Madeleine Wickham aka Sophie Kinsella

Go on, how many of you will 'fess up to reading the Shopoholic series? C'mon... I'm not talking about the god-awful movie that was produced starring Isla Fisher (who can be so very funny, but like all actors requires a half-reasonable script to get her part of the way there). I'm talking about Sophie Kinsella's laugh-out-loud books about Rebecca Bloomwood, the financial journalist incapable of managing her own finances due to her out-of-control spending.

Sure, it's not high-brow, but as far as chick lit goes this is some of the best in the genre. Few books have made me actually laugh until I have tears running down my face, but Kinsella consistently get this reaction from me. I have read the entire Shopoholic series as well as her other books (her new one, I've Got Your Number, is a true return to form, I highly recommend it if you're looking for a light comic read).

So imagine my delight when, during an Amazon browse (I do so love an Amazon browse when I can't physically get to a bookstore) I stumbled across the unexpected information that she has written many more books than I realised, and under a different name. Sophie Kinsella is a pseudonym!

As Madeleine Wickham (her real name), and whilst working as a financial journalist, she published her first book aged 24. After it received both critical and public acclaim, she wrote 6 more novels under that name before writing the first Shopaholic book and submitting the manuscript unsolicited to her existing publisher as Sophie Kinsella, without informing them that she was the same person they had been publishing for years. The novel was immediately accepted for publication and there you have it. It wasn't until ten years later, in 2005, that she revealed her true identity.

This story impresses me because it shows what a naturally talented writer she is: she has been twice accepted as an unsolicited first-time author by a big publishing house. That is extremely unusual, these days - and I know the industry was probably different ten or fifteen years ago, but not so different as to make this an easy feat, even back then. There have been experiments done, as most have you have probably read, where the famous works of classic writers have been submitted to unsuspecting modern-day publishing houses and rejected across the board.

Anyway; as soon as I found out about Madeleine Wickham I went on an e-book binge. I downloaded her first novel, The Tennis Party (also published as 40-Love) and loved it, and then immediately downloaded and read all of the others in quick succession.

A scan of online reviews reveals that most Kinsella fans are disappointed by Wickham's writing, largely because it is not what they are used to. Wickham's books are darker. Unlike Kinsella's characters, Wickham's are real and, therefore, inherently flawed. As Madeleine Wickham, she writes contemporary women's fiction that is also a social critique of British society and its class striations. None of the characters are entirely likeable, but the storylines are sufficiently diverting that it doesn't matter.

In Swimming Pool Sunday, the separated parents of a girl who suffers a head injury in a neighbour's pool need to decide whether to carry through with a damaging lawsuit against their neighbours, even though their daughter seems to be recovering well. In The Tennis Party, a group of friends who, many years ago, used to live on the same London street, meet at one family's new country mansion for a leisurely weekend during which the current differences in their economic status and the individual greed of some members of the group threaten to ruin any prospects of ongoing friendship. In The Gatecrasher a funeral-crasher cum con-woman toys with the possibility of redemption when her latest target provides a domestic stability she has never before experienced.

I would give each of her books a solid 3 out of five. Don't pick them up if you are hoping for more Sophie Kinsella; but if you like British social commentary and contemporary women's fiction, you will enjoy Wickham's writing. And isn't it fun to find a hidden store of novels written by an author you like, even if they are somewhat different to what you've come to expect? A little hidden treasure trove.