Leroy, Margaret

PERSONAL:

Married first husband (divorced); married second husband, Mick; children: two daughters.Education: Attended St. Hilda's College, Oxford.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Little, Brown, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. E-mail—info@margaretleroy.com.

CAREER:

Music therapist and teacher for children with learning disabilities; social worker. Guest on television and radio programs.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

Aristotle Sludge: A Modern-Day Dinosaur (juvenile), Hippo (London, England), 1991.

Trust (novel), HarperCollins (London, England), 1999.

Alysson's Shoes (novel), Flamingo (London, England), 2002.

Postcards from Berlin (novel), Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003.

The River House (novel), Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2005.

NONFICTION

Miscarriage, Optima (London, England), 1987.

Pleasure: The Truth about Female Sexuality,Harper-Collins (London, England), 1993.

Some Girls Do: Why Women Do and Don't Make the First Move, HarperCollins (London, England), 1997.

Contributor to periodicals, including Observer andPrima. Also author of advice column for Optionsmagazine. Leroy's work has been published in Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, French, Swedish, Dutch, Greek, and German.

ADAPTATIONS:

Trust was adapted for television asLoving You.

SIDELIGHTS:

Margaret Leroy has had a varied career as a writer, including working as an advice columnist, writing nonfiction books on subjects including female sexuality and psychology, and finally achieving her goal of writing and publishing novels. She enjoyed writing as a child, but gave it up around the age of twelve. Studying music in college, she did not take up writing seriously again until after her children were born. Her first publication, Miscarriage, is a self-help book for women who have suffered the loss of a pregnancy. She followed this serious work with Aristotle Sludge: A Modern-Day Dinosaur, a children's story inspired by Leroy's experiences with a classroom full of young students.

Leroy interviewed fifty women, ranging in age from fifteen to eighty years old, to research her book Pleasure: The Truth about Female Sexuality. In her interviews, the author elicited frank and open responses from her subjects about their love lives. She followed that book up with Some Girls Do: Why Women Do and Don't Make the First Move, an inside look at modern dating intended to encourage women to be more confident about asking men out for dates.

Returning to fiction, Leroy's novel Postcards from Berlin is a "singular, graceful" work, according to Maude McDaniel in BookPage. The story concerns Catriona, the second wife of a successful, upper-class man and mother to eight-year-old Daisy. Catriona's life appears to be idyllic, but that illusion slowly begins to unravel when Daisy becomes mysteriously ill. When a pediatrician suggests that the child might be suffering from a syndrome brought on by psychologically damaged mothers, Catriona denies the possibility fiercely. In fact, her shadowy past does fit the profile. Reviewing the book for the New York Times,Margot Livesey found that at times it is unrealistic, but she added: "Despite the occasional straining of her plot, Leroy succeeded in making me care about these characters; even at my most incredulous, I was eager to find out what would happen next."

The River House, Leroy's next novel, again uses psychological suspense as its foundation. Ginnie, the main character, is a psychologist who is married, though she is carrying on an affair with a police detective named Will. At a tryst with Will, Ginnie sees a man running through the rain, and she later has reason to think that he is the perpetrator of a murder. In order to act as a witness, however, Ginnie must reveal her secret life with Will. "This tense character driven tale … displays Margaret Leroy's skill at a person's mental collapse," remarked Harriet Klausner in Best Reviews. A Kirkus Reviews writer recommended The River House as a "serious, delicately composed" work, while Booklist reviewer Carol Haggas called it a "sensuously ethereal, subtly electric drama."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2005, Carol Haggas, review of The River House, p. 1570.

Entertainment Weekly, July 15, 2005, Jessica Shaw, review of The River House, p. 78.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2003, Margaret Leroy, review of Postcards from Berlin, p. 774; April 15, 2005, review of The River House, p. 441.

Library Journal, June 15, 2003, Barbara Love, review of Postcards from Berlin, p. 101.

New York Times, August 31, 2003, Margot Livesey, review of Postcards from Berlin.

Publishers Weekly, May 16, 2005, review of The River House, p. 37.

ONLINE

Best Reviews,http://thebestreviews.com/ (July 18, 2003), Harriet Klausner, review of Postcards from Berlin; (May 24, 2005), Harriet Klausner, review of The River House.

BookLoons,http://www.bookloons.com/ (April 18, 2006), Hilary Williamson, reviews of Postcards from Berlin and The River House.

BookPage,http://www.bookpage.com/ (April 18, 2006), Maude McDaniel, review of Postcards from Berlin.

Curled Up with a Good Book,http://www.curledup.com/(August 1, 2003), Luan Gaines, review ofPostcards from Berlin; (June 1, 2005), Luan Gaines, review of The River House.

Margaret Leroy's Home Page,http://www.margaretleroy.com(April 18, 2006).