It’s a truism that writers are poor judges of their own work. Which may be the best explanation for why Nita Pronovost, who writes under the pen name Nita Prose, felt so wholly unprepared for the wild success of her debut mystery novel, The Maid, despite a nearly 20-year career in publishing – most recently as vice-president, editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster Canada, a post she just left – in which she guided multiple authors down the road to bestsellerdom.
Nita Prose.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Since its publication in January, 2022, The Maid has sold more than a million copies in North America alone and been translated into 40 languages: unicorn territory for a first-time author, especially a Canadian one. It puts Prose, 51, in the company of marquee names such as Louise Penny, Linwood Barclay and Shari Lapena, the difference being, of course, that the others are now long-established with substantial bodies of work under their belts.
On top of being a fixture on The Globe and The New York Times’ bestseller lists, making multiple Best of the Year rankings, being named the Toronto Public Library’s most-borrowed book of 2022 (and landing on similar lists with other library systems), winning a clutch of awards and becoming a finalist for the prestigious Edgar, The Maid was also optioned for a movie starring and produced by Florence Pugh. (Production is expected to start gearing up soon and Prose will executive produce).
Overnight popularity brought with it a string of surreal moments, among them an appearance on Good Morning America, after The Maid was picked for the show’s book club, an (unsolicited) endorsement from Stephen King on Twitter and Megan Thee Stallion announcing she’s a fan on Instagram.
(Some people were confused by the fact that Prose was published by Ballantine, an imprint of Penguin Random House, while she was working for Simon & Schuster, but the answer is a simple one. When her agent was shopping The Maid’s manuscript, Prose insisted that it not be presented to her employer to maintain appropriate separation between professional church and state.)
Her new book, The Mystery Guest, which published on Nov. 28, sees the return of Prose’s unlikely hero Molly Gray, a hotel maid (whose literal-mindedness and difficulty with social cues strongly suggest she’s autistic, though Prose never labels her) with a sunny outlook and unimpeachable work ethic, as she tries to solve yet another murder in her workplace, the posh Regency Grand Hotel.
Molly’s anachronistic gentility, combined with Prose’s approach, which some have called “a warm-hearted whodunit,” allowed her to carve out a unique space, genre-wise. Think Ted Lasso meets Amelia Bedelia meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time meets the board game Clue.
Books gift guide 2023: The best reads for everyone on your list
Prose has never worked in a hotel, though she’s stayed in plenty. She grew up in the country, on a rural route outside the tiny town of Tottenham, in Ontario’s Simcoe County (closest city: Barrie), where her main surroundings were fields, not books, and where getting to school involved a 40-minute ride on an orange bus.
One of her most vivid early memories was the “seismic” moment when, at age 4 or 5, she suddenly gained the ability to read. What had once looked like hieroglyphics was now a code to which she held the key. From that day forward, reading was a constant in her life. As much as they found their daughter’s natural bookishness perplexing, Prose’s parents supported it wholeheartedly.
Many assume that Prose’s surname, Pronovost (whose “st” is silent) is Eastern European. It’s actually French-Canadian – from “pré nouveau,” or new meadow/land – her mother, Jacqueline, a nurse, and father, Paul, an aerospace engineer, both of them now deceased, having hearkened from Lac Saint-Jean and Drummondville, Que., respectively (French was Pronovost’s first language, but she’s largely lost it from underuse).
Paul spearheaded the move to Ontario, in part to escape pressure from his family to join the priesthood. Tottenham appealed to him not for its convenience (it wasn’t, since he worked in Toronto), but because it evoked the rolling landscape around Drummondville that he’d loved.
Jacqueline, who died in 2015, was the model for Molly’s grandmother in The Maid. In the book, Gran has recently died, but she still serves as a moral compass for Molly, who tries to imagine her advice in sticky situations. Prose, similarly, says she often hears her mother’s “little sayings in my head when I need them most, when I’m lost, when I require guidance. She isn’t completely gone.”
The Maid, by Nita Prose.Supplied
Prose moved to Toronto in the early nineties, to study English and drama at the University of Toronto. The program confirmed to her that she’d found, in the world of words, both her calling and her people. For about five years she made a go of acting, performing in plays in Toronto and, after a move to Mexico precipitated by the advent of a Mexican boyfriend, on television and in a months-long stage production in Mexico City.
(The boyfriend subsequently became a husband, then an ex-husband. He eventually returned to Mexico, but Prose says they maintain a warm relationship.)
Her love of acting being in reverse proportion to her dislike of auditioning (which she describes as “being in a room full of people who are just slightly different – taller, prettier – from you”), Prose eventually abandoned it to teach a high-school special-needs class. She loved the work and found the kids inspiring. She was unaware, naturally, that this inspiration would be the spark for Molly’s character and her future career as bestselling mystery writer.
Next came the move to editing and publishing. In addition to working on books by authors such as Ruth Ware, Paula Hawkins, Jagmeet Singh and Rupi Kaur, Prose has also ghostwritten about 10 non-fiction titles. “I’ve only ever been good at one thing,” she says. “I can tell stories, or I can help other people tell stories.”
These days, she lives in Toronto’s Cedarvale neighbourhood, where she shares a house with her pug, Theo (“the light of my life and a force of chaos”). Her partner of eight years is just 10 minutes away (“we’re one of those freaky couples who exist better apart than together”).
Demand – from readers and her publisher – compelled her to write The Mystery Guest. But though she was happy to take on the unplanned sequel, Prose initially struggled with what approach to take.
In the end, she found liberation within the constraints of genre. The first book had been something of a literary mullet: a mystery in the front half, and what Prose calls “a feel-good journey of the spirit” in the back.
The new book, she decided, would also start as a mystery, then morph into a kind of adult fairy tale when Molly goes to investigate the death of mystery writer J.D. Grimthorpe in his rambling old mansion; a journey that would also enable Molly to reveal more of her backstory.
In August of 2022, Prose’s father was in ill enough health that she was unsure if he’d make it to the The Mystery Guest’s publication date, so she had a Cerlox-bound first draft printed specifically for him. Two days later, he called. “I finished the book and I think you wrote another bestseller,” he said.
A few months later, he succumbed to COVID, at the age of 84. When Prose and her brother were cleaning out his house, she came across the manuscript and discovered that he’d filled it with handwritten notes that touched her deeply.
Could she share some of them?
“You know, they were things that only he and I would understand. He understood, for instance, the peculiar madness of the character J.D. Grimthorpe. He understood the character of Gran, why she couldn’t speak about some of the things she’d experienced in her past.”
With this kick at the can, Prose will presumably be better prepared for a warm reception. A robust promotional schedule is planned for The Mystery Guest, including a swing through the U.S., which wasn’t possible with The Maid owing to COVID restrictions.
Prose’s editor, Nicole Winstanley, like her father, is firmly in her court. She calls Molly “a gift to readers,” and says people ask her how Molly is almost as often as they ask about Nita. “It’s no surprise that the combination of the two, this immensely talented and observant writer and her character of profound depth and wit, have topped bestseller lists worldwide, graced billboards and subway posters, amassed five-star reader reviews and frequent ‘favourite books of all times’ lists,” she wrote in an e-mail.