A Woman's Education (Pt. 2)
Live at Miu Miu Literary Club: Deep Read #37 with Naoise Dolan
DEEP READ #37 is with the author Naoise Dolan. This episode was recorded live at Miu Miu Literary Club, which took place at the Circolo Filologico Milanese on 9th-10th April 2025. Listen to Deep Read #37 [Apple | Spotify].
Miu Miu Literary Club 2025 is the latest in a series of cultural experiences devised by Miu Miu to promote the arts. The inaugural Literary Club, Writing Life, which took place in April 2024, brought back into focus the work of Italian feminist authors Sibilla Aleramo and Alba De Céspedes.
Under the direction of Mrs. Miuccia Prada, and now in its second iteration, the event this year explores the subjects of girlhood, love and sex education through the work of two international literary masters, French existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir, and Fumiko Enchi, the pen-name for Fumi Ueda, among the most prominent female authors of the Shöwa era in Japan.
Naoise Dolan is an Irish author whose first book, ‘Exciting Times’, was published to widespread acclaim in 2020. Naoise followed this with the equally well-received ‘The Happy Couple’ in 2023. In both books, Naoise tackles the confusion of contemporary life with precision and wit: her characters grapple with sexuality, housing instability, social media malaise, and our growing class disparities. At the same time, Naoise brings a fresh, often unpredictable perspective to the timeless topics of education, girlhood, and desire that inform this year’s Literary Club curation. She’s witty and brilliant, and I really enjoyed speaking with her in Milan.
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Phoebe
NAOISE DOLAN: DEEP READING LIST
“When she came over to see my schoolbooks, I looked at her with respect; she took notes in her pretty, already well-formed handwriting, and I thought of her swollen thigh under her little pleated skirt. Nothing so interesting had ever happened to me. It suddenly seemed as if nothing had ever happened to me at all.
‘The Inseparables’, Simone de Beauvoir
“Everything that she had suffered for, worked for, and won within the restricted sphere of a life whose key she had for decades past entrusted to her wayward husband Yukitomo lay within the confines of that unfeeling, hard, and unassailable fortress summed up by the one word: ‘family.’ No doubt, she had held her own in that small world. In a sense, all the strength of her life had gone into doing just that; but now in the light of the lamps of these small houses that so cheerlessly lined one side of the street she had suddenly seen the futility of that somehow artificial life on which she had lavished so much energy and wisdom. Was it possible, then, that everything she had lived for was vain and profitless?”
‘The Waiting Years’, Fumiko Enchi
“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”
‘Wuthering Heights’, Emily Brontë
“You keep describing yourself as this uniquely damaged person, when a lot of it is completely normal. I think you want to feel special - which is fair, who doesn’t - but you won’t allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you’re especially bad.”
‘Exciting Times’, Naoise Dolan
“In heterosexual monogamy, the woman forfeits at least as much freedom as the man—but her agency isn’t valued enough to be considered a loss.”
‘The Happy Couple’, Naoise Dolan
“I felt caught in a dilemma that was new to me then but which since has become horribly familiar: the trap of adult life, in which you are held, wriggling, powerless to act because you can see both sides. On that occasion, as generally in the future, I compromised.”
‘Memories of a Catholic Girlhood’, Mary McCarthy
“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”
‘Sense and Sensibility’, Jane Austen
“Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air. Open your eyes.”
‘Assembly’, Natasha Brown