Like all of the ideas for Lisa Jewell’s novels, her latest began with a flash of inspiration. For None of This is True — her 21st novel in 24 years — it was the unusual concept of “birthday twins.” The story starts in a London pub, where one of the book’s two main characters is a regular, and the other happens to be there on her first night out in years. That’s when fabulous-but-desperate-for-a-new-story podcaster Alix Summer meets unassuming-but-far-darker than-you’d-ever-imagine Josie Fair. Both are celebrating their 45th birthday, on the same day, having been born in the same hospital. What are the chances, right? (You’re wise to be suspicious.) 

They decide to make a podcast together called “Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!”, but the dorky-cute show moniker turns into a misnomer as Alix begins to dig deeper and deeper into their connection. Soon enough, Josie is Single White Female-ing herself into Alix’s home, life and marriage. But Alix is all too willing to let it happen for the sake of having a successful podcast-turned-Netflix show. 

Unlike most of the novels Jewell has written, None of This is True flowed easily and in record time, beginning in March  2022 and with edits wrapping up in September. So, is 20 books what it takes to perfect the art of novel-writing? We Zoomed with the bestselling author in London to get the story of how she accidentally became a writer on a bet (she won, obviously) and how her new murderous psychological thriller is just like a delicious Christmas feast.  

 

 

Rosemary Counter: Your name is so fabulous I thought it had to be a pen name. But it’s real! 

Lisa Jewell: In the U.K., Jewell is a very unusual surname. All the Jewells are otherwise in America, it seems. But yes, it’s my real name. It works very well.

RC: I read a great story online about how you became a writer … on a bet. Tell it again? 

JL: Long story short, I was a recently out-of-work secretary and I’d gone on holidays with my brand-new boyfriend – now husband – and his friends. One was a journalist, and she got me talking one night about how I’d lost my job and was going to sign up for some temp work. She said, “Don’t you ever feel like there’s something else you’d like to do?” I confessed I wanted to write a novel someday, but obviously I couldn’t at the moment, and she said, “Why not?” I gave her a hundred reasons — my age, lack of experience, the fact that I was a secretary — but she said if I wrote just three chapters of a novel, she’d take me out for dinner at my favourite restaurant. I did it for the free meal, but those eventually became the first chapters of my first novel, Ralph’s Party, which came out when I turned 30. 

RC: After 21 books, are you still nervous or excited to publish a new one? 

LJ: Yes, of course, but what’s different from the beginning of my career and now is that I now get early reviews before the book’s published — from NetGalley, Goodreads, bookstagrammers. It used to be that before the publication date, nobody’d read it apart from me and my publishers, so I’d be very nervous about whether people would like it or not. Now my readers get to read it early, so I get to relax and enjoy the process. 

RC: Do you read your reviews?  

LJ: I try not to, but I do like to read the early ones because they tend to be from the people who really enjoyed it and therefore read it quickly. So reviews usually start out really high, which feels great, but then as the days go by, the average star rating goes down. That’s when I stop — when I’m ahead. 

RC: Good strategy! After 21 books, how do you keep coming up with ideas? 

LJ: All of my books, no matter their theme, always start out with some tiny little seed that tickled my fancy. Maybe it’s someone I see, a house I walked past, a headline on page eight. Some tiny little thing will make me wonder, and I’ll want to know more, and that’s when I know I’ve got something interesting. This book came from a man I happened to see as I walked by his window – an ordinary man, typing on his laptop – but I couldn’t help feeling there was something going on behind closed doors. He ended up becoming the character of Walter, Josie’s husband. And then I had this birthday-twins idea in my head for a few years … I liked the idea of two human beings born in the same place on the same day, but ended up so, so different. There’s a nature/nurture quality. How different would these people be if they happened to be raised by another family? That interests me. I’m also into split-second decisions and how one small-seeming choice can completely change your life. 

RC: Oh my gosh, Josie is something…

JL: Ha, yes. Josie’s a very complicated woman, indeed. As the book unfolded, I realized all the horrific trauma she carried inside, and she really grew from a two-dimensional baddie into a woman with so many layers. She’s the only daughter of a narcissistic mother, which I know enough about to know you don’t get out of that dynamic unscathed, and she’s the wife of Walter, who groomed her as a teenager. She has a sort of splintered mind where she’s lost her grip on reality, so you’re never sure if she’s telling the truth or not. 

RC: That’s true, I think, of your protagonist, who isn’t particularly innocent, either. Alix is exploiting this woman’s story for her own gain.

JL: She is, absolutely. She meets Josie at a point professionally when she’s finished her last project and got nothing coming up next — as a writer, I know that feeling — and she can’t resist the fact that Josie’s almost giving her something for free. She doesn’t even like Josie, she finds her creepy and unsettling, but she treats Josie like a car crash that she can’t look away from. The more she discovers her twisted background, the happier she is to keep watching. She doesn’t pay attention to the red flags, because she’s only after the story.

RC: You wrote this book at an almost superhuman speed. Is book writing getting easier or did you just luck out this time? 

JL: I’ve never written a book so quickly and I don’t think I ever will again, to be honest. I usually have so many characters and spend a lot of time confusing myself, but this one was simpler and more straightforward, plot-wise. I had two main characters, both in one small corner of London, so didn’t have to worry much about structure.

RC: Speaking of structure, this book is about a podcast … in a Netflix show … all in a novel. 

JL: That’s it, exactly. Like one of those complex Christmas birds that people eat with a sparrow inside a duck inside of a turkey. There’s an awful lot of layers, but there’s something for everyone.