Any Way You Want Me

APPLE BOOKS REVIEW

From the author: “When I wrote this—my first novel—I’d written lots of children’s books and was sort of struggling. I had a one-year-old baby and I really felt like life was suddenly very different for me. So I joined an evening writing class. I found that all the pieces I wrote were about women, motherhood and how their identity had changed. I kept thinking, ‘God, I used to work at the BBC. I used to go out every day and be professional, then go out in evening with my friends or go to the theatre on Sunday. All I’m doing now is being at home and wiping bums. And we’re all crying together!’ I think it’s interesting how a person’s life changes so much when they have children and how you do sort of lose a bit of yourself. In a way, I’m only finding who I am again at the moment, now that my kids are much older. I was thinking about what I’d lost, but also what I’d gained, of course. And this book came out of that, really. I wrote something about a woman going through her wardrobe and finding all her lovely evening dresses that she once wore and thinking that person is not here anymore. And I developed it into a story. I was exploring a big ‘what if’. What if a woman found it so difficult to accept that this was her life that she felt compelled to lie about it because she wanted things to be bigger and more exciting for herself? And how far would the character go before it all went wrong? One of the nicest things about being an author is getting emails or letters from people saying, ‘I really felt like this too. Thank you for articulating some difficult times I was going through and for showing me a way through.’ This book really was a life-changing moment. It validated me spending all that time writing and started me off on my career. I felt like I could do this and that I wasn’t wasting my time.”