Author Jojo Moyes says she's 'always been a woman's woman'
Novelist Jojo Moyes says the thing that has struck her most since reaching her early 50s is "the absolute joy of the solidarity of other women".
She grew up in London's Hackney, which was then "not overburdened with literary types" - although her parents were "penniless sculptors" so she was exposed to the arts at home. "All my school mates' horizons were very limited so... I didn't have an idea of what I wanted to do," she says."It wasn't just the environment... I was surrounded by really ambitious young people. Everybody had a goal. And they were the first people I met who had goals and by the end of that week, I didn't want to go home."
But Moyes had her first three books rejected, which she describes as "crushing... like someone telling you your baby is ugly", although she wasn't going to give up."There's definitely a girder of bloody-mindedness running down my spine. I can't see why I can't do something. She says the reason Me Before You - about a woman who is a carer for a man with paralysis and later falls in love with him - got past a few thousand words was down to Sophie Kinsella, the bestselling author of the Shopaholic series.
The two female protagonists in the book come from very different backgrounds and Moyes recognises that "social inequality, whether it's class or money... has been a big factor in a lot of my books".
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