Goodreads asked Michelle Frances:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Michelle Frances The Girlfriend is the story of a mother, a son, his girlfriend and an unforgivable lie. I’ve always been fascinated by the notion that two women who are complete strangers are suddenly thrust together in a very intimately bonded relationship for potentially the rest of their lives. It’s a bit weird and great territory for emotional stress and anxiety. Will she like me? Will I like her? What about for the next forty years? There’s a lot at stake! Even in the most harmonious relationships, things can be misunderstood and easily spiral out of control. I imagined a scenario where this could potentially happen and the story for The Girlfriend went from there. Then during the course of writing the novel I heard a radio programme about the difficulties some women were having with their new daughters-in-law and one story particularly affected me. A heart-broken woman had phoned in and was in tears speaking of how she was excluded to the extent she hadn’t even known her son and his new wife had had not one, but two children. She had discovered that her grandchildren existed by accident. It reinforced to me that it’s a universal relationship that can affect a lot of women and cause a lot of distress – to either party.

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