Sitting beneath a skylight on a brilliant Sunday morning, Sophie Kinsella called to mind a posh, slightly weary matriarch who might appear in one of her novels. Flowing leopard skirt, check. Devoted husband who looks like Harrison Ford, check. Townhouse near the Thames with chocolate bars on a silver platter in the living room, check and check plus.

Then Kinsella lifted her chestnut hair to show a bald patch left by treatment for a brain tumor. It was a glioblastoma, the most aggressive kind.

“I couldn’t say the word ‘cancer’ for a long time,” she said “There’s still a residual cringing, fearful disbelief.”

Kinsella, 54, is the author of 33 novels, many of them No. 1 best sellers, including “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” which led to eight spinoffs and a movie. Her novels have been translated into 40 languages in more than 60 countries. They’ve sold approximately 48 million copies worldwide, including seven books that Kinsella wrote under her given name, Madeleine Wickham.

But, over the course of an interview that ran the gamut from gutting to upbeat, it was clear that the only numbers that matter now are closer to home. Kinsella and her husband, Henry Wickham, have been married for 33 years. They have four sons and a daughter, ranging in age from 28 to 12.