Step into “Someone Else’s Shoes,” Jojo Moyes’s Wittiest Novel Yet

Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.

Tricia Ford: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Tricia Ford, and today I'm so excited to be speaking with bestselling writer Jojo Moyes about her latest novel, Someone Else's Shoes. Welcome, Jojo.

Jojo Moyes: Oh, thanks for having me.

TF: Now, at its center, Someone Else's Shoes is a story about female friendships, unexpected love, and redefining yourself. It's full of real women of a certain age who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. And, as you'd expect from Jojo Moyes, it's tremendously witty. I listened compulsively. I just love this story and the two women at its center, Sam and Nisha. Both Sam and Nisha seem to be pushed into what you might call a midlife crisis, propelled by outside circumstances, and they both make bold moves. Would you describe what they go through as a kind of second coming-of-age for each of them?

JM: Ooh, that's an interesting description. I guess they do, because they both have to reinvent themselves. It is interesting, I'm sure some of what I write comes from my own experience, but I found myself in my early 50s having to reinvent myself after my domestic circumstances changed. We had a pandemic, which stripped away all our normal support systems and networks. And so, like a lot of people, I think—and also, frankly, a lot of people who are lucky enough to get to their late 40s, early 50s—you're suddenly looking around you and go, "Well, who am I from here?" And they are like polarized versions of that experience.

On the one hand, you have Sam who internalizes everything and feels like if she'd just try harder, if she could do more—she's drowning in coulda, woulda, shouldas, you know? And Nisha's the opposite in that she doesn't internalize anything. She just gets mad and she does stuff. And yet both of them, I think, are coming to terms with their own invisibility, if you like, and then become seen by other women and by each other in the truest sense.

TF: Yes, I was struck by how important it was for each character to be able to ask for and accept help.

JM: Yeah, that probably definitely comes from me. I am terrible at asking for help. Always have been. And I think the one thing I've learned over the last few years is sometimes you have to reach out. No woman is an island, just like no man is, and what I really wanted to show with this book was a sort of celebration of female friendship, not the kind of sentimental kind, not some kind of idealized version of it, but a real, gritty kind of get irritated with each other sometimes, but essentially knowing that someone has your back.

And what I really liked about writing these two women is they have absolutely nothing in common; they shouldn't like each other. For a good part of the book, they don't. And yet what they see in each other is the unfairness of the situations they've been put in, and that just overriding sense that if you see someone in trouble, you step in and help. And through that, they both learn to give and receive help, I think.

TF: I think that's true, and it goes beyond those two. There's other supporting women, so to speak. And for me, where the story ends up could not have happened without that kind of team effort, and something magical happens, and it goes a little bit beyond the everyday kind of experience.

JM: Oh, sure. I mean, I wanted to write a caper. I found myself, over the last few years, looking consciously for things to read and watch and listen to that were lighter than my usual menu, if you like. I couldn't watch anything too depressing. I couldn't listen to anything sad. I just wanted to be uplifted and taken out of myself for a bit. So when I started writing again, I wanted to write almost an old-fashioned caper, where people do stuff and it's a bit silly in places and it’s maybe hyperreal, but perhaps with a kind of bedrock of grit, of truth. I'm going to say it—it isn't entirely realistic. But then, I'm 53 years old, and the older I get, the more I think real life is crazy, you know? [laughs]. I look around me at things that happen, and half of it I couldn't put in a book because someone would say, "Well, that wouldn't happen." It did happen. It just happened. You know? I'm not sure what I mean by hyperreal anymore. I think it's just, yeah, whatever happens in the day.

TF: Now, do you think their experience is something other women do naturally, or something women need to do more of for each other? How they helped each other and how even the supporting characters were brought in at key moments?

JM: I think, in my experience, women do step in and help each other. I feel like for those of us lucky enough to get to our 40s and 50s, there's a recognition that nobody gets to this age unscathed. We've all been through something, whether it's death, divorce, some kind of illness, tough times at work, whatever. Everybody has been through something major, pretty much, by this age. And what I have found kind of an unexpected delight, if you like, is the way there is this unspoken recognition of that. Actually, I'm saying unspoken; often, it's really spoken. There's just this kind of willingness to meet each other where we stand, and accept each other without artifice, without trying to present yourself as anything.

You know, when you're in your 20s and 30s, there's a lot of image, there's a lot of trying to project something. I find that among the women I know at this age, it's all stripped away. No one has the energy. It's just like, within five minutes of meeting someone, they're telling me about their divorce, their depressed child, their whatever, and there's just this humanity. And I guess that's what I wanted to show in the book. You don't have to even know somebody very well. There's just this sense of, it's almost like a kind of righteous indignation, which is “there's so much wrong, let's just put something right.” Let's be kind to each other. Let's just lift each other up, and that's certainly been my experience with women I know at this age.

"The loveliest bit is when you, the author, are so taken by the reading that you forget it's your book, and that has actually happened to me. I'm sitting there, listening in my car, going, 'What's going to happen next?' And it's my book!"

And it's been interesting speaking to women while I've been on this book tour because so many of them seem to recognize that. And I think maybe this age group of women, perhaps maybe TV has kind of recognized them more than fiction has at this point, and I'm just doing my little bit to give them a profile in fiction. Because often in fiction, middle-aged women are either kind of really annoying mothers or mothers-in-law, or they are cheated-on spouses, or they're just kind of background characters. I don't know any background characters. They're all kind of heroic. So yeah, that's what I wanted with the kind of underlying caper-y feel.

TF: Well, it works. It's wonderful. I took it as kind of, not a rallying cry, but I do think there's women out there that don't realize this exists. So many women go through life thinking they're the only ones, and especially coming to midlife, there's just so much shared information that isn't always freely shared, I don't think.

JM: And sometimes it's shame and protectiveness, and sometimes it's just the logistics of you're so busy holding down your job and running your home and looking after elderly parents and trying to take care of teenagers that you don't have the time to go out and talk to other people. Up to about 2019, I didn't really have a social life. I don't say that as someone who has no friends. I had plenty of friends. But I had decided that work and family had to come first because I only had so many hours in the day, and most of my friends I spoke to on the phone or by email, or they were work friends. They were other writers. And this last couple of years, I've made a real conscious attempt to see people in-person and reconnect, because we need each other. I think we do, and my oldest friend—we've known each other since we were 16—we walk our dogs together three times a week now, and it's just made the biggest difference for both of us, to see somebody who you know completely understands you, completely gets you, will also give you a kick up the bum if they think you're being self-indulgent or doing something stupid. And I love that honesty, as well, among women. My oldest friends have no problem telling me when they think I'm doing something stupid.

TF: That is so great, and so well-represented with these women in this story. But getting back a little bit to the seriousness and also opening up to another co-character or secondary character, Phil. The women, they're not alone in finding courage to ask for help. Sam's husband, Phil, struggles with depression after the loss of a parent, and while he seems like an unlikely therapy candidate, he's the one that goes and does the work, so to speak. What do you think we can learn from Phil?

JM: Well, I'm really interested in the kind of conversation around men's mental health. I think most women I know are kind of quite conscious of where they are at the moment, and most of us are kind of interrogating ourselves about what's working, what's not working, are we happy, do we need to do something about it? I think for men, especially in the UK, it's a much trickier question, because especially British men, I think possibly more so than American men, they've been told since they were small boys to just man up, stiff upper lip, get on with it, you know? We're the country that makes two small boys walk behind their mother's coffin in front of a global audience. That's how seriously we take male mental health.

And I think the conversation is changing. I had a guy come to do my drains a few weeks ago, what we call over here a "white van man." And he ended telling me about his son's battle with depression and the methods he was using to stop himself saying the wrong thing and to get his son the right help. And I thought, "Wow. I'm having this conversation with the guy doing the drains."

Phil is very resistant to therapy. He's been raised just like a typical English guy. And what I wanted to show was that—I was going to say even for men, but probably especially for men, there are advantages to just having the tools to open up and navigate really difficult life events. And it's not just the therapy that prompts Phil into kind of taking action again, but that's a huge part of it. And I think, for me, it was also important to kind of play with the reader a bit for the first, I don't know, quarter of the book. I want you to be quite irritated by Phil, because you can see Sam holding up the whole world, trying to kind of juggle everything and pay for everything and run everything, run around. And you just see this guy laying on the sofa watching daytime television, and the easy thing would be to just make him a lazy slob. But actually, when we start peeling away the layers of Phil and what's going on with him, you realize it's that same thing: You have to walk in someone else's shoes to understand where they're coming from, and we have no idea how Phil has ended up in this position until some way into the book, and then hopefully, when you discover that, you should completely change your feelings about him because what you understand is he is also carrying an unbearable burden.

TF: Right. Right. That's another theme for this age group, I think, with the loss of a parent and that experience. I know so many people experiencing that for the first time, and it truly is—talk about a coming-of-age. I've had my own experience with it, and in a way you don't feel like a grown-up until you've lost one or both parents.

JM: No. Me too. I lost my mom in 2020, and I'm sure some of that fed into this book, because it is one of those huge life experiences that nobody can prepare you for. It is life-changing, and as you say, it alters your position in the great scheme of things. But in Phil's case, it's infinitely more complicated.

TF: Yeah. Totally changed my mind about Phil.

JM: Oh, I'm glad.

TF: I don't want to give away too much, but I was so happy that things were turning around for all involved, and I see good times ahead for Phil.

JM: Yeah, I was also interested in just the dynamics of a long-term marriage, you know? I don't want to give away any plot spoilers, but there is a lot of love in that marriage, and also a lot of frustration and a lot of irritation. I was married for 22 years, and one of the things I discovered about marriage is that all those things can exist in a single five-minute period, you know? You can feel the love and also want to kind of bash somebody over the head with a newspaper [laughs]. When we watch fictional or television or movie accounts of marriages, there's always these sort of harbingers of doom. You know, the time that he stops looking up. Real life isn't like that. In reality, peoples' relationships go up and down and up and down, and sometimes they're good for ages and sometimes they're bad for ages. And I wanted to show that just because when we meet Phil and Sam they are in this kind of really tricky, alienated state, it doesn't mean that automatically the love is gone. Life is infinitely more complicated than that.

TF: Yes, indeed. I learned a lot from Phil. Now, the heart of the story is so much fun and so funny, and the one word that I keep going back to is "entertaining."

JM: Oh, good.

TF: It's just so darn entertaining. Easy to listen to. I felt like I was in it, just became immediately submersed in the story, and it's mostly your words, but you found the perfect narrator in Daisy Ridley.

JM: Isn't she fantastic?

TF: She's phenomenal. I was curious about how she was chosen for this project.

JM: My publishers found her, and they sent me an example of her reading. And I was a long-term fan of hers. I think she's a really good, interesting actress. They then managed to get her, which she's probably the most high-profile person, apart from Emilia Clarke, who I've ever had reading one of my books, so that was pretty exciting.

"If another writer can make me either laugh or cry, I'm theirs."

They sent me four chapters to listen to, and I just loved it. I spoke to her during the recording, and I think it's the first time she's done an audiobook, so she was anxious to get everything right. But it's quite a hard book to pull off, just because of the variety of characters, the variety of accents, and I think what Daisy does fabulously is make them all so distinct. I don't think there's ever a point in which you're questioning who you're listening to now. But she's sharp as well. I knew she read the whole book before she even began the Audible reading, and I sent her a message afterwards just expressing my gratitude, because I think there's nothing more upsetting than if you feel like the audio version doesn't properly match the text, not that that really happens to me anymore. But the loveliest bit is when you, the author, are so taken by the reading that you forget it's your book, and that has actually happened to me. I'm sitting there, listening in my car, going, "What's going to happen next?" And it's my book!

It's just that if you have the right reader, they take it onto a whole new plane. It becomes something distinct to the thing that you've written, and I think Daisy achieved that. And I should also add that Julia Whelan did that for Giver of Stars, my previous book. Her reading was extraordinary, too, so I feel very lucky in the choices of people for my books.

TF: Yeah, they're both so perfectly cast. I didn't even realize at first that [Daisy] was going back and forth between a British and an American accent. I just knew who's speaking, and I'm like, "What? That was so seamless." It was just like the natural voice you would hear in your mind when you're reading the book, or probably better.

JM: Yeah. I always think it must be really hard doing voices of the opposite sex as well, because I'm sure if it was me reading, I'd end up doing some terrible rough parody of a man, and then everyone would be entirely put off. But that's why you get these great actors to do it, because they know how to do that stuff. That's probably why I'm never going to be asked to narrate my own audiobooks.

TF: It's a true art. It's a true art.

JM: It really is. I'm immensely grateful to her.

TF: This was one of the books that I'd go walking in the park and there were those laugh-out-loud moments where I just, I didn't care. I didn't care what the passerby might have thought about me. I loved those moments. Part performance, mostly story. I could listen to this one even more than once, I think.

JM: Yeah. I mean, it has been interesting, the last few years. In lockdown, I couldn't read. I just couldn't read. And the way through that, for me, was listening to books, and I did exactly that. Every day, I would just head out with my dogs, and words in my ears, and that would take me to somewhere else. And at night as well, because I couldn't sleep, I would listen to books. And some books I listened to because I wanted to listen to the books. Other books I listened to because I found that the narrator had a really good sleepy-sounding voice, and it would put me to sleep. Which I'm not sure was the entire point that the author had wanted to do. But they really got me through it, a tough few years. So, yeah, I think they're great, and I still listen to them most days.

TF: I think sleeping is okay and a legit activity. I know there are actually lots of listeners who will do that, and they have a set title that's something they've listened to 10 times before. I think Pride and Prejudice is super popular for sleep-time listening.

JM: Is it?

TF: Yeah.

JM: Oh, see, I'd get too lost in Pride and Prejudice because it's one of my favorite books. I would have to just be listening. But I listened to a book, and I hope that she takes this the right way, a fantastic book called When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön, who is an American nun, a Buddhist nun. It performed a dual purpose: There were just enough kind of ideas that I could grasp onto that my brain would be soothed by the idea that there was a bigger purpose and everything was going to be okay, but she has this lovely, soft, comforting voice, so it was like being kind of lulled to sleep. The only problem being that I probably listened to that book about 10 times in the end because I would definitely sleep through some of it and then not know where and at what point I'd gone back, and I think this is quite a common thing.

TF: I think so. But that is the kind of book I think you're supposed to experience it that way, I do. Yeah. [laughs]

JM: She sounds like a generous soul. I think she won't mind what it's used for as long as we listen.

TF: It'll get in there somehow, right? So, with me laughing out loud in the park, I did want to talk about you have great skill in humor. And traditionally, to me, Jojo Moyes is the best source of, if you need a good ugly-cry book. You know, Me Before You, best ugly-cry book ever.

JM: That was an ugly-cry book. Yeah. That's the ugliest cry book ever.

TF: But it was also witty, and I think this one's even more witty. How important is humor to you in your writing?

JM: It's really important. I mean, I'm British, and we find it quite hard, generally, to express deep emotion, so we do it with jokes, you know? At every moment of extreme tragedy in my family, someone will make a terrible joke, and that's what will get us through. And I only really introduced humor into my books with Me Before You because I looked at that topic that I was trying to write about and wrestle with, and I thought, “This book is potentially so bleak, the only way I can bring a reader with me on this journey is to make them laugh at the same time.” And the way I looked at it was like, if you want the best jokes, you go to the emergency services. They have all the best jokes, you know? Police, firemen, nurses, doctors. They're the ones with the great humor. They just are, because they're dealing with that level of cataclysm every day, and I think that's probably how those people get through. I mean, not everybody, of course. I'm speaking in vast generalizations.

But for me, it was notable that once I introduced humor into my books, there was a big change in my success levels. And I know it wasn't just the humor, but I do think that that was related. And I know for myself that if another writer can make me either laugh or cry, I'm theirs. Like, that's it. I'm a loyal reader of theirs for life. And I do feel that that's what I try to do now. I think there's an element of catharsis in books, you know? It's like watching a black-and-white movie. You just want to be made to feel something that's not related to your own life, and you have a big old ugly cry, and then you get on with your day and you feel loads better. Or a belly laugh.

TF: Agreed. And it's successful in that, for sure. Now Me Before You, everyone knows, became a great movie. It's actually a great memory of mine, when it first came out, being a favorite book among the editorial team, we actually had an outing where we all went to the movies together to go see it.

JM: Did you?

TF: Just a great memory, and it's like a required listen for the team. My experience of this book and how entertaining it was and how enthralled I was, I would love to see it on the screen. Whether it's this book or anything in the future, did you enjoy your book becoming a movie and being involved in that process?

JM: Yes. I really did, and in fact, it prompted a whole different career strand for me, which is that now I am heavily involved in the adaptation of other books of mine. I went on to be an executive producer on The Last Letter from Your Lover, and helped with that script. And I've written a couple more scripts, which may or may not ever get made—you know, it's a lottery ticket, getting a film made. You can try, but really, once you've bought the ticket, you just have to park it and forget about it, and hope that one day it happens.

"This book, there might be a teary moment in it, but the bulk of it, I just wanted to bring people some laughs and put people in kind of ridiculous situations and make people giggle, because we've all been through enough, frankly."

This book won't be a film, or shouldn't be a film, but what it might be is a television series. I've actually been working with a television company in LA, before I'd finished the book. I'd been working with a woman executive who wanted me to write something about midlife women, and then when I told her this idea, she bought it before I'd finished the book, which is a first for me. And so I'm currently working on the pilot episode, which is quite challenging because I find working in television very different to working in film. In film, my books tend to follow the same narrative arc as the film, and my books are quite visual. I'm quite a visual writer. So I find them relatively easy. Well, "relatively easy," ha-ha, to adapt. But television is a completely different ballgame because it's so structural, and so I'm kind of wrestling with that at the moment.

But it's exciting because I'm learning, you know, at the grand old age of 53. I'm learning new stuff all the time. And also, I just feel like there's a new climate in television, where thanks to people like Reese Witherspoon and other female creators, like Shonda Rhimes, there is an appetite for women's stories that maybe wasn't here five, ten years ago. So I hope that we'll see these guys on the screen, but who knows.

TF: Yeah. I can't wait. Well, it's a great audiobook, so you can listen to it, read it, and then hopefully, in the future, go see it.

JM: Yeah. That would be lovely.

TF: Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you wanted to chat about?

JM: Ooh. I mean, I'll just tell you the genesis of this story, if you'd like.

TF: Oh, that would be great.

JM: I got huge, I won't say writer's block, but I just kind of ran out of steam at the end of 2019, and I had planned to take a gap year and have a rest and reconnect with friends and travel a bit for fun. Then, instead, I got a pandemic and we were all confined to our back gardens. And I remained in touch with a lot of other writers during that time, and one of them was Jodi Picoult, author of many, many bestselling books, my favorite being My Sister's Keeper, which that book made me ugly cry.

And every time I spoke to Jodi, I felt like she'd written another book, and in the end, I thought I'd have to do something. And I watched Desperately Seeking Susan, which is one of my favorite films, which is also a kind of caper about two women who pretty much life-swap based on an item of clothing. And I remembered this short story that I'd written about 15 years ago for a women's magazine about a woman who goes to a gym and accidentally picks up the wrong bag, and the impact it has on her day. And I suddenly thought, "Well, what happened to the woman whose bag was taken?" And then suddenly it became fun. In my head, I thought, "Oh, okay. We could play with this. They could be different, and it could be like Trading Places for menopausal women," and it all came together.

And then I had a huge crisis of confidence. I think because it was longest period I hadn't been writing for. And Jodi said to me, "Send me what you've written." So I sent her maybe 20,000 to 30,000 words of it, and she read them overnight and came back to me the next day and said, "I want to read this book." And so I owe her a huge debt of thanks, because she gave me the confidence to do this at a time when I just wasn't sure whether I still had it. And what's been lovely and surprising to me is how well and warmly it's been received. And I'm grateful to that, and I'm grateful to her.

TF: That is a good example of women lifting each other up.

JM: Yes, it is. Yes.

TF: A real-life example. I love that. Now, one last thing before we go. What are some of your favorite audiobooks?

JM: So, the last book I downloaded was Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These, which is only a two-hour listen, and when I first saw that, I thought, "Has there been some mistake?" Most books seem to be about 12 hours. And actually, it's the most exquisite two hours. It's beautifully narrated. Apparently, it took her 11 years to write this book. But there's just not a misplaced or wasted word. It is an exquisite story, and it's quite uplifting at the end as well, in a strange, sort of unexpected way. So, I love that.

Another book that I listened to on audio quite recently, that made me sob, was Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which my daughter had read in print form and insisted I got it, and I said, "Well, I don't know. It's about computer gaming. I don't think it's going to be for me." And she said, "It is and it isn't. It's about so many other things." And it has a chapter at its climax which made me sob for an hour. It's beautifully narrated in a way that's perfect for the book. It's so original, this book. I still feel slightly in awe of it. So that was amazing. And I love the Sally Rooney books' narration, because they perfectly match the books as well. But I'm always out walking my dogs or in the car. So, for me, listening is really important because I think, especially if you're driving long distances, listening to a book is completely different to listening to the radio. Listening to the radio, I get tired. Listening to a book, I'm completely transported and I'm in a different part of my head. Yeah, my phone is overburdened basically, with books.

TF: That's a good thing. A book in your ear is always a good thing.

JM: Exactly.

TF: But yeah, I think this one is a two-listen type of listen. It's that much fun.

JM: Oh, thank you so much.

TF: That's my recommendation to the people out there.

JM: I'm going to take that as a huge compliment. Thank you so much.

TF: I fully support this book, and I'm so happy to have a chance to talk to you and meet you.

JM: It was my pleasure. I'm such a lover of audiobooks and Audible, so it was a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

TF: And listeners, if you're looking for a story that will make you laugh out loud walking in the park, and leaves you feeling triumphant, this is the listen for you. Someone Else's Shoes is available now on Audible.com.