‘ The first inspiration (for Shopaholic) was a girl opening a Visa bill and that swell of emotions,’ says Sophie Kinsella.
‘SOPHIE KINSELLA’ MAY BE A PEN NAME, BUT SHE WRITES SURPRISINGLY REAL HEROINES
With over 30,000 Instagram and Twitter followers, 36 million copies of her books sold in more than 60 countries and an impossible- tocount number of shoes in her closet, for all intents and purposes, Sophie Kinsella is the ever likeable heroine and success story that all of her characters happen to be – borrowing more than just a page from her real life story.
Having started out as a financial journalist in London, spending her days writing reports and columns at Pensions World by day – “It was literally the only job I could get” – and fantasizing about writing fiction by night during her commute home, Kinsella injected a little bit of her beginnings into the character she has written most, and who will likely remain her legacy in the literary romcom world: Confessions of a Shopaholic’s Becky Bloomwood, a charming finance ex- pert who also happens to be a very big spender.
“The idea of her came to me while I was in a shop,” Kinsella says with a laugh on a particularly snowy Friday i n Penguin Random House Canada’s Toronto offices. “The first inspiration was what really turned into the first chapter, which was a girl opening a Visa bill and that swell of emotions, which I used to feel. I still look at a bill and go, ‘ What? Really? I plead amnesia!’”
Although she had written several bestsellers under her real name – the just as charming Madeleine Wickham – before she ever dreamed up Bloomwood, Kinsella assumed her now famous pseudonym in hopes of adopting a “fresher, funnier, more confessional” restart. She began writing her most infamous character in 2000 and, nearly two decades later, still has no plans to let her go.
“She feels very real to me,” Kinsella says. “Anytime I want I can dip back in and catch up with her adventures. Which I don’t feel with all my characters.”
Kinsella has managed to share that intimacy with her readers, who have long dubbed her “the queen of chick lit,” sharing shelf space with contemporaries Emily Giffin, Jennifer Weiner and Marian Keyes – to name a few of the authors who have struck a nerve with women around the world.
But the term “chick lit” has often meant a certain stigma, targeted at pinkjacketed fiction often dismissed as nothing more than “fluff ” about women sipping martinis.
“That phrase and I go way back – we’re old friends,” Kinsella says, dismissing the stigma. “And I’ve always chosen to be quite pragmat- ic, and don’t really classify myself as one thing or another. I try to write exciting and funny stories that make people think, laugh and turn the pages. What people call it is up to them.”
So while her books may be marketed towards a certain demographic and easily found on a shelf under a certain label, don’t be fooled – Kinsella isn’t writing exclusively for women.
“I don’t assign a gender to my audience. I write for people who have a sense of humour and are inter- ested by these contemporary trends, and I don’t really think beyond that. I try to write a book that would please me as a reader and will hopefully please other people, rather than try to imagine a mass of women sitting around and thinking, ‘ Oh ok, what do you all want?’ That would freak me out.”
With a readership that is largely female, however, Kinsella’s writing has in fact become more satisfying rather than daunting in the current political landscape, where there is a newfound hunger for and motivation to promote nuanced female heroines – particularly ones with a tendency to find themselves in a hotbed of chaos and dysfunction, and aren’t designed to be instantly likeable, such as the heroine of Kinsella’s latest, aptly titled novel, My Not So Perfect Life.
Her new novel also shifts away from the usual love story to quite another – that between a woman and her boss, one in her 20s and one in her 40s, who must learn to compromise, connect and balance their real lives with their “perfect” social media lives.
“I’m really glad to have written a book where the primary relationship is between two strong women,” Kinsella says. “They are in two different stages in their lives, both with their separate issues while failing to understand one another. It was really interesting to explore the issues of women at work, of being a role model, of judging somebody on their appearance and having a female boss, rather than exploring the traditional boymeets-girl.”
With ideas “bubbling and overlapping” in her head years before she actually sets pen to paper, prolific annual output and an adoring fanbase of women who have graduated, found careers and built families alongside her, it seems the sprightly, gutsy heroines Kinsella has given birth to in her books will only continue to come calling.
“Actually, when I start writing I always think it’s a bit like having a baby,” Kinsella says with a laugh. “Believe me, I know, I’ve had five babies! You go through exactly the same process, and think, ‘ Why have I done this? This is a huge mistake!’ And then it comes out, and it’s like, ‘ Ohhh, this is actually quite amazing! God, you know what? I need to do it again. I want to do it again.”