Looking Back at the Decade’s Mysterious Sleepers

‘Tis the season for editors and bloggers everywhere to weigh in on what they believe to be the best books of the year. Some are even taking the opportunity to size up the whole literary decade. The most interesting list I’ve seen is The decade’s best unread books, compiled by the Guardian.

“While people are busy ranking the hit books of the last 10 years,” the Guardian says, “many a publishing insider is quietly mourning a volume that unaccountably never made the ‘best of’ or bestseller lists, but should have. Here publishers, agents and translators speak up for the ones that really shouldn’t have got away.”

It’s fascinating to get this behind the scenes perspective on books that were expected to do well but didn’t.

Take, for example, the case of Mutiny (2001), the fourth novel by Lindsey Collen, a critically acclaimed and award-winning South African author (now living in Mauritius) whose readership was thought to be growing. The book was “published with great energy and commitment by Bloomsbury” and received a few excellent reviews, including John Berger’s declaration that it was “a break-out and a breakthrough.” Still, “somehow it just never quite took off.”

Or Black Juice (2006), a collection of short stories by Margo Lanagan. Simonn Spantz, the editorial director at Gollancz, recalls that the in-house excitement about the book “was like having a new Angela Carter on your list.” Black Juice was packaged and marketed well. And it got great reviews. But 60 percent of the print run was returned, leaving the publisher “[c]rushed. And utterly mystified.”

Reading these accounts of miscalculation and inexplicable failure, one is reminded that the book business is capricious and nothing if not humbling.

Erin Brown

Thomas Riggs & Company

Missoula, Montana

From Thomas Riggs & Co. Blog: www.thomasriggs.net/blog

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