Bubbly, fun-loving, bestselling author Jojo Moyes reckons that hitting midlife has been a liberating experience.
“One of the benefits is knowing exactly who you are, which sounds like a weird thing but we care a lot less at this age about what other people think of us,” says the novelist, 55, whose most famous novel Me Before You, about a young carer who falls in love with the quadriplegic she is looking after, was adapted into a movie in 2016 starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin.
Yet Moyes, who also wrote the Me Before You screenplay to bring Lou Clark and Will Traynor to life on film, was in a very different place when she turned 50, she remembers.
“It wasn’t a great year for me because my mum was dying and I got divorced. Let’s say I didn’t have a big party. But I keep thinking I should have a late, late 50th party but I don’t know if I will,” says the author and screenwriter, whose books have sold more than 57 million copies worldwide and been translated into 46 languages.
Readers might be forgiven for thinking that her latest, We All Live Here, a part romcom, part tragi-comedy about a broken family, might have been inspired by her own life.
It centres on Lila, a bestselling author whose career is in free-fall as she goes through divorce and continues to come to terms with the death of her mother and her husband’s departure into the arms of another school mum who is now pregnant with his child. Lila is also under pressure to sell the family home and downsize.
Moyes also split up from her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, with whom she has three children, in 2020 after 22 years of marriage, the year her mother died. She later moved from her seven-bedroom Grade II listed house set in 22 acres in Essex to her current home near Hampstead Heath in North London.
Lila finds new romance, and Moyes has also found a new partner, who she knew many years ago, although she prefers to keep her personal life private.
But the fictional characters in the novel could not be more different from her real friends and family, she insists, and she failed to see that parallels would be drawn.
“I was just really naïve. I’ve never written about a writer before. For the purpose of the plot I needed her to be writing about her own life and I needed the divorce for the plot, for her to be in an absolute crisis when the book opened. I just didn’t think people would ever draw the parallels.”
In the novel, the animosity and anger Lila feels towards her ex is palpable, but Moyes says she wasn’t channelling her own anger into the book.
“I have zero anger towards my ex. We are so cordial, in fact, that the divorce lawyer wrote us a letter saying that they wished everyone could be as graceful to each other as we had been. I don’t think I’m someone who feels anger very much. I’m just not made that way.”
She was, however, worried about moving from the family home.
“I was really anxious about it because I’d lived in the country in a house that was literally in the middle of nowhere for 20-odd years, but I really wanted to be near my friend and my daughter and it was just time for a change.
“I have loved every minute of it. I just really enjoy a very different way of life. I love seeing people every day. I love being able to get takeaways, which I haven’t done for two decades. I love being able to walk to three different cinemas from my house. My daughter lives seven minutes’ walk from me and my best friend is 20 minutes’ walk. To have two beloved people on my doorstep feels like a massive privilege.”
Writing has been a constant for the former journalist, who had written eight books before Me Before You sent her career stratospheric, and which she followed with sequels After You and Still Me. Has she finished with Lou Clark now?
“I think I have. I wrote a short story in the pandemic about what happened to Lou in lockdown and it was lovely to revisit her, especially at a time when I was finding it quite hard to write. I’m not sure there’s an appetite for Lou in middle age, but I’m never going to say never.”
Moyes considers more carefully how she spends her time in midlife.
“When you know that you’ve probably lived more than half your life, you become much more careful about how you spend your time and energy.
“I have people who I absolutely love and would travel across the country to see, while a lot of other people I will just say no to, not because they’re not nice people, but because they are not in that kind of top-energy tier. I would rather be at home cuddling my dogs (she has two rescue dogs from Bosnia).
“I like being a little bit more selfish in terms of how I spend my time and I’m much better at carving out time for me now. I ride my horse four times a week, I do Pilates, I make sure I meet friends for lunch – all the things that I didn’t do for a very long time.
“Also, there’s just gratitude. When you get to your 50s you’ve probably lost a few people along the way and you know how sweet life is. Every evening I find three things to be grateful for and I’m lucky enough that there are usually more than three to choose from. I’m really happy to still be here.”
She remains a terrific advocate for female empowerment and women supporting each other through good times and bad, as she illustrates in her novels including The Giver Of Stars, a fictional story based on the real Horseback Librarians of Kentucky, a group of women who joined forces to deliver books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1930s, which is currently being adapted for an eight-part TV series.
Female friendships have helped sustain her own mental health, she agrees.
“I don’t know how anybody stays sane without female friends. I don’t know what my character would be without the close friends that I’ve had. I’ve had my best friend since I was 16 and it’s such a privilege to have somebody who has known you for the best part of 40 years and knows every bit of you and can call on you when you’re being a pain in the backside or can make you laugh or put things into perspective. I don’t know how people survive without that.”
We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes is published on February 11 by Penguin Michael Joseph, priced £22.
