perth years earlier. We’d kept in touch through the occasional Instagram DM, and I was chuffed when she messaged to ask if I was attending and if I’d like to come stay with her.

Awkward first date shot

Naturally, I said yes. Any chance to sit in a small town with coffee, wine and authors.

We were only in Berry for a night, and over the course of that evening Jess began telling me about the novel she was nearly finished writing. Years ago, I’d devoured How To Be Second Best—Jess’s second (?) book. I loved it so much I urged my husband to look into the film rights (they’d already been snapped up). So I already knew I’d be all in on whatever she wrote next.

But as Jess began to tell me the premise of her book: A woman who receives an email from her dead best friend - I was immediately struck by how kismet the story was for me.

Sally Hepworth, Jess and I yapping at the back of Berry Writers Fest

You see, I didn’t receive an email from my friend, Abbey, who died in 2021, but a series of dreams that changed the trajectory of my life.

It’s a wild story and one I’ll dive into another day.

The grief of losing my friend and the distance that continues to widen between us is exactly what Jess’s new book is about and why I think it is so special.

‘Your Friend and Mine’ is so quintessentially Jess Dettmann. Funny, sweet and satisfying - all the qualities one would hope for in a rom com. It feels like it could be a Richard Curtis movie and quite frankly it should be. In a parallel universe Richard reads this substack and immediately instructs his PA to be sent a copy.

The official blurb of ‘Your Friend and Mine’ is this:

When Margot receives an email from her best friend it comes as a shock . . . seeing as Tess died twenty years ago.

Margot is catapulted back to 2000, meeting the confident English backpacker visiting Sydney, where their intense friendship led to plans to travel back to Europe together. But then Margot fell in love with Johnny, and she never made it to London. Margot still feels guilty for letting Tess down.

Now Tess is providing Margot with the means to fly to London and have the trip they never got to do together. But there are stipulations to Tess's beyond-the-grave generosity—Margot must scatter her ashes and carry out 'tasks' in the company of Leo, Tess's stepbrother.

Margot can't help but compare the dreams and aspirations of the girl who partied with Tess to the bored, exhausted woman she has become. How could Tess have predicted that Margot would need a second chance to get on that plane?

Like the book’s protagonist, Margot, I had similar feelings of letting my friend down. In the last year of Abbey’s life I was pregnant with my second child and about to open the bookshop. As she fell into a difficult spot in her life I didn’t have the capacity to give her much of my attention.

Abbey knew me - just like Tess knows Margot in the book. She’d been my friend since I was born. We were at each other’s birthday parties, school events, ballet classes. We had sleepovers, shared secrets, and went to our first concert together. I trusted her like a sister.

The information she gave me in the dream was a propelling force, something I didn’t want to believe but had to hear. I had let her down, but still in death she was giving me gifts.

When we lose someone at a young age we begin to idealize and ask questions about what their life might’ve looked life.

Would they have had a family?

What career would they have chosen?

I love that ‘Your Friend and Mine’ explores the particular kind of grief of losing someone young and the realizations that those who are left behind have to have in order to move on with their lives, to close a chapter they do not want to.

It’s brilliant and a great book to take on holiday.

BUY IT NOW

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SPEAKING OF HOLIDAYS !!!!

I have been watching A LOT of TV and film this month. Tom thought it was hilarious how buzzed I was about sitting in economy on our way to Europe and tbh I was surprised as well. Do you KNOW how good it is to have a library of films and TV you’ve yet to watch with ZERO interruptions? If you do it’s because you don’t have children and ….. respect.

Look up ‘Joy’ in the dictionary and this is what you’ll find

What I watched and LOVED:

• The Imagineering Story on Disney + : This is about the team of Imagineers who built Disneyland and all the other parks. Sounds boring but oh.my.god. I have never felt so inspired watching it. The level of detail and creativity that you get to witness watching this show is unparalleled. Tom and I watched it every night in Greece after dinner because we are losers.

• American Manhunt - Osama bin Laden on Netflix : . For someone (me) who thought I was so knowledgable about the events leading up to that day and the events after there was so much I DIDN’T know and learnt in this series. There are other seasons about OJ Simpson and the Boston Bombings which are just as good. We watched them all. They are very well made.

• Poop Cruise on Netflix: Just watch it.

• Killing Eve on Stan: I’ve already seen this but Tom and I are doing a rewatch and god it’s just a fun series.

• ‘Priscilla’ by Sofia Coppola: I wanted to hate this so bad but I LOVED it. I love Sofia Coppola but it’s a shame this film came out so close to Baz Luhrmann’s ‘ELVIS’ (which I also loved). Slowly realizing that I do have an obsession with the Presley’s. ‘Priscilla’ was such a different take and I thought Sofia Coppola did an amazing job at telling the story of a particular kind of romance (the kind where a grown man pursues a 14 year old girl)

• I watched ‘The Notebook’ again and sobbed on the plane.

• Turned on ‘We Were Liars’ because I was excited to see the adaptation. Hated it and switched it off. Then I watched it on my own on the plane because there was nothing else to do and I ended up enjoying where it landed, the acting from the kids was just a little CW Network level cringey. However, it piqued my interest back in the series because I picked up the prequel from the shop ‘Family of Liars’. If you haven’t read these books (they are YA) I suggest you do so. They are dark enough to be adult fiction.

Thank you everyone for all your amazing messages about my grandma. She was a queen.

Happy Reading (and watching)

Jessie

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