Jacqueline Wilson: ‘There’s such a lot of pressure on teenage girls – but I feel sorry for boys too’

A generation of millennial readers greeted news of an adult Jacqueline Wilson novel with the kind of excitement usually reserved for a surprise Taylor Swift album. The author talks to Jessie Thompson about whether teen girls have changed since her ‘Girls in Love’ books were published 25 years ago, the perils of TV casting, sexuality, and the one scene her editor told her to cut

Jacqueline Wilson on swearing and sex scenes in her adult novel: ‘I wanted to show: no, it’s not suitable for children’ (Supplied)

For the Jacqueline Wilson generation, there’s a new, tongue-in-cheek way to indulge in some nostalgia. With a splash of wry humour and a huge dollop of affection, readers on TikTok have begun to rank her books in order of how “traumatic” they were. “Oh, do they?” the author says, glowing (I think with curiosity rather than delight), before asking, “Which would be the ones they think are the most traumatic?” Before I can respond, the author is gamely taking up the challenge herself. “My Sister Jodie [in which Jodie falls to her death from a tower], I would think that would be one. Vicky Angel [where Vicky is killed by a car and then haunts her best friend Jade as a ghost] is also a worrying one. And probably The Illustrated Mum [a heavily tattooed single mother is sectioned and her children go into foster care]?”

TikTok certainly concurs. “This book should have come with a trigger warning and a voucher for therapy,” one post said of Vicky Angel; “What the hell was this babe?” was its verdict on The Illustrated Mum. Maybe they were a bit traumatic. But Wilson was, and remains, a phenomenon, having written over 100 books and sold 40 million copies. Most likely it was the “trauma” of her plots that appealed: in stories covering everything from divorce to death to eating disorders, Wilson captured the unwieldy emotions of everyday difficulties in a way that young readers could relate to, with a unique sense of humour and an approachable, chatty style, couched in bright iconic covers, illustrated by long-time collaborator Nick Sharratt. But… did publishers ever say she’d gone too far? Just once, in fact. “I remember in one of the Tracy Beaker books, I had one of the characters glue-sniffing,” she says. “I was wanting to point out that this was a mad thing to do, but the editor did point out that some children might not even have heard of it and decide to experiment.”

Anyway, the Jacqueline Wilson generation – largely comprised of millennial women who read her books growing up – made it to adulthood. The former children’s laureate, who was made a dame in 2008, ignites a rare kind of devotion in her fans. I should know; she was the author who inspired in me a love of reading, and to whom I wrote a fan letter aged 12 and actually got a response (“I don’t have a favourite football team I’m afraid,” said her patient reply). In my 2002 Jacqueline Wilson-branded, sticker-covered diary I wrote “had my first snog EWW!!!!” Her connection with her readers feels deeply personal, sustained over the generations, meaning that the announcement of Think Again, her just-released adult follow-up to her Girls in Love series, was met with the kind of euphoria reserved these days for surprise Taylor Swift albums. Tote bags bearing the words “Jacqueline Wilson raised me” have been made for the occasion.

Speaking to me at her publisher’s offices, Wilson is petite and immaculate, in an indigo dress embroidered with sequins, her nails a matching shade, her characteristic chunky silver rings in full view. She talks candidly, full of stories, her eyes often gleaming with mischief; it is a bit like meeting the Queen, except everyone calls her Jacky. Think Again, which returns to the lives of Ellie, Magda and Nadine as they hit their forties, is a read-in-a-day comfort book – but you also step back from it and realise what a subtle, compassionate observer Wilson is of the way in which women live. Ellie, we learn, had a daughter at 19 and went on to become an art teacher and cartoonist for The Guardian which decides to drop her on her 40th birthday, just as she is feeling at her most alone, insecure and unloved. Magda is on her third husband and learning how to patiently step-parent, while Nadine is still getting embroiled with men who seem deeply suspect. None is portrayed as conventional – but each has their private anxieties, loved ones they must attend to, patronising men they must put up with, and each remains on the road to self-discovery.

Ellie, then and now, has a bit of a Bridget Jones quality: she worries about her inadequacies, wants to be liked and to lose weight, but also tries her best to be a good friend and person. “In the initial books, lots of girls related to Ellie because she does get anxious, she does worry about things, and she’s not the sort of girl that everyone in the class thinks is the prettiest or best or sportiest, or whatever – she’s kind of an average girl,” says Wilson.

This is why, when ITV made a series of the books in 2003, Wilson “had begged them – I don’t usually interfere with television adaptations – but with this one, I did say, can the girls be about around 14 or so, not actual young women, and can Ellie just be a normal-sized girl? And of course, the actress [Olivia Hallinan] was beautiful and slender, and didn’t wear glasses.” She became “an aspirational sort of girl, rather than a girl that viewers identified with”, Wilson tells me. “I did get some very pained letters.”

Jacqueline Wilson has written more than 100 books (Getty)

With the first book published in 1997, Wilson decided to start the series because she found herself intrigued by the year 9 kids on the many school visits she was doing. “Year 7s are still quite childish in a way; year 8, they’re on the turn; year 9, they’re fun, they’re lively… they are out to get you,” she laughs. “And so it’s that lovely in-between stage where you feel so grown-up one moment, and so like a child that next.”

We both agree that giving your PE teacher a note to say you had period pains is a universal part of girlhood. “I mean, it’s quite astronomical the amount of girls that had constant period pains,” she jokes. But back when she was writing the books, the things that worried young women were having a boyfriend and being thin – Wilson hopes this is no longer the case. Does she think today’s teenage girls have changed?

“I think in some ways they’re more ambitious. Very few teenage girls today think, ‘Oh I long to get married and have children’ without really thinking about what job they’ll have,” she suggests. But also, “in some ways, there’s even more self-consciousness and self-awareness, and the worry about going online and seeing so many other images that… well, they would find desirable – I’m not a particular fan of ‘the lips’, the sort of different pouts and everything. But I can see these are what girls want.” (In her day, she laments, it was “bouffant hairdos”.)

I am going to be doing an event at my local village, and none of these experiences are based on anything that I have been involved with – and yet I know, I just know they’ll be looking at me, ‘Oh, fancy Jacky doing that’

How awful it must be, she adds, in the age of social media and smartphones, to not only fall out with your friends “but to get messages when you’re at home trying to relax, about how horrible you are. God, that’s such torture. There’s such a lot of pressure for girls.” She adds that she feels “sorry for boys too”, exposed to an online culture rife with misogyny. “I’ve never actually tried to access real hardcore porn,” she says, matter-of-factly, “but people tell me that it’s nearly all things about men doing quite violent things to women, as if this is what women want. And for a sensitive boy of 13 or 14, that’s a terrible message.”

“I still think the vast majority of teenagers are very sensible and will just find out themselves how things should be, but it is a worry. I do think parents of young teenagers must be quite anxious sometimes,” she adds.

Although Wilson has written adult books in the past – her early career began with a series of crime books – many readers will be shocked to find the author writing swear words and sex scenes. The latter she thought about carefully. “You can’t really fudge things,” she tells me, so she decided that from the first page, “I wanted to show, you know, some fond granny who thought ‘Oh, Jacqueline Wilson, my granddaughter likes that’… no, it’s not suitable for children.” The three women have active sex lives, “so I tried not to have anything too cringe-making, and no actual descriptions of genitals – which I think is probably the least sexy thing of all to read – but just to show what was happening.” None of it embarrasses her, except, “I am going to be doing an event at my local village, and none of these experiences are based on anything that I have been involved with – and yet I know, I just know they’ll be looking at me, ‘Oh, fancy Jacky doing that’.”

Jacqueline Wilson meets Queen Camilla at a reception for her charity The Reading Room. Wilson was made a dame in 2008 (Getty)

Parenthood is a major theme of the book, from Ellie’s single parenthood to her brother Ben (nicknamed “Eggs” in the original books) same-sex parenting with his husband and Nadine staying childless by choice. Wilson had her daughter Emma, now a Cambridge professor, at 21, before publishing her first book at 23. Her then husband Millar Wilson had a busy work and social life at the time. “It felt like being a single mum. And my mum, who was never a maternal lady, said, ‘Well, you chose to have the baby, get on with it’.” But Wilson found a “camaraderie” with other mothers she met at the laundrette – the couple were too poor to afford a washing machine – and would send herself up in articles about parenting written for a magazine called Mother and Baby. (She and Millar divorced in 2004 after he left her for another woman.)

In 2020, Wilson spoke publicly for the first time about her partner Trish, whom she has now been with for over two decades. Recently she said she was “delighted” to be thought of as a “gay icon”, and sexuality is a theme in Think Again, although Wilson does not necessarily think about the topic in strict categories. “I think for some people it’s more who you meet – and I don’t necessarily mean that defines you as bisexual. Perhaps it’s just somebody of my generation, but I didn’t really think that I would ever be living with a woman, but I also didn’t think, ‘Oh that would be dreadful.’ I just hadn’t met her, maybe?”

Her new book makes you realise what a subtle, compassionate observer Wilson is of the way in which women live ( )

Think Again also finds Ellie in a creative crisis after being dropped from her Guardian cartoon gig, contemplating whether to try a new artistic direction, or whether the public even still cares. When I ask if Wilson has ever worried about no longer being relevant, she answers, fast, eyes wide. “Yes!” Always aware that success can’t go on forever, she also had some serious setbacks early in her writing career, before The Story of Tracy Beaker cemented her reputation in 1991. “It was pretty horrible. I felt quite lost.” After having a book rejected, she turned to cooking, embroidery – anything creative. Eventually – to the relief of her family – she had another book accepted and her writing career recommenced. “I did miss writing so. I think now, when most sane people would say, just put your feet up, read other people’s books, enjoy yourself, I just feel compelled to carry on writing.” She has no plans to stop.

Over the years, she’s intermittently kept a diary, yet she finds herself so consumed by her books and other writerly commitments that “they’ll often peter out by March. Some even in January.” They’ve mostly been kept “when something is troubling me or worrying me, and I don’t know what to do with them. I have told my partner and my daughter, once I’m dead, they’re free to read them, but they mustn’t take to heart if I seem sad or worried, because that’s the time I feel like doing a diary, to get things off your chest.”

But, following Think Again, would she ever write an adult memoir of her life? Her 2007 autobiography Jacky Daydream was written for younger readers, and Wilson has since admitted it gave a “slightly rosy version of things”. Since her mother’s death in 2015, Wilson has felt more able to be honest about the unhappy times in her childhood. It’s something she’s contemplated, although she’d miss making things up. “And then I feel uncomfortable about it in that my ex-husband is still alive, and various people in my past that would find things upsetting.” She has, though, recorded more than 18 hours of interviews about her life and career for the British Library, none of which will be released until after her death. She thinks about it all again. “If I went completely out of fashion, and wasn’t published any more, I might then. Because I need to write.” A world where Wilson isn’t published? Now that would be truly traumatic.

Jacqueline Wilson will be in conversation at Henley Literary Festival, in partnership with The Independent, on 2 October; henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk ‘Think Again’ is out now, published by Transworld