Are You Receiving Me?
Writing is a solitary occupation, in which you spend many hours sitting in a room on your own, imagining conversations between people who don’t actually exist. I am, however, uncomfortably aware that this sounds like a definition of someone completely divorced from reality. Perhaps this explains why I have run so many writing workshops and met so many readers groups in the last year – maybe it’s all a desperate effort to re-establish contact with the real world.
As well as touching base with reality, last year, while running a workshop at a Readers Day in Scarborough Central Library, I also learnt something invaluable. The group I met had read the Secker & Warburg edition of my first novel, All This Is Mine. One woman told me she was particularly pleased to have selected my book from the three on offer, as she was certain that if she’d picked it up in a bookshop and read the blurb on the back she would have put it straight back on the shelf again, convinced it was not for her. This came as a nasty shock, the said blurb being the result of a long and painstaking collaboration between me and my editor. Our attempt to distill the essence of my 89,000 word novel into just four short paragraphs coming to 175 words had apparently been an abysmal failure.
I asked her to explain what she’d found so unappealing about the blurb. It had made it seem a very political novel she replied, and this was a real turn off. For me, the references to politics were merely a context in which to set the central human drama, yet somehow we had managed to convey the opposite impression. I asked if anyone else had felt similar misgivings when they received the book? Sure enough, several others agreed that the blurb had given quite a false impression of what the novel was actually like.
Now, instead of them asking me questions, I began to question them. If the blurb was so misleading what, then, did they feel the book was really about? They were in no doubt - the family, divided loyalties, and the sheer joy, pain, and confusion of childhood. Universal themes, rather than the narrower concerns suggested by the blurb, which perhaps dwelt too much on the cold war atmosphere in which the book is set, at the end of the 60s (though the main character, ten year old Liam, has a very sketchy understanding of what’s happening in the adult world, a source of much humour and drama).
Later, driving home, while I felt exhilarated at having taken part in a successful event, I was also troubled by the negative reaction to the blurb. Then, slowly, I began to realise that I had just had the kind of experience that most publicists can only dream of. Instead of sitting in a meeting trying to second guess the latest trends from sales figures and what other publishers were doing, I had received honest and constructive feedback from a readers group, the absolute backbone of the book buying public. When I got home and read the blurb again, I began to understand the group’s reaction. Liam’s family was barely mentioned. Neither did it give any notion of the rich stew of anxieties that Liam suffered from, and which had made such an impression on them. It outlined the bare bones of the plot, but didn’t convey the character of the novel.
I rang my new editor at Vintage, telling him about my illuminating session with the group at Scarborough, and how it had persuaded me to re-write the blurb, taking account of their comments. He was agreeable in principle, but pointed out that the Vintage paperback, to be published this August, would have to accommodate reviews on the back. This would reduce the maximum space available for the blurb to just 150 words – about the length of an email to a friend, asking if they fancied lunch. Over the next few days I wrote and re-wrote the new version countless times, agonising over every word, full stop and comma, till the text began to swim before my eyes. I recalled Oscar Wilde’s reply when someone asked him how he’d spent his day - ‘This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.’
In the end, if I did succeed in writing something which gives a truer flavour of the novel, I did it by keeping the fifteen people in that group in Scarborough at the forefront of my mind throughout the process. They came to represent all the casual browsers throughout the country, picking up my book and reading the new blurb. How, I kept asking myself, could I prevent them from putting it straight back on the shelf, convinced it was not for them? Finally, when I sent off my finished version, I was confident my editor would accept it, backed up, as it was, by my own market research. He did indeed, so thank you to everyone I met that day in Scarborough.
The Secker & Warburg Blurb
South Wales, the 1960s – life is hard. Especially for Liam Bennett, ten years old, surrounded by Communists, and with a father who is losing his mind. Then the glamorous Marek Sikorski arrives, and turns Liam’s life upside down. Marek’s family has fled Communist Poland only to find a red flag flying over the town hall in Crindau. But Marek is determined that Wales should not suffer Poland’s fate. Together, he and Liam form the Crindau resistance, and begin attacking trains they believe are bringing a wave of Communists into Wales.
Drinking Polish vodka, selling looted cigarettes and making Molotov cocktails, Liam becomes a rebel with a cause. But while he wages his war against international Communisim, his parents battle with each other, as his father frantically stockpiles food in fear of the imminent Russian invasion.
Steeped in the exuberance and intense camaraderie of childhood, as well as its loneliness and pain, All This Is Mine is a moving, darkly funny novel about boys and men and heroes. It is a tender and sophisticated debut.
The Vintage Blurb
South Wales, 1968, and ten year old Liam is grappling with some big questions. Is he adopted? Is it true he'll live to be a 108 if he drinks a glass of his own pee every day? Why does everyone laugh at his dad behind his back? The more he sees of the adult world, the less he understands. Until he makes friends with Marek.
I would die for Poland. Would you die for Wales?
Marek, the son of Polish immigrants, reveals that the Russians are planning to stage a coup and take over Wales, just like they did in Poland. Liam and Marek form the resistance and begin a desperate campaign of sabotage. Meanwhile, at home, Liam finds no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t make his parents love each other. And what are the strange noises coming from the cellar in the middle of the night?