Author whose Shopaholic series of romcom novels were global bestsellers and adapted into a Hollywood film
Sophie Kinsella, who has died of a brain tumour aged 55, was one of Britain’s most successful novelists, selling more than 50 million copies of her books, including the globally successful Shopaholic series. Through three decades she retained a loyal and passionate readership with her deceptively light and intricately plotted comic novels.
Like her best-known heroine, Becky Bloomwood, Kinsella began her writing career in financial journalism, but, realising she was uninspired (and probably not very good at it), she wrote a book, The Tennis Party, that was published in 1995, when she was 25, under her given name, Madeleine Wickham (“Maddy”). This was followed by five subsequent standalone “Aga sagas”, which all achieved moderate chart success and critical acclaim.
But in 1998, struck by an image of a horrified woman confronting a credit card bill with little idea of how her addictions had landed her there, she came up with a very different kind of protagonist and story, and changed her own fortunes completely. Becky Bloomwood was a screwball heroine in the 1940s mould who, despite making repeated financial and emotional mistakes, manages to win not just the man but the readers’ sympathies.
