The best-selling Irish author you may not have heard of says social anxiety prompted her to write

When the best-selling books chart of 2023 was announced earlier this week, there were few surprises on the list. From the Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch to Irish favourites Liz Nugent, Claire Keegan and Marian Keyes, it appeared to be business as usual. But one name stood out as unfamiliar. Evie Woods, whose novel The Lost Bookshop was listed as having sold 86,619 copies in the UK (to put that in context, the Booker Prize winner sold 54,632), had also hit the number one spot on the Wall Street Journal, on Amazon (both US and UK sites), and also made it into the Sunday Times top 10. The book has sold 500,000 copies worldwide since its publication in June last year and has been translated into 20 languages. In short, Evie Woods is the best-selling Irish author you may never have heard of.

Woods, whose real name is Evie Gaughan, was born and raised in Galway, where she still lives. She says the success of The Lost Bookshop, her fourth novel, has been nothing short of “dreamlike”.

Her trajectory as a writer seems dreamlike too, or perhaps like one of her novels. In her 20s, while living and working in Canada, she began having panic attacks out of the blue and subsequently developed social anxiety, which forced her to give up her job. “I was at home a lot and I just didn’t know what my future was going to look like at that point. I started going to the library.”

There she discovered books by Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes. “I read every single one of them and they just gave me such comfort. All of a sudden, you kind of had ... friends.” She pinpoints this moment as the beginning of her writing life.

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When she returned to Ireland soon after, she came across another pivotal book that was even more influential for her. “I was going for a shiatsu massage and was waiting for my turn and I picked up some kind of wellness magazine. There was an article about The Artist’s Way [Julia Cameron’s famous creative bible]. I got the book and that’s when I really started to think, I could actually make a life out of this. Before that, you may as well have said you’re going to be an astronaut as be a writer. It changed everything.”

She wrote a first novel and sent it to an Irish publisher, who loved her writing but said the story was not strong enough. Undeterred, she went on to self-publish two other novels (2013′s The Heirloom and 2014′s The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris). Her third novel, The Story Collector (2018), was published by an independent publisher before One More Chapter, a division of HarperCollins, published The Lost Bookshop last year.

[ Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize winner is Ireland’s bestselling book of 2023 ]

When she published her first book, she says she had dreams of hitting the big time and appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show. “The opposite happened,” she says with a laugh. By the time The Lost Bookshop was published last year, she says her expectations were “right where they should be – I hoped people would like it, and I hoped I would like it and be proud of it”.

The book tells a story across time of Opaline, a book dealer in 1920s London and Paris, and Henry and Martha in present-day Dublin. She wrote the story during lockdown. “I was craving that simple thing of walking into a bookshop and taking books off the shelves and they had just announced another lockdown. I thought, what would I love to read right now? What would take me out of this? And I started thinking, as you do,” she laughs, “about a vanishing building and how that might work.” As you might expect from that description, The Lost Bookshop has strong elements of magical realism, allegory and fairy-tale. “I think what I find in magical realism is it’s just a really lovely way of finding empowerment for the character and feeling empowered in a world where you’re coming up against adversity. Imaginatively, you find your own power.”

[ Books about bookshops? That’s escapism to the power of infinity! ]

However, alongside the magical, Woods also tackles serious themes and uses The Lost Bookshop to address societal misogyny. “I wanted to mirror how women suffered at the hands of men historically, with how it still happens. Domestic violence numbers are through the roof. I was drawing a comparison to show how we haven’t really progressed at all.”

While Woods’s first three books were published under her real name of Evie Gaughan, she made the decision with her new publishers to change her surname to Woods. “It’s just easier for pronunciation and for people to recall the name.” The name change had the unexpected effect of giving her a sense of creative reinvention. “I didn’t anticipate that, but creatively it’s just given me a greater vision for what I want to do.”

Woods is clearly a gifted storyteller, but there is determination there too. “I know we all want to be humble,” she says, “but I am really determined. You have to be so determined even to just finish a book.”

After 10 years of writing and publishing novels, she says she has learned the vital importance of self-belief. “I think that’s why a lot of writers are a bit secretive; if you tell other people they might ruin it. I learned that early on: don’t tell people, keep your head down, just keep at it.”

Woods grew up in Galway city, the youngest of three children. Her love of books began in childhood after a spell in hospital. “Growing up, I was in and out of hospital and that’s when I really got into books. They really helped me through that time but then I got better and moved on with life. I stopped reading. I wanted to be out, having a social life and everything I had missed out on.”

She studied business at what was then the RTC (now Atlantic Technological University), followed by a diploma in marketing, before spending a year in Toulouse on an Erasmus. When she returned to Ireland, she made “a decision of the heart” to apply for a visa and move to Canada, where she lived and worked for five years before returning home. Does she think her life might have taken a different path had she not developed social anxiety, which in turn prompted her to seek comfort in books?

“I am 95 per cent sure I wouldn’t have become a writer if that hadn’t happened. In my 20s I was like a lot of people, living my life for other people or doing what you’re supposed to be doing and what’s supposed to be successful and trying to fit in. I think the harder you try to fit in the more you’re living out somebody else’s expectations and I don’t think you’re getting to be your authentic self. I feel like I’m being more authentic since I started writing and this crazy journey began. I’m hoping the more it goes on the more I’ll be able to reflect that.”

She says she hopes to show other people that there are many routes to success, not just the traditional ones. “When I started out writing, there were other authors who weren’t comfortable putting themselves out there, for any number of reasons, and the message was, well, if you can’t do that, you’re not going to be a success. What I’m so happy about is I have found another way to this success. With the books I write now, that’s at the forefront of my mind. People who don’t conform or fit in, they’re the people I want to talk to. I just want people to know that there is another way. You can do things in a way that you’re comfortable with. That’s one thing I have found throughout the length of time I’ve had social anxiety: there’s always another way. I think that’s what’s probably stood to me.”

Woods says word of mouth has played a huge part in her success. “Based on the emails and messages I’m getting from readers a lot of people are telling me their stories. They’ve read it during a difficult time and it’s given them a sense of hope.” One of the main themes of The Lost Bookshop is the healing power of books – or “bibliotherapy”, as Woods calls it.

“It’s the hope factor that I really love with books,” she says. “Seeing readers find healing in my book, that means so much to me.” It’s a full-circle moment for Woods, considering her writing life started with her search for hope and comfort in books. Now she is the one offering hope to readers through her best-selling novels.

– The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods is published by One More Chapter

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