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Bestselling Chick Lit Author Dies

edited February 2010 in - Reading
Can't remember seeing this back in October. She wrote under the pseudonym Zoe Barnes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248414/Chick-lit-author-Susan-Morgan-kills-marriage-break-up.html

Comments

  • Yes, I just saw it and recognised the Zoe Barnes name. I thought it must have been recent until I read the date it happened.
    Very sad.
  • Oh dear, that's rather sad. I see she was a translator as well as a novelist. It's a shame to lose talent to the world in such a dreadful way.
  • I never heard about that and I live on that island, very sad indeed.
  • Yes, very sad.

    And I heard that another best-selling author, Marian Keyes, is in the throes of depression.

    It kind of puts some of the angst we suffer over our writing into perspective.
  • And shows that being a successful writer makes no difference when it comes to depression and other health problems.
  • edited February 2010
    Edited: Bad taste joke.
  • I never read any Zoe Barnes novels, I'm not sure why. I'm a big Keyes fan though, and love the life that she pours into her novels.
  • [quote=Stirling] QuotethanksReport Post whisper
    Edited: Bad taste joke.[/quote]

    Ahhh I want to know what that was now.


    [quote=LeeH]I never heard about that and I live on that island, [/quote]

    Hey Lee my dad is from the IoM, Douglas.
  • The original post was something like, 'maybe romance fiction should come with an health warning.'

    *Feel free to throw rotten fruit*
  • It's sad. Seems her health problems and marraige break up caused her suicide rather than her chosen writing genre.
  • It's always sad when someone decides to end their lives. Just been reading another thread where the topic slipped onto writers being oversensitive (something I am guilty of myself, although I am improving). I would suspect that is more of a factor than the genre she wrote in. Happy endings tend to lift our spirits but perhaps they can emphasis what we are missing out on too.
  • The point I was making is that romance is hinged on the myth of 'happily ever after.'

    A marriage breaks down, the myth explodes. A lot of women have built their whole lives around the myth.
  • Been there, done that, got the t-shirt! :)

    It can be devastating especially if you have been married for a long time. I don't know any of this womans history but I would have been lost if I hadn't had my children to keep going for, their needs had to come first. I do remember feeling at one point that I hadn't been given a choice in anything...HE had decided to leave, everything was on his terms (he would only occasionally have the kids at his convenience and expected me to drop everything and fit in around him) and that he hadn't even left me with the option of ending it all. I remember thinking I wish I could but that would have been unbearable for the kids because they would have no mother or father...so he could walk away and I couldn't. (A bit of a long way of saying that it is easy for any of us to feel suicidal).

    I think the genre reference is just a headline grabber really.
  • edited February 2010
    Ref. your comments, Gina, she couldn't have children. There was something about her writing a book on a single woman who flourishes with an unexpected pregnancy, just after she'd had a hysterectomy.
  • With all those things as well to deal with it's no wonder she took her own life.
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