Kinsella’s tales captured youthful joy and optimism

You won’t often find me writing about a novel (or reading one).
But I have to comment on Sophie Kinsella, who died today (Dec. 10) at 55, of brain cancer.
Some people know her for writing two books that became the 2009 movie “Confessions of a Shopaholic” (shown here) That’s a fairly pleasant comedy (streaming on Netflix and Disney+) that stars Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy.
But that was just the start. She wrote 10 books in the “shopaholic” series and 13 others, all under that “Sophie Kinsella” pen name.
She had previously written seven others under Madeleine Wickham. (That was her real name, since marrying her college sweetheart; she had four sons and a daughter.) More than 50 million of her books have been sold.
And she seems to be the forerunner of fresh trends. Read a current best-seller like Emily Henry’s “Funny Story” and you can feel Kinsella’s voice.
Kinsella’s main characters are bright young women, but their intelligence might be hidden under a surface of wide-eyed optimism. They expect things to work out; as in real life, that can be self-fulfilling.
Those first novels (under Madeleine Wickham) apparently included the requisite angst and agony. Then she decided that wasn’t her; she adopted the Sophie Kinsella name and had fun.
Kinsella even dabbled in time-travel type plots in some books (“Twenties Girl,” “Remember Me?”), but only to bring out character adventures.
Walk through a book store these days and you’ll see a trend. The covers themselves are brighter and cheerier. The characters are often young women juggling the modern blend of agency and obstacles. Some are bright, optimistic and Kinsella-esque.