Rape Culture in Educational Institutions, Fiction as Vehicle for Change and How to Not Let Research Consume You. Interview with Rebecca Spargo, author of Such a Nice Boy

This month, The Debut Digest had the immense privilege of interviewing Rebecca Spargo on her debut novel Such a Nice Boy. The inspiration for this novel came from events surrounding rape culture in UK schools and the following interview makes reference to the Everyone’s Invited website, a platform dedicated to sharing stories from survivors of rape and sexual abuse with the aim of exposing and eradicating rape culture from UK educational institutions. It gives survivors space for community, empowerment and catharsis and we very much recommend visiting the site for further context around the topic. That said, please be aware that the content of the site may be triggering for some.

Since we spoke with Rebecca, the internet has been frenzied with discussion around the reopening of a 2024 American investigation into the gang rape of a woman in a frat house at Cornell University. Whilst this novel is set in, based upon and published in the UK, it grapples with the internet and misogyny at large and thus the themes of this novel have become all the more pertinent. Please be mindful of these themes before reading on.

What was the inspiration behind Such a Nice Boy?

The inspiration came from real life. Back in 2021, Soma Sara started posting on Instagram about rape culture in Britain’s most prestigious schools. From this, she was inundated with responses from others with similar experiences and so she set up the Everyone’s Invited website for survivors of rape and sexual assault to share their stories

The website got a lot of news coverage at the time and I remember, like a lot of women my age, being absolutely horrified by the entire story. I went onto the website and read through so many stories - I was horrified, saddened, angry. I then went through the list of schools that the testimonies had come from because, at the time, the newspapers were reporting it as solely a problem in very prestigious schools but going through the list, I was searching every school I knew of in my area and every single one was on the list.

It became clear to me that this problem wasn’t just in private schools like some of the newspapers would’ve had you believe, it was everywhere. And I remember talking to my friends about this. All of us had grown up in the 90s around the height of ‘lad’ culture and we all had experiences of men behaving badly towards us but now, as mothers, we were surrounded by a different culture and we were under the illusion that things were getting better. This news story made us realise how wrong we were, how out of touch we had become.

That was what sparked the inspiration to write the novel. I’m a mum of two girls, some of my friends are mothers to young boys and we all consider ourselves to be feminists so we would be absolutely horrified to learn if any of our children had taken part in something so horrible. That was what made me think about the surrounding women in that scenario, particularly the mothers and mothers who thought they were doing everything right to raise future feminists. I hadn’t really seen anyone talking about the situation from that position. That idea really stuck with me, in fact, it wouldn’t leave me alone. And that’s how the book started and how the character of Amanda came to be.

I always wanted her to be an everywoman sort of character. I wanted her to be a clueless mother in a way, especially when it came to knowing what her children’s online lives were really like because that allowed me to take her through a process of uncovering the reality of what many children are experiencing online these days.

After the initial idea, how did you go about undertaking research?

I started off with the big picture stuff, academic studies and articles. It was very depressing and scary because it confirmed that there had been quite a significant cultural shift for the worse. And the more I was reading about young girls and boys and their different attitudes to sex and relationships, I thought ‘I have to see this for myself’.

I cleared an old laptop and I set up an email address for Nathan, the main teenage boy character in the novel. I set up social media and gaming site profiles for him and gave him typical interests such as football, gaming and good looking actresses - typical, innocent teen boy stuff. Then I sat back and waited.

My children aren’t gamers so that world was the biggest eye opener for me. Misogyny was very prevalent on some of those platforms. Again, I spoke to friends and fellow parents about this and admittedly, their main concern had always been around stopping predators from being able to groom their children through these platforms - it hadn’t particularly occurred to them to worry about what kids were actually seeing on these platforms and how that might be affecting their world view.

And that’s what I wanted to highlight with Amanda. As a mother, she’s rightly very concerned about keeping her kids safe from other people online but she soon realises that the worry is somewhat misplaced; there’s a different kind of predator that isn’t necessarily interested in meeting up with your child, the goal for many of them is actually to manipulate their views to match their own dangerous ideologies.

It sounds intense, how did you survive that research process?

I’m very passionate about the subject but I can feel it’s bad for me at the same time. To be honest, there were large chunks of time where I couldn’t sleep because I’d seen something so disturbing or I was so angry about it all. I had to take breaks and truthfully, I was quite glad when I was finally out of the research stage, it was only really when I stepped away from that part of the process that my equilibrium returned.

I became quite meticulous with screenshots so that I didn’t have to keep going back into these platforms but even on my own social media algorithm kept feeding me posts about misogyny and I could feel myself growing more tense and angry.

I became quite meticulous with screenshots so that I didn’t have to keep going back into these platforms but even on my own social media algorithm kept feeding me posts about misogyny and I could feel myself growing more tense and angry. I think for anyone who wants to keep an eye on this stuff, it’s important to be able to recognise when it’s affecting you too much. At that point, it’s ok to take a step back.

For example, when I first went on Discord, I discovered certain chat rooms that were very clearly labelled as women-hating, basically a ‘if you’re not a misogynist, don’t come in here’ vibe. For a long time, I debated whether to enter those chats as Nathan but, in the end, I decided not to. Partly because I never wanted Nathan to be an incel - he wasn’t a character that was actively seeking out that sort of thing, he was a normal teenage boy. But also, I thought those chats would probably send me over the edge and I wanted to protect my mental health too.

The other frightening thing was that it’s so easy to pretend to be 18 on these sites! Yes, age verification measures are promised to be coming but how effective those will actually be is yet to be seen...

How important was it for you to give Amanda a son and a daughter?

Very. When I was planning the book, I had the mother-son relationship in mind but I also wanted to look at the bigger picture problem of misogyny and ask the question ‘how much has really changed?’. That was part of the reason for the 1997 storyline. I set the other part in 2022 because, at that point, names like Andrew Tate had started becoming more well-known but parental awareness of things like the ‘manosphere’ was (and still is) relatively low and therefore it was realistic for Amanda to be clued up on feminism in general but still not fully aware of how misogyny was on the rise in the online world her children were growing up in.

The book asks how much has really changed because really it’s technology that’s changed. The internet is the great enabler of a misogyny that has perhaps always been there but it massively amplifies it.

There’s lots of documentaries and non-fiction on this topic - why did you choose to write a novel?

I think fiction can be used as a vehicle to talk to each other - we saw it with Netflix’s Adolescence, parents using it to start an important conversation with their children which I think is fantastic.

For me, I didn’t know any other way to express it all. I’ve written all my professional life, I love it!

Coming from a background in journalism, writing a novel was a massive learning curve. I have tried to write one other novel before but I was 8 months pregnant at the time I sent it out on submission and it didn’t really work. But it meant that when I came back to the novel form years later, I had learnt from my own mistakes - mainly that I needed to plan!

Have you spoken to your own children about the issues in Such a Nice Boy?

My girls are 10 and 12 so they know I’ve written a book and I’ve told them in very general terms what it’s about and it would be great for them to read it when they’re older but, for now, they’re still quite young.

However, if this process has taught me anything, it’s that it’s really important for parents to put the embarrassment to one side and have difficult conversations so I have spoken to my children about things like porn in an age appropriate way.

What was the process like when it came to publication?

As a writer, you get used to a lot of rejection but eventually, the dream scenario happened and I had three agents suddenly interested at once. It was very surreal to be the one interviewing the agents after so long of wondering if this would ever happen for me.

From there, it was all very long. I don’t think I realised what a torture being out on submission to publishing houses would be! And the whole process of having other people read your work for the first time was more anxiety-inducing than I thought it would be. The imposter syndrome gets you and you think to yourself ‘are they going to think it’s rubbish? Am I deluded?’. But it turned out that readers, especially other authors, are really lovely! It was such a relief! The one saving grace was meeting other first time authors in the same boat and finding community there.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

When Hilary Mantel collected her first booker prize, she said writing a novel is 10% talent and 90% dedication, determination and discipline. And that’s always stayed with me. You have to be able to sit down and get on with it and believe in yourself.

You will make mistakes but learning from them is the only way you improve. Don’t give up - the only failed writer is one who gives up.