Bellies: ‘A beautiful love story’ Irish Times

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Nicola Dinan’s debut novel Bellies begins on familiar terrain – a group of college students at the union bar, the beginnings of attraction between two students, Tom and Ming – but as Dinan closely follows their relationship, the book shifts from the kind of generic story you think it’s going to be, to the kind of story that becomes a lasting favourite with unforgettable characters. ND: Sometimes, to truly empathise with characters, they need to be a bit cruel. They need, at times, to be unfair and unreasonable, because people are unfair and unreasonable. I don’t want people to read Bellies and empathise with Bellies because they think they’re seeing their best selves in the novel. It’s far more interesting to reflect people as they are. I don’t think we learn from characters that are overly virtuous, particularly if they’re minorities like Ming – it just reaffirms the fear that we are not entitled to the same flaws and spectrum of emotions as everyone else, and that is damaging. Everyone in the book is flawed. You have Tom’s best friend Rob, who is a bit of a shit to girls, but at the same time is a really lovely supportive loyal friend. You have Ming’s dad, who genuinely wants what’s best for Ming, but it’s his own vision of what’s best for Ming, not necessarily hers. Doubleday has snapped up an “honest, wry and tender” debut novel by Nicola Dinan in a five-way auction. EC: We see Tom and Ming at their best and their worst, and at times I found it genuinely challenging to keep seeing the world through their eyes. What’s your view on the benefits of keeping narrative focus and empathy on characters who are being unlikeable, foolish, or cruel? Bellies, this glorious debut about the beautiful discomfort of being seen and known, hooked me from the very start. Nicola Dinan's prose is swift and immersive and the empathy with which she writes her characters' foibles, flaws, and faulty perceptions is boundless. Both tender and biting, Bellies has captured my whole heart. Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers

On a trip to Malaysia, where Ming’s mother died – and “it’s not so hot for the gays”, reports Ming – the couple eat kuih seri muka and yong tau foo. Dinan summons different locations with supple grace. (“Places move into people just as much as people move into places,” she writes.) She is also deft at depicting intimacy. Tom and Ming listen to each other’s bellies gurgle, watch Britney Spears’s snake dance on a laptop and practise Meisner technique, a theatre exercise of closely observing a partner’s actions. I finished this book and wanted to tell everyone I met to read it. Quietly heartbreaking whilst tremendously sharp and funny. I couldn't stop reading. Travis Alabanza, author of None Of The AboveAs a trans woman, Dinan has her own experience of transitioning. In Bellies, she was keen to look at something “which is seen as so personal” from the perspective of someone one step removed. “I was interested in what it meant to be on the outside of someone else’s experience—and an experience that is deeply personal to them, like someone’s transness.” It was also important to her to offer a more pluralised view of queer and trans identities which, at times in fiction, can be relatively one-note. “[Ming] does things and you think, ‘Oh my God, you’re awful’ or, ‘You’re being awful in this moment’. But at the same time, just like the rest of us she is allowed to be...” Elaborating, she says: “There’s an impetus to create this virtuous image of a trans person who can do no wrong. I find that very limiting…I want trans people to have the freedom to be a bit shit too.” Instead she advocates for fully fleshed-out, authentic, multitudinous representation. “If we truly want to aim for fiction being an effective way to raise empathy for disenfranchised and marginalised communities, we have to write characters that are fallible. It’s not actually helpful to the cause to have these perfect characters, because when you create a solely virtuous narrative around a group of people, people look for ways to prove that wrong.” Picture this I’m not really someone who cries a lot, I wish I cried more. I often want to, but the tears just never flow. Yet when I finished an advance reading copy of Bellies by Nicola Dinan I had to sit down and let myself cry. Real tears. Not one singular tear to brush off, but embarrassing flood-gates-open crying tears. A loud crying in contrast to the quiet sadness of this book. The way Dinan writes about love, loss, growing up, transitioning and our bodies took my breath away. I can’t wait for this novel to be published, so I can talk about it with everyone I know. The most fantastic consequence of that, however, is all the messages I’ve had from people telling me how seen they felt in the novel, and not just readers from the east and south east Asian community it depicts, but anyone who has struggled to move to a new culture and felt displaced and in limbo. Knowing I’ve written something specific and yet universal is genuinely the highest praise I could have hoped for, especially as growing up I never really saw myself represented in the mainstream fiction space and this was always something I longed for. A coming-of-age story about falling in and out of love, brimming with humour and heartbreak, Bellies asks: is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?

The synopsis says: “It begins as your typical boy meets boy. At a drag night in a university town, Tom meets Ming. Ming is what Tom wants and wants to be: a promising young playwright; confident and witty and a perfect antidote to Tom’s awkward energy. They fall hard for each other, but when Ming announces her decision to transition, the pair must confront that love may not be enough. It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink.Bellies by Nicola Dinan is a beautifully bittersweet depiction of the seismic changes of early adulthood with unforgettably funny, spiky, believable main characters. Leon Craig, author of Parallel Hells I wanted to capture the turbulence of both transitioning and being in your early twenties. I also wanted to offer the perspective of a character who isn't trans, but instead observes their partner’s transition. It felt like a story I hadn’t seen, and transness has always been an interesting prism through which I view other aspects of life: extraordinary periods of change, how we grow apart from other people, fundamental incompatibilities in relationships.

A novel overspilling with care and affection for its characters.... The hype for her book is high i-D magazine after newsletter promotion The dual perspectives elegantly enact themes of transition and relationality. Bellies is a novel about feeling seen Jury Head Baz Luhrmann on Attending Red Sea Film Fest Amid Regional Conflict: "Voices of Storytellers Need to Get Out There" Bobby Mostyn-Owen, commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to Bellies from Monica MacSwan at Aitken Alexander. A publication date has not yet been set. Filled with warmth and heart, Bellies is a tender, beautiful and heartbreaking exploration of identity, growing up, and love in all its glorious forms. I can't wait to see what Nicola Dinan does next. Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Souls

Retailers:

Bellies is the story of Tom and Ming. They are originally a couple until Ming realizes that the anxiety he is feeling is because what he really wants is to transition but where does that leave his and Tom's relationship? There's no real drama. The story is simply told but gives a lot of insight into the kinds of compromises and decisions that need to be made when a person decides to become someone else - the someone they are happier being. In Happy Hour, we meet Isa and Gala, two carefree young women visiting New York for a summer. The friends are broke and get by on the favours of men who buy them free drinks, pay for their cabs and give them gifts. In Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, Lenu and Lila come of age in a violent postwar Naples, embroiled in fights between communists and fascists, with (unhappy) marriage being one of the only means of escaping poverty.