Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope (December 9, 1943) is an English writer.

• 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?’
  • On being more of a social rather than political writer in “Joanna Trollope on families, fiction and feminism: ‘Society still expects women to do all the caring’” in The Guardian (2020 Mar 2)

• 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.
  • On her novel Mum & Dad in “Joanna Trollope on families, fiction and feminism: ‘Society still expects women to do all the caring’” in The Guardian (2020 Mar 2)

• 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.
  • On how people react to her characters in “Joanna Trollope on families, fiction and feminism: ‘Society still expects women to do all the caring’” in The Guardian (2020 Mar 2)

• 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 also being aware of situations that are currently preoccupying people. Codes of conduct change, but what the human heart wants really doesn’t.
  • On what stirs her to write in “Interview with Joanna Trollope” in Writers & Artists