Sue Margolis
Sharp and witty comic novelist, who wrote ‘Neurotica’
SUE Margolis, who has died of lung cancer aged 62, was the author of a dozen bestselling “chick-lit” books, in many of which she drew inspiration from her own background growing up as a member of the Jewish community in East London.
Sue was almost 40 before she found the confidence to write. Even though she did not own a computer, “it was a case of now or never”, she said. She recalled sitting at her son’s desk one morning after he had left for school and writing the first few paragraphs of what became Neurotica (1998), her first novel, which was marketed with the strapline: “If he always has the headache, why should you suffer?”
It is the light-hearted and somewhat risque tale of Anna Shapiro, a 37-year-old tabloid journalist whose hypochondriac husband, Dan, has lost interest in sex. Anna is assigned to interview three women who have had extramarital affairs and, amid a welter of sub-plots, realises that if she is to follow their example too closely she will face the possible disintegration of her own family.
Encouraged by the success of Neurotica, Sue Margolis went on to write titles such as Sisteria (2000), also about a Jewish housewife’s sexual awakening; Spin Cycle (2001), in which a stand-up comic is uncertain about the direction of her love life, and Apocalipstick (2003), another comic tale of a Jewish journalist being pulled in various amorous directions. All were marketed in light, bright and sassy covers.
Sue, who had a similarly breezy personality, recalled that at times her work had drawn criticism from the Jewish community. “They all said, ‘Why do we need anti-Semites when we have Sue Margolis?’” she told the London Evening Standard in 1999. But many did like it, especially in America, where there was a huge appetite for her brand of light-hearted rom-com, combining cheery suspense with sharp English wit. She was born Susan Linda Wener on January 5, 1955 at Gants Hill, East London. Her father, on whom Dan in Neurotica was based, worked for the Inland Revenue, while her mother gave up a career in nursing to look after her daughter. She claimed not to have shone at school, but nevertheless read politics at the University of Nottingham.
For 15 years she worked as a BBC reporter, largely for Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. She left when she started writing her first novel and never looked back. Her preferred method of working, she once explained, was on the sofa or in bed with her laptop, accompanied by Brian, her Bengal cat.
In her “advice for would-be writers” on her website, Sue alluded to problems in her past that meant she spent much of her adult life in therapy: “It has taught me a great deal — not only about myself, but about how other people tick.” She also trained as a Relate counsellor.
“I have always made my heroines strong, capable women,” she insisted. “The humour comes from the mad cast of characters that surrounds them.”
The books continued in similar vein, including Original Cyn (2005), which contained some surprisingly graphic sex; A Catered Affair (2011), the tale of a jilted bride auditioning rather too earnestly for a replacement groom; and Losing Me (2015), in which Sue tackled the love life of a woman who, like herself, was nearing 60.
In 1976 she married the journalist Jonathan Margolis, who survives her with a son and two daughters. Sue died on November 1.