First, I just want to say that I love the covers for your books.
Thank you! I’ve been incredibly lucky with the team at Berkley. Vikki Chu is the cover designer and Rita Frangie the art director. The books burst with such color—pure sunshine in paper form. I love how striking all three covers are, and yet how the design is so cohesive across the collection. I think the illustrations capture the whimsy contained in each novel.
What inspired you to write SOPHIE GO'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB?
This book was a love letter to my grandparents and to my city, Toronto.
I was close to my grandparents. I wanted to show how spunky and sassy they were, and how they were so full of life and joy. I remember my Amah holding a Heineken within each hand while playing a wicked game of Mahjong! Seniors are often ignored and deemed disposable by society. Writing this book was my way of trying to change that line of thinking.
How much of you is in this story? Places, characters, and experiences from your own life?
Much of my childhood haunts, and some kernels of my life, are woven into Sophie’s narrative. Casa Loma, for example, was a place we visited as part of our third-grade school project. I grew up in the same area as Sophie—northern Scarborough. I tried to inject as much of what I love (and loathe!) about the city into the setting from the delightful foodie scene to the terrible transit system delays. Canada isn’t only made of moose and maple syrup. We’re also the aggressive and deadly Canada geese.
As for the characters, these Old Ducks carry fragments of my grandparents, my uncles, and of my father-in-law, who passed last year. I stitched their best qualities and their crusty parts into the Old Ducks. The rest of the cast is inspired by my friends and family. Of course, I’d never say who was whom. I’d take that secret to the grave.
Why septuagenarians? What made you decide to have Sophie work with that group as clients?
Septuagenarians are remarkable. I’d love to still be as feisty as the Old Ducks when I’m 70. I feel this is a story that needs to be told—that love happens even later in life, including all the challenges it entails. Sophie needs the Old Ducks, and they need her.
As part of my research for this book, I spoke to a matchmaker and learned that seniors are a large percentage of their clientele. It’s not something we think about, but love doesn’t age out. I also found it fascinating that when seniors get into a relationship, they often continue to keep their own places. There’s no pressure to “move in together.” It’s interesting to see how expectations and norms change as one ages.
Is there any hint of romance for Sophie in this story?
Yes! Our intrepid matchmaker is entitled to have her own romance. In most stories about matchmakers, they tend to stand on the sidelines. I wanted to break that trope and have Sophie be in the messy thick of all of it. It’d be hypocritical for her to believe in love for others but not for herself.
I refused to write her as the shoemaker who’s so busy making shoes for others that she goes barefoot. Her story is about the possibility of having it all. Why should we settle when there’s much more that’s in store for us?
Since this is a book about a matchmaker, do you have any favorite love stories?
I love Helen Hoang’s “The Kiss Quotient” and classics like Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate.” I love reading stories that have a fiery passionate relationship. I write the opposite: sweet stories with—at most—kissing. I admire romance writers who can set my eyebrows on fire after reading a great spicy scene.
This book and your previous two books are about women finding their path in life. What is it about these three female characters that is so compelling?
Natalie Tan is someone who needed more confidence to find her own path. Vanessa Yu desperately wants what she feels she’s been denied. Sophie is a bright-eyed optimist who navigates hardships with grace.
As with most writers, they’re all facets of me. Natalie is how I felt in my twenties when I wasn’t sure if I’d ever make it as a writer. I wanted to know that it would all work out.
Vanessa’s convictions and spirit are what I wished I had when I was younger and struggling to have my voice heard. Like her, I would have rebelled against my mentor, but secretly, I’d love to have had someone guide me.
Sophie, with her way of looking at the world with such hope is who I, a natural born pessimist, aspire to be.
The common thread is that they’re all young women who are capable of more! Growing up, I often felt as though my horizons were limited. I hated that feeling. Like my characters, I knew, deep in my heart, that I was capable of more. Writing their stories allowed me to live those lives.
A few authors I’ve interviewed in the past have told me that the kind of book they enjoy writing is not the same kind of book they enjoy reading. What do you like to read? Favorite books? Authors?
Oh goodness! I love reading fantasy. Madeline Miller’s “Circe” is one of my all-time faves because it centers on Greek mythology. I love faerie tales and myths so much that when this book came out, I had to get it. I also love YA Fantasies like Judy Lin’s “A Magic Steeped in Poison”. I love atmospheric, rich, lyrical books that rip me away from reality. There’s such an allure in getting lost in worlds so different from ours.
What are you currently working on?
I’m working on Book 4 which is completely different from what I’ve written so far. It’s a different universe from the last three: it’s a love story between ex-lovers, involving gods and ghosts. I think that’s all I’m allowed to say for now.
Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to Toronto, her hometown, after spending three years in Shanghai. Her job is made quite difficult, however, when she is revealed as a fraud—she never actually graduated from matchmaking school. In a competitive market like Toronto, no one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced and unaccredited matchmaker, and soon Sophie becomes an outcast.
In dire search of clients, Sophie stumbles upon a secret club within her condo complex: the Old Ducks, seven septuagenarian Chinese bachelors who never found love. Somehow, she convinces them to hire her, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test as she learns the depths of loneliness, heartbreak, and love by attempting to make the hardest matches of her life.
Literature and Fiction [Berkley, On Sale: August 16, 2022, Trade Size / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593335611 / eISBN: 9780593335611]
Roselle Lim was born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada as a child. She lived in north Scarborough in a diverse, Asian neighbourhood.
She found her love of writing by listening to her lola (paternal grandmother's) stories about Filipino folktales. Growing up in a household where Chinese superstition mingled with Filipino Catholicism, she devoured books about mythology, which shaped the fantasies in her novels.
An artist by nature, she considers writing as "painting with words."
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