Rachel Johnson sequel to novel Notting Hell follows timid Mimi and philandering Ralph to Dorset

Author Rachel Johnson temporarily lost the ability to speak in a freak accident when she tried horseback riding researching her latest book.

     “I bought some new riding boots, just for the day,” says In a Good Place author Johnson. “I thought I better get up on a horse and just see what all the fuss was about. As we walked slowly to the moor, the horse saw a gate and started cantering. I lost the stirrups. Then I lost the reins. Very slowly, I fell off into a soft cushion of heather. Although nothing hurt at the time, it was really bizarre. I lost the power of speech. After that, I decided to stick to writing.

     In her sequel to Notting Hell Rachel Johnson follows Mimi and her husband, Ralph, to Dorset, to escape the mess Ralph made by fathering a child with Mimi’s former friend Clare. But, Dorset has its own pitfalls to avoid.  Their rural haven has the UK’s version of Martha Stewart, Rose, who Mimi at first dislikes. In the hamlet of Honeyborne, the question is: do you ride and what kind of organic items do you buy or grow? It isn’t too far away for Clare to pursue Ralph. Clare wants another child. Will Ralph accommodate her this time? This latest attack on Mimi’s confidence is less a threat than the secret that she’s afraid will ruin her life forever.

     “After Notting Hell was done and dusted, my editor called up as soon as she'd finished reading it, and commissioned the sequel,” says Johnson. “It was all kind of waiting to go in my mind. After I'd moved the Flemings to Dorset, I had to go there with them and see what happened. There were ends loose after Notting Hell. I had such fun following the characters. I kept the ones that people talked to me about, Clare and Virginie, and lost the ones that didn't have so much traction.”

     Besides Johnson’s ill-fated horseback ride, she says her research of Dorset including buying many books. However, she had known the area already. “I’ve had a family farm in Somerset, an hour away, my whole life,” says Johnson.

     Johnson says she’s always felt an outsider. “In Notting Hill, very few women need to work. And in the country, I don't ride.” She won the Bad Sex in Fiction Prize, jointly with John Updike, shortly before he died. “That made everyone, including me, laugh a lot.”

     Rachel Johnson was a reporter for the Financial Times, has worked for the Foreign Office, and for the BBC. She’s currently working on her fifth book, a period novel set in 1930s Germany and in 2007 in the UK. Johnson splits her time between London and Somerset.

     Rachel Johnson’s take on peoples idiosyncrasies and how they deal with what happened in their lives and others is funny and poignant. You’ll become involved in the lives of the new people in Mimi’s life and want a happy ending.