Encounters with Top Authors

Prior to 1986, Jilly had published a string of domestic romances, but was still best known for her hilarious articles in The Sunday Times. So when all her passion and wicked sense of humour came pouring out in Riders, a 900-page tale of ambition on horseback, Bookcase invited her to write a background piece for the magazine. Among Jilly’s admissions were that the main character, Jake, was based on her own childhood riding teacher, Mr Green; that she'd lost the original 50,000-word manuscript on a bus in 1971; and that, second time around, she’d almost come to a stop after a few chapters. Yet, despite all this, Riders ran on to become a number-one bestseller.

Certain authors have such a reputation that we are always interested in their work. P.D. James is a case in point – an original writer of crime fiction for more than 30 years. Prior to publishing her acclaimed novel, A Taste for Death, she wrote an article for Bookcase about the development of the English murder mystery, in which she observed that the gentle puzzles of the past had given way to a darker form reflecting a moral crisis in society. ‘The detective story has moved closer to the style of other novels,’ she said, ‘and this is a trend which will continue.’ Her words were put into action. As recently as the last issue of Bookcase, we reviewed The Children of Men, which marks a major change of direction for P.D. Appealing to her widest audience yet, this is a terrifying, futuristic morality tale.

If you thought Joanna Trollope was a recent success, think again. Her long career as a published author began in 1975. And when Bookcase visited her in 1991, she had just had five years of relative financial hardship. Bookcase’s interest had been aroused by the easily readable, yet thought-provoking style of her third novel, A Passionate Man, about emotions beneath the surface of English village life. As it turned out, this book was to light up her slow-burning career. ‘Perhaps the public has been fed impersonal fiction for too long,’ said Joanna, who herself favours writing with ‘an appetite for dealing with life as we really live it.’ Today, the appetite for Joanna’s work is so strong that even a re-issue of her earlier novel, The Choir, reached number one in Britain.

It didn’t sound that promising: a novel by a 63-year-old grandmother, featuring a heroine her own age; a novel distinctly short on blood, passion and glamour; a novel, instead, about the complexities and pleasures of family life. Yet Bookcase was charmed by Rosamunde Pilcher’s storytelling and set off to interview her immediately. It emerged that Rosamunde had written 12 published novels prior to The Shell Seekers. She had stuck to her beliefs, reasoning that ‘people are looking for moral standards.’ Her instincts were right. In America, the book hit the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for three months. A star was born.