Sophie Kinsella, the English author whose bestselling “Shopaholic” book series gave way to a classic American romantic comedy, announced Wednesday that she has been undergoing treatment for more than a year for a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer.
Kinsella, whose first name is Madeleine Wickham, shared the health update in a social media post which outlined her treatment plan and explained why she had decided earlier to confront the illness out of the public eye. The author said she was diagnosed in late 2022 with glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor that usually carries a poor prognosis because it often progresses rapidly. But Kinsella told her followers that she “generally feels very well” and described her current condition as stable, crediting the medical team at University College Hospital in London who handled her care .
“I haven’t shared this before because I wanted to make sure my children could hear and process the news in privacy and adjust to our ‘new normal,'” Kinsella said in the post. Kinsella has five children.
Since her diagnosis, Kinsella said she has successfully undergone surgery followed by radiation and chemotherapy, which she is still receiving. Surgery to remove as much of the brain tumor as possible is usually the first line of treatment after a glioblastoma is discovered, with at least one longer-term cancer treatment given afterward, according to the Mayo Clinic.
On Wednesday, Kinsella thanked her medical team as well as the readers whose responses to her novel “The Burnout,” published in October 2023, “(have) supported her, during a difficult time.”
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“I am so grateful to my family and close friends who have given me incredible support, and to the wonderful doctors and nurses who cared for me. I am also so grateful to my readers for their continued support,” said she declared. “To everyone who is suffering from cancer in any form, I send my love and best wishes, and to those who support them. It can be very lonely and scary to have a difficult diagnosis, and the support and care of those around you means more than words can say.”
Kinsella is best known for writing the sensationally popular “Shopaholic” book series, which follows a financial journalist’s struggles to manage her own budget as she confronts a shopping obsession. The novels themselves gained popularity around the world, and his work attracted a particularly large audience once the first two installments of the book series were adapted into the 2009 romantic comedy film, “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, who played Fisher Island and Hugh Grant.
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