In our fast-paced world the conveyer belt of online bookshops zooms by at the speed of light. We writers and our books may only have one chance to catch a reader’s eye and make a good first impression. Browsing is not what it used to be. Readers don’t hang about in bookshops, sieving at their leisure through tomes of leather-bound sameness to discover the literary treasures that hide inside. They don’t pause by every volume, pull it out, blow off the cobwebs and read the first chapter to see if the story is to their liking. Those days are gone. Nowadays, our book’s debut on the literary catwalk may be no more than a flash of pixels, a click of a button, or a slip of a finger on the keyboard.
We have entered the era of fast food not only for our bodies but also for our minds. Book covers amount to the virtual sugar coating designed to whet readers’ appetites. The attraction to our book has to be generated before our potential reader contemplates reading the blurb on the back cover or on the Amazon web page. We have one shot at getting it right.
Our publishers and graphic designers rely on us to come up with ideas for the cover. We know our books intimately. If anyone can describe our books in one word – or in one image – it is us. When contriving a cover for our books we look for a symbolic expression that will best represent our book. We can’t go too far or too deep into the story. We don’t want to retell it on the cover, or even summarise it in wide strokes. A good book cover will only just hint at what is to come when the book is opened and read.
Below are three brilliant examples of conceptual book cover designs. The matchstick-house of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine hints at a burnout, at several false starts – prematurely extinguished, at an existence unfulfilled, at loneliness and emptiness. Slaughterhouse Five delivers an ingenious image of an alarm clock with missing hands and two unexploded bombs waiting to be struck – the time has come to an end and history has stopped in its tracks. The symbolism on the cover of Atwood’s The Testaments is effortless because we are already familiar with The Handmaid’s Tale, and what that lampshade-shaped wimple stands for. Colour is drained away from the woman’s face – she doesn’t need a face to express her feelings, she’s not allowed to feel.
Not all covers represent books using highly conceptualised symbolism. Different genres abide by different rules. Romance frequently features idyllic watercolours with flawless silhouettes of romantic heroines and heroes that melt your heart at first sight. Horror covers do the opposite – they make your blood run cold.
Below are examples of historical fiction covers. Again, apart from the obvious symbolism of 12 Years a Slave, they bear stylised references to the eras and locations the books are set in: The Interpretation of Murder in turn-of-the-century Manhattan, New York, and The Innocent in Cold-War Berlin. The reader is given a clear message: this is your destination if you choose to journey into this story.
Crime fiction covers are the least predictable or standardised. There are only so many ways in which one can depict death. Crime fiction goes for diverse ways of intriguing the reader without betraying any of the plot. My new DI Marsh mystery, due to be published in October, features a grand old public-school edifice as its focal point. That’s because all the roads – or, as in this story, all the clues – lead to that school. Even the sky plays its part to perfection: the clouds are gathering and darkening the horizon. There lurks the present and imminent danger. The book cover is an invitation to come in and play with that danger.
When a body is found in the grounds of a prestigious Wiltshire private school, DI Gillian Marsh takes on the case. The young groundsman, Bradley Watson, has been shot dead, pierced through the heart with an arrow.
As the investigation gathers pace, DI Marsh is frustrated to find the Whalehurst staff and students united in silence. This scandal must not taint their reputation. But when Gillian discovers pictures of missing Whalehurst pupil, fifteen-year-old Rachel Snyder, on Bradley’s dead body – photos taken on the night she disappeared, and he was murdered – the link between the two is undeniable.
But what is Whalehurst refusing to reveal? And does Gillian have what it takes to bring about justice?
Anna Legat is a Wiltshire-based author, best known for her DI Gillian Marsh murder mystery series. A globe-trotter and Jack-of-all-trades, Anna has been an attorney, legal adviser, a silver-service waitress, a school teacher and a librarian. She read law at the University of South Africa and Warsaw University, then gained teaching qualifications in New Zealand. She has lived in far-flung places all over the world where she delighted in people-watching and collecting precious life experiences for her stories. Anna writes, reads, lives and breathes books and can no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction.
I’ve enjoyed work by Jasper Fforde before, so I was delighted when I got a copy of his latest, ‘The Constant Rabbit’ through NetGalley.
How to begin to talk about this joyfully eccentric work? I suppose the most important thing to say is that I absolutely loved it. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say anything that will sound remotely coherent to anyone who isn’t familiar with Fforde’s particular style of outlandish humour. This is a book set in a world populated, alongside humans, by anthropomorphic rabbits. The story is told by Peter Knox, who had met a rabbit, Connie, at university and fallen deeply in love. Not that his love was consummated or even, as far as he knew, requited. But when Connie turns up at the library where he volunteers for the six minutes it is open every fortnight, he wonders if he might ever be able to rekindle their relationship.
Things look up for Peter when Connie moves in to the house opposite. There are problems though. Connie, it turns out, is married and her husband, Major Rabbit, is a military veteran and crack shot. Peter earns his living working for RabCoT, the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce. RabCoT is part of the government response to the Event, when anthropomorphic rabbits first appeared. It is fair to say that the government’s prime objective is not to improve life for rabbits. Since the electoral success of UKARP, fiercely anti-rabbit, RabCoT has been enforcing increasingly restrictive rules governing rabbits’ opportunities in human society. RabCoT is aided in this by anthropomorphic foxes, created by the same Event. It is fair to say that Fforde does not view the foxes sympathetically.
Will Peter’s love ever be reciprocated? Will Connie’s husband demand satisfaction in a duel? (With pistols: notions of honour are very traditional in the rabbit community.) Will RabCoT succeed in rounding up all the rabbits to work in a MegaWarren, specially built on the Welsh borders?
It’s a surprisingly gripping story. There is rather more violence and rather less sex than you might expect in a story about rabbits, but there are fascinating details about Peter Lorre (who played Ugarte in Casablanca and had bulging eyes), the car driven by Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers (a 1974 Dodge Monaco), and the name of the character played by Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children (Roberta but known as Bobby). If random side-tracks like this are not for you, you probably should avoid this book. It even has footnotes (with more than a nod to Terry Pratchett).
Is this just random silliness, or is there a point to it all? The library that is open for six minutes every fortnight should give you a clue: “the UKARP Government’s much-vaunted Rural Library Strategic Vision Action Group had kept libraries open as to per their election manifesto, but reduced the librarian staffing levels in Herefordshire to a single, solitary example working on greatly reduced hours – which meant that each of the county’s twelve libraries could be open for precisely six minutes every two weeks.” Yes, we are maybe talking satire here. Maybe satire drives the whole story. Fforde gives us a further clue:
“The Event does have all the trappings of satire” I said, “although somewhat clumsy in execution.”
I’d say ‘unsubtle’ rather than clumsy, but given that we live in an age where we have a Prime Minister whose response to national disaster is to quote Latin very badly at bemused audiences, I think the time for subtle satire has long since passed. And if unsubtle satire suits you (think Spitting Image with less sympathy for the establishment and more furry animals), then this will suit you very well indeed.
It races on like a bunny in a marathon (yes, there is) and may sometimes get carried away with its own exuberance (there are what look suspiciously like traces of an entire sub-plot that has been excised leaving just some odd, unexplained details) but it holds together surprisingly well. I found the ending both unexpected and satisfying. And it has the advantage that, quite apart from the satire, it is genuinely laugh out loud funny.
Carol McGrath’s latest is a fictionalised biography of the life of 13th century Queen Ailenor, wife of Henry III. You probably know her (if you know her at all) as Eleanor but McGrath prefers the alternative spelling.
I knew practically nothing about the 13th century when I started this book and I was certainly massively better informed by the end. It is packed with politics and personalities as well as details of everyday life.
McGrath used to teach history and her knowledge of the period is evident throughout the book. It is a great primer for anyone wanting to understand the power plays of the medieval period and the importance of marriages to bind together the families that controlled the countries of Europe. At the top, King Henry’s marriage ties together England and Provence, just as his daughter’s marriage will, in time, bond Scotland to the English throne. Further down the social scale, the marriage prospects of the embroideress, Rosalind, are viewed by her tailor father as a way to further his business connections, as his own marriage with a widowed haberdasher has.
The web of family relationships that marriages produce can bind the prosperity of a tailor to the political success of an earl. The personal is always political, the political always personal.
The book reminds us that England and France shared ties of blood as well as economic and political alliances. Tracts of what is now France were the property of King Henry, while Scotland then was a foreign country. And over all, there was the Church, a separate and mighty power, able to mobilise armies as well as threaten excommunication to those who crossed it.
Money, too, was central to the relationships in this book. Money has to be raised so that money can be spent. The church must be taxed and God appeased by ever more extravagant buildings. Henry is building Westminster Abbey and the nation is paying for it. Unrest is calmed with acts of extravagant generosity but stoked when taxes are raised to pay for them. Earls are, essentially, bribed to support the king against other earls who will, in turn, demand bribes of their own.
It’s a chaotic, dangerous world, in which Queen Ailenor often retreats to shelter amongst her own ladies, dressed in the finest gowns, eating food flavoured with spices imported from thousands of miles away – a life of unimaginable luxury, not only intrinsically desirable but necessary if she is to retain the status and authority of her role.
McGrath’s book offers an insight into a lost world. It almost makes the world of today’s political and economic powers look sane by comparison.
I’ve just had one of these Twitter things where you are asked to list your five favourite books or six favourite films or seven favourite dwarves. This one was “five favourite things”. As ever, I over-think my reply.
My first worry is: ‘are people things?’ The person who sent me the question is happy to include her “boys”, which I assume means husband and male children. She can probably get away with this, but if I mention my wife then, as a man, I could be accused of objectifying her. I’m not even sure that the PC brigade don’t have a point. She’s not a ‘favourite thing’, she’s a person. And if I do mention her, then what about my son? I mean, I love him too, but it’s a different sort of love now he’s grown up and moved away and married. So maybe ‘my family’. But how much of my family? My daughter-in-law? My sister I hardly ever see? Should I rate them against friends who, prior to covid, I saw almost every week?
Probably best to leave people out of it.
Home
Let’s say my very favourite thing is ‘Home’, which is handy, given the situation we all find ourselves in. And it does sort of include my wife, because ‘home’ is defined in part by the presence of both of us in it.
The bit of home I’m looking at right now.
Phew! One down, four to go.
Tango
The second one is easy. It’s tango. I’ve blogged too much about this already. If you want to know why I love it so much, then go and read my blog post HERE. Rather to my surprise, it’s one of the most-read posts I’ve ever written.
I miss dancing with my friends and I look forward to doing it again as soon as I can. Fortunately, though, we have the space to dance at home, so we’re doing a lot of practice at the moment. It keeps us happy and sane. (As sane as we ever are, I guess.)
Skating
The third is easy too. It’s street-skating. After three weeks stuck in the house (we had to isolate a week ahead of everyone else because my wife had a temperature and a cough) we decided to put our skates on and take our permitted exercise on the empty streets. It’s been bliss!
Arriving in Amsterdam (having skated from Hook of Holland)
Skiing
For the fourth I would have said skiing but we missed the season last year (for the first time in over 40 years) and our attempts to hit the slopes this year were foiled by the virus. Will we still love it as much when we get back? I do hope so. There is something magical about exploring the mountains on snow.
Wales
The fifth is another one where I’m not as confident as I would have been before covid. It’s mid-Wales. My wife used to live there as a child and we return often. Last year we spent about a month there all-told. We think of it as home and love it as much as home in London. It’s always been our bolt-hole in a crisis and this year we’ve been told by the Welsh government that we can’t go. In fact, we probably couldn’t have gone there anyway, because there is still work to do and a working internet is something we couldn’t live without for an extended period. (Perhaps I should make that a favourite thing?) I can see why the Welsh don’t want people visiting, but the joy of the place is that we literally go for days on end without seeing another soul, so it seems a good place to self-isolate. Anyway, even if the rule makes sense, just like the EU citizens who used to think of the UK as home, being told we’re not welcome colours the way I view Wales. I hope we still love it when we eventually get back, but right now, like a lot of covid couples, we’re on a break. I’ll leave it up anyway and hope to be happy there again when this is all over.
A word from our sponsor
Wow! I seem to have exceeded 240 characters. Obviously this works better as a blog post than a tweet.
I enjoy blogging, but it does take up quite a lot of my time and it doesn’t pay me a penny. It would be quite nice if, if you enjoy reading my blog, you consider buying one of my books. It’s not like you don’t have time to read right now. The cheapest of my books costs just 99p and all are available on Kindle, which is useful when Amazon is struggling to deliver them in paperback. There is information on all my books, with buy links, on this website: http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/my-books/
There only seems to be one subject that everybody is talking
about at the moment so I’m going to join in with an account of lockdown life. Strangely, I’m finding less activity on my social media and
fewer hits on my blog, so it’s probably not the right time to be writing a
long, serious historical article. If you do want to read long, serious
historical articles, you could spend some of your time at home looking through
old posts of mine – check out http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/blog/.
During the first days of lockdown I saw an irritating number
of articles suggesting that this was the time when I could finally achieve a
new and exciting goal. Lots of people told me that
Shakespeare had written King Lear
during a period of quarantine and psychologists rushed to assure me that I
would only be able to stay sane if I followed a rigorous programme of regular
exercise and possibly spent my evenings learning a new language. Anybody who
knows me, will realise that these ideas were unlikely to go down well. Since
we’ve been in lockdown I’ve had a birthday and my wife bought me a toy sloth,
which shows just how well she knows me.
All this means that you can be sure you will not get a
Pollyanna-ish blog about how lucky you all are not to be able to see any of
your friends. I am very aware that, besides the thousands of people who
are dying, many people are really suffering economically and emotionally from
what is happening at the moment. But it is worth remembering that there are
upsides.
Life is not fair and while there are too many families on minimum wage trying to survive in a small flat with children locked in almost all the time, the two of us are comfortable in a big flat in an airy part of London. We can still dance together (as in the photo above). We are both used to working from home – indeed, my beloved sometimes says it needs a crowbar to get me outside. So we are finding adjusting to this is very easy. In fact, much of the time, I don’t have to make any adjustments at all. It is worth remembering, though, that this crisis has led to some really good things that we might like to remember as we move back to “normal”. Could we, perhaps, try to hold on to some of the things that we have come to appreciate?
Like most people in West London, we enjoy the dubious privilege of living under a Heathrow flight path. Not having the peace disrupted every few minutes as another planeful of businessmen jet off on their ‘essential’ travel is bliss. Now that so many people have realised that their flights weren’t that essential after all, can we go back to a world where we just have a whole heap fewer aircraft?
The absence of planes and cars has meant noticeably bluer skies. This was the sky over the Albert memorial earlier this week. Trust me, it’s not usually like that.
How come we were at the Albert Memorial? We skated there. Skating is one of the main ways we exercise. Usually we have to skate in a large group, because traffic makes it at best unpleasant and at worst just too dangerous to skate around town. Personally I find even cycling in London can be unnerving. But not for the last few weeks. With fewer cars on the road, skating or cycling has become a pleasure. Not only is it quieter but the cars that are there all seem to be being driven more slowly and considerately now that they are not fighting for every inch of space.
I can hear the birds. They seem to be less frightened of humans, too, for some reason. I’d say this was my imagination but I’ve heard other people mention it. Sometimes it goes too far – we had to chase a couple of pigeons out of our bedroom last week.
Not only is the air cleaner, so is the water. Walking by the River Thames, you can see the bottom near the shore. Perhaps we need to ask if we really need quite so many pleasure boats going up and down it – especially when they ignore the speed limit and create massive amounts of disturbance, stirring up the silt at the bottom.
As we’re not driving anywhere and it is all too literally as much is your life is worth to risk public transport, we are doing much more exploring in the area near where we live. After almost 35 years, you’d think we’d know it really well, but it turns out that there are beautiful spots quite close to us which we have never visited. They’re not crowded either. Socially isolating means treasuring the quieter parts of London and it is surprising just how many there are.
Like a lot of people we have discovered that it is neither necessary nor desirable to shower every day. The river life that is no longer drinking our rinsed-off detergent is grateful.
As we are not going out, we eat home-cooked food every day. It tastes better, it’s better for us, and we’re not even putting on weight.
Less of a social life also means that we get to sleep when we want, rather than when the last train gets us home.
I see families in the park. There are fathers who can now remember what their children look like. I asked a neighbour (from two metres away) how her teenage son was taking it and she said he was just happy not to be doing exams at school.
And speaking of school, I hope this will be remembered next time that some self-important educationalist tells us that missing a single day of school can destroy a child’s education. Our son was home educated for GCSE (now has a good degree from a good university and postgraduate qualifications), so I have always had my doubts about this particular shibboleth. I hope some other people are going to question it too.
Different people will have
different blessings, but it’s probably worth remembering what they are. I fear that when this is over, we will very quickly try to go
back to what life was like before. If, though, we can remember some of the things
this experience has taught us, maybe something positive can come out of it.
I still haven’t written King Lear though.
Of course, I have written the odd other thing …
I am still writing. It would be nice if some of you were using this time to read one or two of my books. All are available on Kindle (important right now, when getting my paperbacks delivered can be tricky). Dark Magic is also available free to read on Kindle Unlimited.
