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Author Sophie Kinsella has died aged 55, her family have said.
Kinsella, best known for her bestselling Shopaholic novel, was diagnosed with glioblastomaIn 2022, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He revealed this news to the public last year.
A statement posted on their Instagram account read: “We are sad to announce the passing this morning of our beloved Sophie (aka Maddie, aka Mummy). She died peacefully, her final days filled with her true loves: family and music and warmth and Christmas and joy.
“We can’t imagine what life would be like without her sparkle and love for life.
“Despite her illness, which she endured with unimaginable courage, Sophie considered herself truly blessed – to have such wonderful family and friends, and to have had extraordinary success in her writing career. She never took anything for granted and was always grateful for the love she received.
“She will be greatly missed, our hearts are breaking.”
His books have sold approximately 45 million copies in over 60 countries around the world, and have been translated into over 40 languages and adapted for film and theatre.
Born Madeleine Sophie Townley in 1969, Kinsella grew up in London and studied politics, philosophy and economics at New College, Oxford, before working as a financial journalist. Inspired by writers such as Mary Wesley and Joanna Trollope, she wrote her first novel, tennis partyDuring a few months when she was 24 (to understand how a story should be structured), she “took a Jilly Cooper novel and broke it down chapter by chapter, noting what happened in each, to see how she did it”, she later explained. woman and home,
She later admitted that she was determined to be taken seriously as a “real writer”, so she focused on darker subject matter and characters with experiences very different from her own.
It was published two years later in 1995, using her married name Madeleine Wickham (she had tied the knot with Harry Wickham, a teacher, in 1991; they met on her first night together as a student at Oxford).
She continued to write six more books under her real name and released one book every year until 2001. But in his late twenties, he decided to begin work on a novel that would take his career in a very different direction.
“I thought, OK, now without getting defensive, I’ll write a silly book about the things I know, and make it fun and funny,” she explained. Guardian“And if it fails, that’s okay,”
that was the book A shopaholic’s dream worldIt tells the story of Becky Bloomwood, a twenty-year-old financial journalist who is desperately worried about money and prioritizes the dopamine rush of putting a new pair of shoes on her credit card rather than saving wisely. This change of genre required a new writerly alter ego: she came up with Sophie Kinsella by combining her middle name with her mother’s maiden name.
After initially handing it over to its publishers under this new identity, the first Shopaholic The book started in 2000. It was an immediate hit and spawned two sequels over the next two years. Kinsella eventually wrote a total of 10 Shopaholic novels, chronicling Becky’s marriage, motherhood, and her various misadventures in spending. Confessions of a Shopaholic, A film adaptation of the first two books starring Isla Fisher as Becky and Hugh Dancy as her boyfriend Luke was released in 2009.
Kinsella also wrote a dozen standalone titles. Can you keep a secret? (from 2003) The Burnout (2023), and moved into young adult fiction with the release in 2015 finding audreyHer work was often branded as “chick lit”, although she preferred to classify it as contemporary fiction or “wit lit”,
“When I hear the term ‘chick lit,’ I don’t feel irritation but a slight resignation,” she said. daily Mail In 2018. “‘Oh, there it is again…’ I’ve never had anyone say to me, ‘Your books are lousy,’ but if people say, ‘Your books are read on the beach,’ I say, ‘Yeah, that’s fine by me. Read them on the beach!'”
In April last year, Kinsella revealed that he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma in late 2022. “I’ve wanted to share a health update with you for a long time and I’ve been waiting for the strength to do so,” she wrote in a statement posted to her social media accounts, explaining that she had held off on making the news public “because I wanted to ensure that my children are able to hear and process the news in privacy and adapt to our ‘new normal'”.
He told his fans that he was being treated in a London hospital, and thanked his family, friends and “the wonderful doctors and nurses who treated me” for their support.
She is survived by her husband Henry and their five children.