Beth O'Leary dives into her latest romantic comedy, Swept Away

“The tale of someone being lost at sea is really, in a lot of ways, a tale of early motherhood,” explains O’Leary; the story was inspired partly by the author’s own experience of becoming a mother. “I felt a little bit amazed at myself. I tend to think I’m not great at coping with challenge. That’s something that I am trying to ‘unsay’ about myself because I looked at what I was doing and was like: ‘Oh my god. You actually are doing this, and you can do hard things.’ It helped me become more grounded in myself and a little steadier on my feet. Having that challenge thrown at me and being able to run with it made me feel a lot more confident in other parts of my life too.”

The intensity of the relationship that develops between Lexi and Zeke captures some of O’Leary’s profundity while penning the novel. “I wanted to write a story that held something of the fierce love I felt for my little family,” she writes, in an author’s note to the proof copy. When we talk, O’Leary adds that she wanted to convey the “intensity of love and emotion” she felt “particularly in the first year” of motherhood for her baby and her husband. “It changed and strengthened our love for each other in this sort of state of crisis and exhaustion,” O’Leary laughs. “I really wanted to write a love story that captured the scale and depth of that kind of love, where you’re in love and up against it together.”

Swept Away is O’Leary’s first age-gap romance: Lexi is 31 years old and Zeke is 23. The eight-year difference highlights both of their vulnerabilities and, to my mind, challenges stereotypes surrounding age and maturity. Parts of Zeke’s character were created in “response to Lexi”, and his age is one of those things: “I knew that she had put herself to the side for so much of her 20s and I love the idea that maybe she needs to be with somebody who is a little bit younger, so they are encouraging her to still have that time.” As put by Zeke: “There’s more to a person than their age... You can’t just decide who I am because I am 23.”

Part of what Zeke challenges is Lexi’s relationships to others. She has been living her life in the service of others to such an extent that she has forgotten what it is like to do something for herself. The idea of letting someone else take care of her, O’Leary writes, is “alien”, it feels “totally decadent, almost shamefully so”. She reflects: “It would be lovely to think that a few people will treat themselves a little more after connecting with Lexi.”

One standout episode occurs when, still stranded after six days, the pair take turns washing the other’s hair. The seemingly quotidian act becomes intimate, indulgent even, a sign of Lexi’s vulnerabilities unspooling. “It’s so romantic because it’s taking something so mundane and making it special. So much of what happens on the boat has to be like that – everything is both everyday and extraordinary because of the setting.”

Swept Away is a testament to O’Leary’s strength and confidence as a writer and, deservingly, it has taken its place as the novel she is “proudest of” in her oeuvre. In keeping with the mood of the novel’s title, O’Leary hopes readers will have “that feeling of total escape”: “The feeling of: ‘I don’t want to do anything but read and I’ve forgotten everything I was worrying about today because I’ve been reading this book.’” Welcome aboard The Merry Dormouse.