Sophie Kinsella, the English author whose best-selling “Shopaholic” book series gave way to a classic American rom-com, announced on Wednesday that she has been receiving treatment for a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer for well over a year.
Kinsella, whose given name is Madeleine Wickham, shared the health update in a social media post that outlined her treatment plan and explained why she had decided before now to confront the illness outside of the public eye.
The author said she was diagnosed at the end of 2022 with glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor that typically carries a poor prognosis as it often progresses quickly. But Kinsella told followers that she is “feeling generally very well” and described her current condition as stable, crediting a medical team at University College Hospital in London that has handled her care.
“I did not share this before because I wanted to make sure that my children were able to hear and process the news in privacy and adapt to our ‘new normal,'” Kinsella said in the post. Kinsella has five children.
Since her diagnosis, Kinsella said that she has undergone successful surgery followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which she is still receiving now. Surgery to remove as much of a brain tumor as possible is usually the first line of treatment after a glioblastoma is discovered, with at least one longer-term cancer therapy administered afterward, according to the Mayo Clinic.
On Wednesday, Kinsella thanked her medical team in addition to readers whose responses to her novel, “The Burnout,” published in October 2023, “buoyed [her] up, during a difficult time.”
