A combination of a desire to communicate, and a passionate belief in the power of story to build up relationships, to shape us. People-watching. But … - Joanna Trollope

What I’m trying to do in all these novels is mirror a contemporary preoccupation. I’m not providing any solutions. I’m simply saying: ‘Can we please get the conversation going?’

I wanted to write a novel about the sandwich generation: parents falling to pieces at one end of your life and children being quite demanding at the other. You, the woman, are probably working full-time, but society, which is really very old-fashioned, still expects women to do all the caring.

For all that somebody gets dumped every nanosecond in the world, you don’t want to be lumped in with everybody else – you want it to be expressed as poignantly and vividly as you feel it yourself…A cliche is only a cliche if it’s happening in someone else’s life.