She refers to her characters as you or I might talk about a friend, and in fact she says "I guess I have a bunch of imaginary friends." She hasn't ruled out revisiting those friends in a future book, either, though she won't reveal what she's writing about for her next book.
Friendship is an important theme in her books, and it's been an important theme in Jacobs' life, too. She's still in close contact with her grade one (or first grade) friends from Hope. "It makes you feel secure, it makes you feel loved, it makes you feel understood," she said about those close bonds. "All of these things are crucial to being happy, and so I think connection and friendship are at the core of being happy. Sometimes that's about romantic relationships, but there's a whole other part of relationships that has nothing to do with romance."
She's often questioned by readers about some of the less-happy choices she made for her first novel, which is largely a celebration of female friendship. "Unless something sad or tragic takes place, we don't turn to our friends and say 'you know what, you really mean a ton to me.' We don't say that. We just go on with our lives."
"When a book has a neat and tidy ending, you can put it back on the shelf and have your emotions about it, but maybe you don't think about some of the things in the same way because you're not as caught up in it," she added.
Jacobs' own happy ending hasn't ended yet, with the highly anticipated Comfort Food released this week, The Friday Night Knitting Club in the top five of the New York Times Best Sellers list, and a movie version in the works starring and produced by Julia Roberts – a happy coincidence, given that Roberts, a famous knitter, is mentioned in the book. As with Comfort Food's main character, Gus Simpson, Jacobs has a lot on her plate. Just don't make the mistake of thinking she is Gus Simpson. Not even metaphorically.
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