Saturday, May 17, 2003
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I'm listening to the audio of The Lovely Bones on my drive to work this week. I know, just about a year late on this one. Some bookseller, eh? Never let it be said I don't keep up on book trends. I blame this stubborn trait I seem to have where once something becomes very popular in the mainstream that equates to it being bad. In my head, "Wow, booksellers I respect are gushing about this book, thousands of people are loving it and recommending it to their friends, Grisham and Clancy can't bounce it from the top of the bestseller list = the mainstream likes it, must be average." Something I need to work on. A bookseller I work with said he doesn't read the hot books because they don't need the publicity, they're doing fine on their own. I disagree with this because it's books, and our culture isn't exactly raining riches down on our authors. There are certainly a few that make out okay, but let's not pretend many writers out there make enough to support themselves on book sales alone. Every book could use to sell a few more copies. And the more we promote the good books, the more the public will trust us to take a chance on a lesser known title. So I'm listening to the Lovely Bones on my drive to work this week. In the first chapter the reader knows the main character, a young teen, is brutally murdered by a close neighbor. The neighbor is revealed, you know who did it. The author chose to make the mystery out of how he is revealed to the girl's family. Today I hit the scene that makes it a good book. The girl remembers a day from school where she witnessed the smartest girl in class being disciplined by the principal and the strict art teacher for a drawing that was too good, i.e. too anatomically correct and thus inappropriate for a junior high class. The absurdity of punishing a student for doing something very well, followed by the beauty of having another student share a moment of sympathy with the art student, both recognizing the tendency of an institution to reward mediocrity and not know what to do with talent. The book opens with a shocking act. It's horrific, disturbing, and probably turns off a lot of readers. It's kept me away for a long time. I don't want to feel a sensational thrill from books. I get that enough whenever I turn on a TV. Books should give us a deeper view into our culture. But it's nice to know authors are capable of using words to elicit such a reaction. Some authors like to put a hurdle at the very beginning of a book, almost to say "if you can get over this, there's great stuff up ahead." Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses has a difficult first chapter that I sometimes wonder if he put in on purpose to keep some readers away from the rest of the story. It seems counterintuitive, make the story shut off readers from the opening? But if you're worried about getting the book to the right audience (and you don't have to worry about not having an audience at all!), then maybe it is a good strategy. I want to see where Alice Sebold is taking this story. Why is it literary fiction and not a suspense/thriller? How does she make it captivating even though I know who the killer is? |
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