Jojo Moyes Meet the Author

appeal. More on that in sport later. Right

now on BBC News. Ws, it's time for meet the author.

Jojo Moyes writes what some people call women's fiction, though that's

not a label she particularly likes herself. The latest book is the One

Plus One. It's a novel about the gulf between the have and have Notts

in modern Britain. We invited her here to be the first guest in our

new-look Meet the Author studio. This book I suppose is a road trip,

there's Ed and Jess and there's Jess' two children and a very large

dog and they take a trip from the south coast of Scotland, very

briefly, Jess is who? Jess is a single mother. She's a cleaner.

She's the kind of person we don't see a lot of in modern fiction.

She's an eternal optimist in the face of events that should really

lead her not to be optimistic. Ed? A failed dotcom whiz kid. He had

everything, the world at his feet and who made a catastrophic error of

judgment and is being prosecuted for insider trading. The kids? Tansie is

a maths genius. She's a prodigy. She doesn't really fit into a small

seaside town, because she's too quirky and too clever. Jess is very

worried about what's going to happen to her when she starts secondary

school. She has a 16-year-old half brother. Yes Nicky, you think is a

conventional troubled teen, but he's somebody who likes neither football

nor musical theatre. He likes to wear eye liner, but he's not

necessarily gay. He just doesn't fit into a town and is being persecuted

by a local family. You say Ed is a failed dotcom whiz kid, but at

beginning of the book he is still successful and he's certainly rich.

That's one of the issues in the book, gulf between those who have

money and those like Jess who struggle every day. One of the

things that's been notable to me in the last few years is the lack of

understanding between the haves and have notes. The most contact that a

lot of people in my dad's old street with people in the under ?20,000

income bracket were their cleaners and that was it. It worries me, this

polarisation. I wanted to use that as a back drop for a fictional story

without being a political thing. I just think it's something worth

exploring. It's definitely an issue, contemporary issue. There are some

novelists who start with an issue, ah, this book is going to be about

whatever it might be, and they build the whole thing around that. Is that

where you started? No, I'm not quite that specific. My books tend to come

organically. I tend to have three or four images or ideas that won't

leave the front of my head. The thing that I've learned over the

years is that you have to write about the thing at the front of your

head. They usually end up congealing, that's an unattractive

word, but they end up becoming a book. That's what I try to do. In

this case, I always wanted to write a road trip. I love road trip films

and road trip books. But I wanted to do something about this lack of

comprehension between the two sides and what better environment to force

two people who don't understand each other's lives together than in a

car? Your previous book Me Before You, that is an issue book. That's

the issue there is assisted dying But, again, I didn't see it as an

issue first. In my own case, I had two members of my family who

required 24-hour care at the time the book was devised. You can't live

with that kind of issue in your family without having it at the

front of your mind. I heard a news item about a young man who persuaded

his parents to take him to Dignitas. As a parent, frankly, as a human

being, I couldn't understand how they agreed to do it. What I think

is interesting as a writer is that dissonance between the brain wanting

to be able to say, this is right and this is wrong. And those situations

which don't allow it. That's the grey area that I like to explore.

Yes, in some ways it's issue based, but it's more human dilemmas than

issues,if you like. This is your 12th book, Me Before You was the

11th. 10th I think. But th went much further in terms of success. First

of all it's going to be made in a Hollywood film. And secondly, in

Germany, you are now a superstar best seller, where previously no-one

had heard of you. No, I had a publishing deal in Germany many

years ago, which pretty much came to nothing. I'd been quietly dropped. I

was picked up by my current German publishers and Me Before You has

been number one in Germany for 49 weeks apart from one week, where it

was knocked off by another of my own books. Germany loves me ah, part

from German authors, who probably hate me. What is it about that book,

do you think, that broke through? I don't know. It's been 28 weeks on

the New York Times list, I say this not to boast, but because something

about that book seems to touch people. It just keeps going across

the world. I think it's a combination of things. One is that

it has two very clear characters who came alive for me, as I wrote them,

in a way that not all books do, from page one. It became a very easy book

to write because it was about the combination of these two people. But

also, it puts the reader in a position where they are forced to

ask themselves again and again - what would I do? I quite enjoy that

when I'm reading a book. I like having my own assumptions

challenged. That's the only explanation I can come up with. Have

you tried to replicate that with this book? I don't think you can. If

I could replicate it, I would do it with every book. I try to create

characters that you feel something for. That seems a bit obvious to

say. But I can't write a character unless I really inhabit their shoes.

I have to think my way in, a bit like an actor thinks, if that

doesn't sound horribly pretentious. That's the way they seem to come off

the page for me. I know whether a book is working because that doesn't

happen. You realise they're not reacting to a character in the way

they should. In some cases I've gone back half a book and stripped out a

character because I feel it's not coming alive. You are often

described as writing women's fiction, is that a label that makes

you cringe? It does slightly. In America, I don't get labelled. In

Germany, I don't get labelled. It is called fiction. I do find it really

limiting and what's interesting for me, since the Advent of the Kindle

and e readers, my male readership has shot up, I know this because I

get loads of ermails and messages and tweets, and it's because freed

of a marketing climate that says this must look like women's fiction,

men feel liberated to read me. They can sit without shame on the Tube

and read. Excellent, thank you very much indeed.

Hello. It's been another day of sunshine and showers. Tonight, some

wintry elements to our weather. There haven't been many of those so

far this winter. Ice is a risk, across Northern Ireland and

south-west Scotland in