What lies beneath

There are many ways a writer can measure literary stardom: sales, reviews, the appreciation or envy of your peers. American novelist Jodi Picoult prefers a more unusual method of expressing her pre-eminence in publishing: holidays.

Being No1 on best-seller lists across the world is all very well, she says, but where on earth does she

go to get away from it all? The answer, thanks to books such as The Pact, My Sister's Keeper and now Nineteen Minutes, would seem to be nowhere at all.

'My husband wanted to do something special for my 40th birthday,' Picoult says in London. 'He wanted to take me somewhere I had never been and where I would never go on a book tour. So we went to Iceland and had a terrific time. One day we walk into a store, and there is an enormous shelf of all of my books.' She looks incredulous. 'In Iceland?'

Picoult comes across as someone who can't quite believe her luck, but who is starting to get used to it nevertheless. Wide-eyed with wonder one moment, she sounds astute and ambitious the next: her tales of early struggle only remind you how far she has come, how

hard she has worked and just how big she is.

Take this recollection of Picoult writing on a laptop in her car while waiting for her children to get out of school. 'I was thinking, gee, if this novel doesn't sell I'm only one book away from getting an application at the grocery store. What are you going to do? Either you make it as a writer or you don't. I will tell you flat out that I never believed I would be No1 in America. That is a shock to me and I still can't believe it - or how well the book is selling. I look at these sales figures and I think, good Lord, never in a million years.'