New York, February 5, 2009 - Author Sophie Kinsella is elusive. In the author’s photo on her best-selling Shopaholic books we see only her back, a gaggle of shopping bags dangling from each hand.  Not to mention that this is a pen name; she stopped writing under her real name, Madeleine Wickham, after the original Shopaholic book became a hit.

Kinsella claims that only “bits” of the Shopaholic heroine, Becky Bloomwood, are autobiographical.  “I was a financial journalist; the job that she had I totally had; all that was just exactly autobiographical,” Kinsella told us at the Confessions of a Shopaholic premiere on Thursday.  “The way she thinks when she goes shopping is autobiographical. But obviously she’s become a lot more extreme than anyone in real life, so she’s kind of taken on a life of her own,” she added.  “There are bits of my sister in her, too, I have to say it’s not all me!” Kinsella said, laughing and shivering on the red carpet in her Alexander McQueen dress.

She is unassuming, and bashful when we ask if she is as funny in person as she is when she writes.  “You’re very kind.  I have no idea – you’ll have to tell me.”  Kinsella was an associate producer on the movie, which combines the plots from the first novel, Confessions of a Shopaholic, with the second, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan.  “There were so many scenes from the second book they thought would be great to put in a movie that they decided to jumble it all up.  And also, so many scenes in the second book are already set in New York,” she explains.

Kinsella describes her own level of shopaholism as “mild to moderate, with the occasional blip of extreme.”  Shoes are what she buys too many of, she admits when we ask.  She thinks a moment, and suddenly Becky Bloomwood comes to life: “Also, presents that I buy,” she says, eyes shining.  “If I see something and I don’t know why I need it, I go, oh, I’ll get it as a present!  I’ll give it to somebody!  And these presents stack up; I never give them to anybody.”