4 books that made Nita Prose an 'accidental' writer

CBC

09-05-2025

In the publishing industry, the process of writing a book versus editing it comes with different challenges.
For Nita Prose, formerly the vice president and editorial director for publishing company Simon & Schuster Canada, making the leap to writing, or what she calls "the other side", was a scary but welcome challenge.
She spoke to The Next Chapter' s Antonio Michael Downing about some of the novels she read and some of the books she worked on as an editor throughout her career and how they influenced her path to accidentally becoming a writer herself.
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Prose is a Toronto editor and writer best known for her thriller series which includes The Maid, The Mystery Guest, The Mistletoe Mystery and the fourth and final instalment, The Maid's Secret.
Here is a selection of Prose's life in books:
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is a novel about a woman who never expects to have an exceptional life. For her, the simple life she has staying at home most weekends with frozen pizzas and phone calls to her mother, are completely fine.
When Eleanor meets Raymond, an IT guy from her work and Sammy, an elderly man who falls in front of her on the sidewalk, they all strike up a wholesome friendship. Pushing herself and her new companions out of their introverted lives, Eleanor is uplifted.
Gail Honeyman is a Scottish writer best known for her first novel, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. The novel won the Costa First Novel Award in 2017 and the British Book Awards Book of the Year. Honeyman currently lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
Nita Prose says:"[This] was a very important book to my process when I began to write the Maid series. That book was important because it was one of the very first books that the Brits call "Up Lit", uplifting literature.
"Where you sit behind the eyes of a character and you follow that character's journey and it's a journey of the spirit that leaves you in a place of feeling hope by the end."
Where I Belong by Alan Doyle
Where I Belong: Small Town to Great Big Sea is a memoir by the lead singer in the Canadian band Great Big Sea, Alan Doyle. Charting the earlier days of his youth growing up in Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, Doyle shares how he came to be the musician he is known as today.
He shares humorous tales of his childhood like helping fishermen on the dock and sharing a two-bedroom apartment with four other family members – everything that shaped him as an artist and stays with him even when he's far from home.
Doyle is a Newfoundland-born musician and frontman of the Canadian folk rock band, Great Big Sea. As an actor, he's starred in Republic of Doyle and Robin Hood. He is also the author of A Newfoundlander in Canada and All Together Now. He currently lives in St. John's.
Nita Prose says: " When we started working together, the notion was that I was going to be ghosting this book, I was going to be helping him pen it. But that is not what happened at all.
I would sit with Alan and we have these conversations and … he would tell a hilarious story about growing up in Petty Harbour, Newfoundland … He would have me completely enraptured in this verbal storytelling."
Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady
Emancipation Day is about a young man from Windsor, Ontario who, like Wayne's father, is so light-skinned he can pass as white. And he does. He goes to St. John's during the Second World War to play trombone in the Navy Band and falls in love and marries.
He and his young wife eventually return to Windsor and the secrets and lies of their relationship play out against a backdrop of race and identity.
Wayne Grady is a Canadian writer and translator currently based in Kingston, Ont. His other books include Bring Back the Dodo, Chasing the Chinook, and The Bone Museum.
Nita Prose says: " Emancipation Day was a really interesting book because of what it taught me about the nature of truth in fiction. Now, so often we think of those two realms as in opposition with each other. Truth is truth … and we think of fiction as something fully made-up that does not exist in reality. But it doesn't always happen that way."
Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent
Little Cruelties is a thriller close to home, following three brothers, William, Brian and Luke, whose lives constantly realign despite their efforts to move away from one another. The games they played as children to win their mother's affection carry into adulthood, with a dangerous twist.
Now, only two of the brothers are destined to survive, but which ones?
Liz Nugent is an Irish novelist and writer for radio and television. Her other novels include Unraveling Oliver, Lying in Wait and Strange Sally Diamond.
Nita Prose says: "It's very hard to choose favourites with [Liz Nugent]. Each one is different, unique and she is a complete pantser. So she will sit down in front of her screen and she will have a first line of a novel and that is basically it … everything else she just moves and creates through intuition which I find so remarkable."