Letters in love
WITH A FILM BASED ON HER NOVEL OUT THIS WEEK, JOJO MOYES TELLS MARTHA ALEXANDER THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO SHOW YOU CARE
‘IN 50 years’ time, who’s going to look at an aubergine emoji they got when they were young?’ Jojo Moyes – the bestselling novelist whose books have been translated into 46 languages and sold more than 38 million copies worldwide – is mourning the loss of the love letter, seemingly extinct in favour of digital alternatives.
‘In theory we have more choice but does it really make us happier in matters of the heart?’ she continues. ‘We don’t write love letters any more because we have all these other modes of communication. There’s going to be vast tracts of romantic history that go unrecorded.’
It’s a letter – or a collection of letters – that underpins The Last Letter From Your Lover, the film adaptation of Moyes’s novel of the same name. Starring Shailene Woodley and Felicity Jones in a story spanning the 1960s to the present day, it involves the discovery of secret love letters that detail an illicit affair. And the plot is derived from a true story.
Moyes, 52, recalls being in a pub and overhearing a group of women dissecting a text message one had received from a man – at length and with forensic attention to detail. It turned out that the text message simply said ‘Later x’.
‘We now create emotional mountains out of digital molehills,’ says Moyes, ‘whereas in my mother’s day or grandmother’s day, if someone liked you enough to write a love letter, you were in no doubt that they really cared about you because no one would put pen to paper, formulate their thoughts, buy a stamp, walk to the postbox unless it really mattered. A letter shows you are at the forefront of someone’s thinking in a way no other communication does. It would be lovely if this film encouraged a slew of oldfashioned love letters…’
The film was in the early stages of production for ten or so years and Moyes is delighted with how her novel, which she describes as ‘by far the most romantic of any book
I’ve ever written’, has been adapted to the screen.
‘When I wrote the story
I wanted it to be like an old-fashioned movie where you would curl up on a Sunday afternoon with a box of tissues and a cup of tea, and lose yourself in a 1950s-type film – and [director Augustine Frizzell] felt the same way,’ says Moyes.
‘She’s an old-fashioned, full-blooded romantic, so I knew it was in safe hands.’
Moyes also claims that romance is not about perfection. Both her main characters, Ellie and Jennifer, are imperfect heroines.
‘I’m not interested in reading about people who get everything right and judge every situation perfectly,’ she says. ‘I like reading about people like me, who make an abominable mess half the time.’
Despite this, Moyes is convinced that people are all about happy endings right now.
‘I find it really hard to watch dark stuff at the moment,’ she admits, citing BBC’s Time as the only exception. ‘I feel I have done dark stuff for 18 months.’
Moyes hopes the film version of The Last Letter From Your Lover will provide the escapism society so desperately needs at the moment – to transport them to the 1960s, to glamour and to the Riviera in summer.
‘To travel emotionally and geographically on
screen – it’s so immersive,’ she says. ‘People have already said [watching it] feels like they have gone on holiday.’
The Last Letter From Your Lover (Studio Canal) is in cinemas from tomorrow