Scottish author Isla Dewar, who started her writing career in the 1960s working for teenage magazines and at her peak "topped the U.K.'s bestseller lists, toured bookshops and spoke at literary events, lighting up when speaking about her characters," died June 20, the Guardian reported. She was 74.
After completing her first novel, Keeping Up with Magda, in the mid-1990s "she rather doubted that the stories she had started transferring from her head to paper would go much further. Nonetheless, within a fortnight a publisher took up her tale of intrigue centered on a cafe in a Scottish fishing village, and after its publication in 1995 it was longlisted for the Orange prize," the Guardian noted.
Her next book, Women Talking Dirty (1996), caught the attention of Elton John and David Furnish, who bought the rights for Rocket Pictures. The movie adaptation featured Helena Bonham-Carter and Gina McKee.
For a while, Dewar published a book a year, including Giving Up on Ordinary (1997), Two Kinds of Wonderful (2000) and Dancing in a Distant Place (2003). She also wrote Briggsy (2008), a novella for young adults, and a children's book, Rosie's Wish, illustrated by her husband, Bob Dewar. Her final two novels were It Takes One to Know One (2018), about the Be Kindly Missing Persons Bureau in Edinburgh, and A Day Like Any Other (2020), on the lifelong friendship of two women from the city. Her more than 20 books are translated into 17 languages.
"Making up stories came as naturally for Dewar as breathing," the Guardian wrote. "Her writing was not polemical or particularly pacey. Instead, she told stories about the beauty, and pain, of the everyday--of ordinary women, leading ordinary lives. Fans felt that she spoke directly to them, sharing their triumphs and failures humorously."