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Joy Fielding Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Joy Fielding

Joy Fielding

Joy Fielding Biography

Joy Fielding submitted her first story to Jack and Jill when she was eight years old, and the story was rejected. At twelve, she wrote her first TV script, the story of a twelve-year-old girl who murders her parents. Like the magazine story, it, too was rejected, but the thought of it caused her parents many a sleepless night. In her last year of high school her English teacher announced to the class that Joy Fielding was going to be a writer, though she hadn't decided that yet for herself.

At the University of Toronto, Fielding decided she wanted to be an actress. She performed in numerous campus productions and starred in the student movie, "Winter Kept Us Warm", a fixture on the art house circuit even today. After she graduated from the University of Toronto in 1966, with a BA in English literature, she went into acting full-time, moving to Los Angeles, where she acted in an episode of Gunsmoke and got to kiss Elvis Presley. Eventually she returned to Toronto and went back to writing.

Fielding is an avid golfer and the mother of two adult daughters. She is a Canadian citizen and divides her time between Toronto and Palm Beach, Florida.

Her works include The Best of Friends (1972), The Transformation (1976), Kiss Mommy Goodbye (1981), The Other Woman (1983), See Jane Run (1991), Tell Me No Secrets (1993), Don't Cry Now (1995), Grand Avenue (2001), Whispers and Lies (2002), Mad River Road (2006), Still Life (2009), Now You See Her (2011) and Shadow Creek (2012).

Joy Fielding's website

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Interview

Joy Fielding discusses The First Time, why it moves back and forth between three points of view and why she chose ALS as the subject to write a book about the healing powers of love.

The First Time moves back and forth between three points of view, Mattie, Kim, and Jake. Why did you create three perspectives? Was it difficult to create Jake's point of view?
This is the first time in a long while that I've told a story from several different perspectives, and the first time ever that I've attempted to speak with a man's voice. My readers know that I don't like to repeat myself, that I make a conscious effort to do something a little different with each book, that I like to experiment with different styles. It was fun watching this complex story unfold through the eyes of three different people, to try to convey the wide variety of emotions each is feeling, to make the reader understand and care about all of them.

Surprisingly, writing from the male perspective wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be. I just thought of the various men in my life, husband, friends, relatives, and tried to imagine how they might think and react in similar circumstances, remembering how they had reacted in other situations and expanding on that.

The teenage daughter Kim…is she based on your own daughter? Why did a teenage character play such a major role in this story?
As the mother of two ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Joy Fielding at BookBrowse
Someone Is Watching jacket Now You See Her jacket The Wild Zone jacket Charley's Web jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Joy Fielding but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Julia Glass

    Julia Glass

    Julia Glass is the author of six previous books of fiction, including the bestselling Three Junes, winner of the National Book Award, and I See You Everywhere, winner of the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The First Time

    Try:
    Three Junes
    by Julia Glass

  • Rohinton Mistry

    Rohinton Mistry

    Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay, India in 1952, of Parsi descent. He earned a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics at the University of Bombay. In 1975, at the age of 23, he immigrated to Canada where he studied at the ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The First Time

    Try:
    A Fine Balance
    by Rohinton Mistry

We recommend 4 similar authors

View all 4 Read-Alikes

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