The Tiger's Wife... It's GRRRREAT!

Flower, hello.

In every review you will see of The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht you will be told that she was the youngest of The New Yorker's twenty best writers under forty list from last year. OK. Nice, but as lists go, who cares? I guess I could care because if I like writer under forty then presumably they will produce more novels for me to read than the best writer under eighty but over seventy. If. If it turns out that writer has than one story to tell, won't suffer from writer's block or make the list that guides me The Best Writers Who Work On Tuesdays In Months With R's In The Name And Are Without Nut Allergies.

So? Did the toddler come through? Oh yes she did. As she and the other kids would say, "She brought it."

Téa Obreht has written an intense, coming of age novel about loss, mourning, life and the storytelling that inhabits a history. The Tiger's Wife is set in an unnamed Balkan country. This is a country whose past for the last century or so was been a constant struggle for independence, stability and equality. Wars dovetail the books plotline. World War Two and a civil war that strongly resembles the Serbian Croatian War. The civil war is recent enough for what side you were on to be a constant judgement in the book.

Natalia Stefanovi is a young physician born and raised in this difficult country. She feels lucky that the war has left her untouched. She uses her profession to try and make amends for that by tending to the causualties and orphans of the war. When the novel starts she is on her way with help for a village that had formerly been within the borders of her own country. When she arrives Natalia discovers that her beloved Grandfather, also a physician, has passed away. His death was not unexpected but where he died was mysterious. Her Grandfather had told his wife that he was going to meet Natalia but instead he went to a village none of them had any connection with and there he died. Natalia's mourning for her grandfather is wrapped up in her obsessive desire to understand his sudden journey to that village and the few pocessions he took with him on that final trip.

While growing up Natalia and Grandfather shared many rituals. Her strongest childhood memories are of the two of them going to the local zoo and Grandfather's repeated readings of The Jungle Book stories to Natalia. His habits and storytelling formed the backbone of Natalia's identity and her connections with her homeland. These stories play a major role in the novel.

One of Grandfather's stories is about "the deathless man". This man is a kind of hobo Dorian Gray. Grandfather meets up with him several times over the course of his life. Each time the vagabond explains that he is immortal and indeed Grandfather sees no signs of aging in the man. The man is collecting the souls of the dead, a never ending harvest in this country. Is he the Devil?

Another of Grandfather's important stories took place during one of the hard, snowy winters of WW2 when Grandfather was a young boy. As a result of German bombings, a tiger had escaped a local zoo. Fear of the tiger paralyzied the village. Here was a danger that could stalk them in complete stealth unlike the waves of bombings and soldiers the war provided. The defiant tiger seemed to befriend a poor, deaf-mute woman in the village. She was the abused wife of the local butcher until the butcher suddenly disappeared. Bias, misunderstandings and terror led the citizenry to conclude that the woman must have killed her husband and fed him to the tiger.

Obreht moves us forward in The Tiger's Wife through Natalia's search and the folktales of the character's and country's past. This is no anecdotal filled stop and lurch ahead again novel. Obreht moves fluidly between the fables and the narrative storyline of the book. The result is a complete portrait of Natalia, her family, her heritage and her country and a powerfully moving mixture of opposites. Natalia's modern look at life and death through science and the myths and superstitions that ruled the past and govern the locals search for peace for their dead.

The Tiger's Wife is a stunning novel. You cannot help but be impressed knowing that it is also a first novel but I think that I would be just as impressed if it were Obreht's twenty-first novel. In perfectly chosen words and through the experiences of a complex young woman we learn the labyrinthine hundred year history of an unknown but very familiar region of the world. Natalia's pilgrimage into her Grandfather's life is an absorbing reading experience from a humane and adult perspective.

Happy

Change the Publishing Model Instead Of Talking About Changing It

Hello Flower.

Publishing and book selling are changing and markets are shrinking. While all that is happening from everything I read the sales of paper books still accounts for 80%  or more of all books sold. Obviously some people want real books and we all want bookstores, right? So can some of these changes be beneficial to books and book selling?

Are you eager to know what I would do if I had the power to change how book selling works? I kind of think you might be.


For as long as anyone working in publishing and book selling can remember a bookstore has had to be either returnable or nonreturnable, correct? Given the abilities of computers these days why should stores have to choose? Why can't Publishers allow stores to order the titles they feel confident in as nonreturnable? If you're doing your spring buy with say Little Brown and you know that you can positively sell 40 copies each of the new Patterson, Meyer and Atkinson and 20 copies each of a few other authors before that frontlist bill comes due as nonreturnable your store could get on average 55% on those titles verses the average 46% that you would get on the rest of your returnable order. When a store does reorders and backlist orders they would get to pick and choose returnable or non by order. Given that publishers would now be selling more books as nonreturnable they could afford to lower minimum quantities for ordering. How hard could it be to find 20 units from any given Publisher to do a nonreturnable order on a twice weekly basis?

How does this effect the returns a bookstore is going to want to do? Well if over a 6 month period you have ordered 80 copies of Patterson and only the initial 30 were nonretunable you can only return up to 50 copies. This would mean that stores could not just generate a return, pack it up and wait for the credit. Big deal. A store would need to be more aware of it's ordering. It is easy enough to code purchase order numbers so that every number that starts with an N is nonreturnable. I know that with at least two of the most popular point of sale computer programs in book selling that you can sort publisher files by PO numbers, then look at those orders in an inventory file and generate a return to that publisher.

The benefit to publishers? More nonreturnable sales would immediately mean less returns and less remainders. The potential is then there for stores who like the extra discount and who know their customers to be more adventurous in their nonreturnable choices. Let's say the average independent bookstore's spring buy from Little Brown is 1000 units over 300 titles. Is it so far out of the realm of possibility that 400 of those units might be purchased as nonreturnable? Then for a few months for 100 of those 300 titles to be reordered as nonreturnable? I don't think so. Over the course of the first 3 months of a Patterson paperback your store might sell 100 copies. Wouldn't it be nice for you and the publisher if 70 those 100 copies were at 55%?

Nonreturnable options for bookstores also gives the stores the choice of discounting more often. Stores compete with online. Online is discounted and you never have to leave your house. An extra 8% could go far in terms of a stores ability to support an in-store buyer program for it's customers and/or item discounting. It also would mean more revenue for the bookstore and the publisher.

Happy to help

Inspector Frost And Jane Eyre

Hi Flower.

I'm always interested how a person comes to read this book and not that book. How do you come to a book Flower? How do you choose?

The books that I read as a teenager that have stayed with me the longest seem to be the books that I was led to by television or the movies. The perfect example of this is Jane Eyre. I saw Jane Eyre before I read Jane Eyre. I was 12 or 13 and a small bunch of us were sick. My poor Mother. It was me, brother V and sister A. We were in the last halcyon days of staying home from school with strep throat so there really was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

The Front Room, because it was the one with the TV in it, had been turned into our sick room. This was in the Dark Time before even VCR's let alone DVD players and TV was different back then. After tiring of game shows and soaps we came across Jane Eyre. I must have had the remote (Thank goodness they at least had been invented by then!) because a black and white movie from the 1940's is not something V or A would have given a second look at.

I loved it. Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Agnes Moorehead (Endora without her mod, caftan party clothes on! Who knew?) and he with the most marvelous voice, Henry Daniell. I was familiar with the title because there was a copy of that book in the bookcase at the top of the hall stairs. After basking in the delights of the movie I got the book and started reading. It was even better than the movie! Go figure. To be honest seeing the movie I am sure helped me to understand the novel and overcome any difficulties with the 19th century writing style.

This was the edition I read. It was a Signet paperback. I have no idea what the pub date on my copy of this edition was but I remember that the price on it was $1.75. Isn't that a wonderful cover? I was able to look it up on line and find out that the cover illustration was done by James Hill. I was not able to find out much information on Hill and his other work.

As an adult it's a rare thing for TV or movies to bring me to a book. One exception was Inspector Frost. Maybe ten years ago the British television series was shown on A&E. I adored it. The character of Frost and the actor, David Jason, who played him were a perfect match. Frost is a typical detective in some ways. He's a loner, cares too much about victims, is not politically correct, chafes under authority and doesn't care about things or appearances but what sets him apart is that he is also an every man. Oh yeah and he's not an addict or recovering addict either, that's refreshing. He's the guy who lives down the street in the house where the grass always needs to be cut, whose car rattles a bit and who knew your Father years ago. Short, rumpled and earthy David Jason makes Frost a slightly softer man than he is in the novels but Frost is still the type of memorable character you want to spend time with and not just a jumble of habits that grow wearisome.

After seeing the series I read the novels Inspector Frost was based on by R.D. Wingfield:

Frost At Christmas

A Touch of Frost

Night Frost

Hard Frost

Winter Frost

They are terrific books. The mystery part of the mysteries are tightly plotted and page turning. Wingfield builds the depressed midlands city of Denton from the poor up. The characters are vivid, working class, real people from the coppers to the villains. The interaction between Frost, great at his job but hardly a model civil servant, his fellow officers and the public is by turns sharp, funny and heartbreaking. I have to say I learned some very colorful slang from these novels as well.

Why am I heading down memory lane with the Inspector? Well because there is now a brand new Frost novel available! Sadly, R.D. Wingfield passed away a few years ago but author James Henry has taken on Frost and brought us a brilliant prequel to the series. In First Frost, Jack is only a Detective Sergeant without the spectacular track record that afforded him leeway to be insubordinate latter in his career, with an unhappy marriage and a special gift for irritating others. His direct superior is on a bender and the other is missing so when a young girl disappears Superintendent Mullett is forced to give the case to Frost despite his better judgment.

As of right now First Frost has not been published here in the U.S. and I cannot find any indication that it will be, BUT the original five novels in the series are available here and definitely worth your time! Or if you prefer try the television series either way you cannot go wrong.

Happy
 

P.S. I do adore the cover on the first copy of Jane Eyre I ever read. It has been a favorite ever since that fateful sick day. A cover I judge other cover by.
 
Here is the current cover on the Signet edition. What do you think? Does the word hideous come to mind? Traditionally Jane Eyre covers have been figurative--as most covers for classic novels are. Usually a Jane Eyre is a reproduction of a painting of a solitary woman from the 1800's sewing or reading.
 
 I have never seen a cover on Jane Eyre that looked so 1984 Rosamunde Pilcher, so collected nature poems, so banal.
 
As long as I am complaining about the utter bleech of the current Signet edition how about a couple wonderful covers that come out recently? These two are by Coralie Bickford-Smith and Ruben Toledo respectively. They make me want to buy and read Jane all over again!
 

Lyrics Alley

Flower.

Lyrics Alley is a skinny book Flower. Sorry, should I have issued a spoiler alert before I wrote that? Well, in for a penny...it's not only skinny but it has that fashionable trade paperback trim size. What I think of as the silhouette of an Edwardian novel. Do not let the 320 page count fool you. If this were the normal size hard cover the page count would be about 170 pages. So how did I like this novella/short story? Loved it. I only got to love it for a couple hours but I loved it nevertheless.


Author Lelia Aboulela brings us inside the closed world of a prosperous home in 1950's Sudan. In the larger world at this time Sudan was about to gain it's independence from Egypt and Great Britain and embark on a series of civil wars but those events are barely touched on in Lyrics Alley. That side of life is not what this novel is about. Lyrics Alley is smaller in scale and bigger in humanity.

Despite a lifestyle dedicated to custom, Mahmoud Abuzeid is a forward thinking man. He has successfully managed the family business and been a wealthy and respected man in the community for many years. Mahoud has been grooming his favorite son Nur to take over the business. Mahoud's wives, the traditional, Sudanese born Waheeba and the much younger, Cairo born Nabilah speak for fight between the past and the future. Although Waheeba is Nur's mother and runs his household, Mahoud prefers the more cosmopolitan company of Nabilah. When war between the wives escalate and a tragedy befalls Nur change amid competing desires come to the family whether they all embrace it or not.

Although the political changes in Sudan are not made a specific part of the story in Lyrics Alley, Aboulela finds other ways to bring the 20th century creeping into the Abuzeid enclave. The close knit character's searching for more choices, freedom and independence are manifesting themselves in this novel and not in harmonious ways. Mahoud has seen himself as the benevolent patriarch, deciding what's best for everyone without a thought of being challenged but change can be insidious, seductive, unstoppable even for a dictator.

Lyrics Alley is a thoughtful novel written in precise, controlled language. It is clear that Aboulela cares deeply about these characters. The loving hand she brings to their every day is juxtaposed by the big mountains Aboulela gives them to climb: tradition verses change, duty verses freedom, silence verses argument, and religion verses doubt without ever creating a villain. As the narrative shifts between different voices and mindsets and you desperately want everyone to be happy, but how often does that happen?

Happy

Why Don't Publishers Try To Sell Books?

Flower. Flower. Flower.

I'm curious.


I have been reading off and on for a couple years (on the web and in newspapers) now about some authors who have gone the self-publishing route via the Internet and been quite successful. I have no personal knowledge as to how these authors achieved their success. Of course they have written books that have a tremendous amount of appeal to readers but we all know that isn't enough. Quality does not equal sales. My guess is that these writers all do an enormous amount of marketing and self promotion. That is an extremely difficult thing to do.

The articles detailing these success stories always point out that Publishers are afraid of these authors. They shouldn't be they should be in awe of them. Not because this style of publishing is a threat to the hold on the market that the long established methods have in place but because these authors have learned how to sell what they produce. That is something that Publishers have never learned how to do. Making the consumer aware of your product is the biggest part of selling and yet what happens in publishing? Books are written, printed and then comes the disconnect. Publishers rely solely on others to sell for them.

I have worked in this business for thirty years. I have yet to see a marketing plan in any catalog for 99% of all books published that consists of anything more than a list that says: inclusion in the white box, targeted web marketing, ARCs available for reviewers, reading group guides available, co-op money available, some vague, potential author appearances and the offer of a counter sign. By the way seeing those things listed in the catalog is no guarantee that any of them will really happen. The 1% of authors that publishers deem worthy of more effort will have national media attention added to that list and the sales rep will assure you that they are hoping for an Oprah or Today Show or Daily Show appearance and to expect a review in the New York Times.

When a book by a first time or midlist author takes off their publisher will give a bookseller chapter and verse on how well their plans for that title worked. OK. In the real world everyone who has ever worked in a bookstore knows that publishers have no clue what to do with all the books they produce. That once a manuscript has been selected by an editor, given a cover, handed to a sales rep, cataloged and shipped to a store it's the booksellers problem. The bookseller ordered it for their store, they can sell it. Retail and publishing are two worlds that only meet at trade shows.

What actually happens to make an unknown book sell? Best case scenario is that some bookseller reads a book, loves it, writes a recommends card for the book, handsells the heck out of it and the bookstore owner or buyer mentions this to another bookstore owner or buyer or sales rep and the process starts all over again in another store.

Sometimes an author works at getting publicity for themselves. They might have a website, do some emailing, maybe they are able to get their local paper to write about them, offer themselves to stores, libraries or reading groups for events, etc. It's a hit or miss proposition depending on how dedicated or aggressive the author is.

Every other way a book can sell can be put down to pure chance. Maybe the book was faced out on the shelf and it caught a customer's eye, maybe a customer liked a previous book by that author and happened to find out that a new book was available. Any media attention is a maybe as well. From the maybe it will happen to the maybe it will be positive to the final maybe that an interested consumer was paying attention and is willing to purchase the book.

That brings me back to my curiosity. If I'm a publisher why aren't I contacting any of these successful Internet authors and paying them to share the secrets of their success with me, my marketing department and my sales reps? Obviously these writers know how to sell and could teacher a Publisher a thing or two about how to sell a book.

Happy

The Beauty of Humanity Movement

Flower, hi.

It's Amy Tan-tastic. Sorry. I had to get that out of my system. Actually that is a horribly small minded thing to say about this novel but it will be written about The Beauty of Humanity Movement I guarantee. Why? Well not because both of these novels are outstanding. It will be written because Beauty interweaves the life stories of several characters of Vietnamese extraction throughout it's plot therefore what else is there for it to be compared to but an Amy Tan novel that unites the life stories of several generations of Chinese and Chinese-American characters? You have to keep all the Asian novels together right?

Anyway.

This is a beautifully written and atmospheric novel by Camilla Gibb.  Beauty is set in contemporary Vietnam but encompasses a hard look at the cost of the last seventy years of Vietnam history through the eyes of three individuals. In Hanoi, Old Man Hung’s pho is famous. Pho is a soup that is “a combination of the rice noodles that predominated after a thousand years of Chinese occupation and the taste for beef the Vietnamese acquired under the French” and that combination of cultures and conquerors says a lot about the search for identity in this novel. Hung has spent his life selling his pho, surviving poverty and political upheaval. Hung has lives through French colonization, Japanese occupation, Chinese occupation and now the Capitalism occupation. In the 1950's Hung had a successful cafe and a soft spot for the dissident artists and intellectuals he let use his place for secret meetings. Now the 80 year old sells his delicious masterpiece from an old cart constantly dodging the police.

Hung's noodle shop is one of a young man named Tu's favorite places. Tu' is the grandson of one of Hung's old radical friends. He works in a relatively new industry in Vietnam. He is a tourist guide for a company called New Dawn. Tu' spends his days pointing out the sights and wondering what his tourists, especially the repentant American Vets, are really seeing in his country. Maggie has also found Hung's pho and Tu'. She was born in Vietnam but raised in the U.S. She has come back to her unwelcoming birthplace in search of the artist Father she cannot truly remember. In order to stretch the bits of memory she has about her Father Maggie will need the Vietnam of Hung's past and the modern Vietnam of Tu'.

Gibb captures the culture, smells and history of a nation that has all three in spades. Her descriptions of the food alone make me yearn for a Vietnamese restaurant to open up next door immediately. In The Beauty of Humanity Movement food and suffering seem to be the only constants in Vietnam over the last one hundred years. Camilia Gibb has taken a time honored plotline, searching for your roots, and by placing it in a country as young and as old as Vietnam has infused a freshness and complexity that had me enthralled.

Happy
 

 
P.S.  The Beauty of Humanity Movement was first published in Canada last year. Here's their cover. I love it, as I love the U.S. cover but they are so similar I have to wonder why the change at all? Then I look a little closer and I see that the Canadian cover references the past and the present. I like that.
 
You win this one Canada.

New Jane Harris Novel!

What exciting news Flower!

In May Faber & Faber is publishing novel #2 by Jane Harris. I am thrilled. I adored The Observations! It was excellent and had one of my favorite characters ever in Bessy Buckley.

This is from Faber & Faber's website:

Gillespie and I
Synopsis:
As she sits in her Bloomsbury home, with her two birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter sets out to relate the story of her acquaintance, nearly four decades previously, with Ned Gillespie, a talented artist who never achieved the fame she maintains he deserved. Back in 1888, the young, art-loving, Harriet arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. After a chance encounter she befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes - leading to a notorious criminal trial - the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception. Featuring a memorable cast of characters, infused with atmosphere and period detail, and shot through with wicked humour, Gillespie and I is a tour de force from one of the emerging names of British fiction.


Sounds terrific doesn't it? And. Aren't you thrilled beyond words that book 2 is not a short story collection as happens so often? I cannot wait. And. Look at the cover. Gorgeous.

I have poked around on the internet to find out the U.S. release date for Gillespie and I  but I'm not finding anything yet. Oh well. If it turns out that Gillespie isn't going to be released here about the same time as in the U.K. I will either get a copy from a friend over there or the very good Book Depository with their free worldwide shipping. So there.

Happy, Happy, Happy