'Growing up in Long Island, New York, she had a 'ridiculously happy childhood'. Her father was a Wall Street securities analyst and her mother a pre-school teacher. 'I really treasure my boring life.'
'Mostly the family stay out of Picoult's fiction. Her husband, a part-time antiques dealer whom she met when she was studying creative writing at Princeton, marshals their three teenagers while Picoult is off on three-month book tours or researching new, incendiary topics.'
'At home – an 11-acre corner of rural New Hampshire – she does an eight-hour day plus 'the Mom thing' after school. 'I get to leave my hideous, cramped, messy office in the attic every day, and I come downstairs ... they are all there and they are so not like the characters in my books. They're my safety net.'
'Picoult says her own children, Kyle, Jake and Samantha, aged 15, 13 and 11, are always the priority. 'To the kids, I'm just the lady who says, 'Your room is a pigsty, pick it up. I hear that CHANGE OF HEART is having an initial print run of one million copies, but to me it's not as important as making sure that I have the right Christmas present for my son.'
'Her vivid characters have a depth and tenacity rarely found in blockbusters. Strong narrative control, a lack of sentimentality and robust but undogmatic research mark her out – as does her proven ability, evidenced by book clubs and fan-mail, to get readers discussing difficult political and moral issues, traditionally, as she points out, the domain of literary fiction.'
'Editing and teaching jobs and a Masters in Education from Harvard gave way to full-time writing as sales steadily climbed, greatly assisted by Picoult's penchant for cracking open prickly subjects that appealed to America's growing book-club readership. With a modesty that belies her exuberant confidence, she's very aware of the opportunities brought by this level of success.'
'When you're a novelist who is selling well, I do think that gives you a very interesting ability to have a platform,' she comments. 'So what do you do with it?'
'It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.'
'Writing is not about being inspired, waiting for the muse to strike. You can always edit something bad. You can't edit something blank. I'm always writing, even when I'm not at my desk. I write on my hands. I used to write on my kids' hands, too, but they don't let me any more. When I'm driving I sometimes write all the way up my arms.'
'People assume that I start to write a book by looking at the papers to figure out what the next hot issue will be,' she laughs. 'It's never actually like that. It's got to be a question that affects me personally, that I find myself thinking about at night, or wondering: what would I do in that situation?'
When I ask her if she can compare herself to any writer, living or dead, she doesn't hesitate. 'Charles Dickens. He wrote about moral and social evil and did it in a way that was commercially popular. I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly MY SISTER'S KEEPER [about a girl who is born to be a bone-marrow match to her leukaemia-stricken sister]. It has sold three million copies in the States alone. I strongly feel that, as a novelist, you have a platform and the ability to change people's minds.'
'What drives her to keep writing? 'Fear. Superstition. The feeling that if I write about it I won't have to live it. Sometimes readers ask me why I am so hard on my moms in my books, I think it's because it's got to be the hardest job in the world and maybe if I write about these awful moms, I'll look so much better.'
'I will never win a literary award in the US, because I write commercial fiction. If I win anything, it will be from England not America.'
'Author of the Year in the 2007 British Book Awards, and MY SISTER'S KEEPER was voted Best Read by the Richard & Judy Book Club in 2005.'
At a recent book festival she was voted 'the author you'd most like to take out to the pub'. 'That has got to be one of the best awards ever,' she says. 'Based on what I write, people expect someone reserved and cold and I'm not like that at all: I'm actually very open and personable.'
'I write adult fiction but a good 40 to 50 per cent of my readers are teenagers. I love that if they have to grow up and move past JK Rowling they can move to me. From Jo to Jodi!'
'Occasionally, (the children) come on tour with me but they find it really strange, all these people wanting to touch me, have a moment with me. Kyle once said, 'It's so weird, it's like you're a rock star.' Last year, between her other commitments, she managed to squeeze in writing six issues of Wonder Woman at the request of DC Comics.'
On an average day she receives 70 emails from fans. Around the time of a new title, that figure rises to 150. She's had hundreds of letters from teenagers who have a history of depression, from women who have suffered domestic abuse. One woman wrote to tell her she'd banked her baby's stem cells after reading MY SISTER'S KEEPER. 'There are moments as an author when you realise that it isn't just about fiction - you can change someone's life. You don't expect to do that, but you never get over the amazing luck if you can.'
'Although she gets 'hundreds' of emails and letters from readers a day, she replies to each one personally. 'I think you should make an effort. There are so many books out there and they picked mine.'